A federal tool to check voters' citizenship isn't reliable. Could it still be useful?

A California law enacted in 2018 limits local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration officials, preventing local police from arresting someone solely for having a deportation order or keeping them in custody longer than necessary to allow time for immigration officers to arrive. The state’s share of national ICE arrests has fallen, as has the number of people transferred from state prison to ICE custody, but challenges to California’s law and “sanctuary” policies like it are mounting.

Since 2018, three Vermont cities have passed measures allowing noncitizen voters to participate in municipal elections. This gives them the opportunity to weigh in on matters that affect all local residents regardless of their immigration status, from school budgets to road projects.

Non-citizen residents of Takoma Park, Maryland have been able to vote in municipal elections since 1993, and 16- and 17-year-olds there have had access to the ballot since 2013. Residents of the city, where roughly 30% of the population was born outside of the United States, say participating in city elections makes them feel more welcome in the community and helps them get invested in local issues.

One way that any ordinary citizen can lend a hand to the plight of those caught in the American immigration system is by being a court observer: someone who sits in immigration court and takes notes by hand. Several organizations are working to develop a standardized way of evaluating judges' treatment of migrants to put it in a central database so that the data can be used to evaluate the human impact by the system as a whole. People who participate testify to the job alleviating despair over the situation as they can mitigate any unfair practices going unnoticed.

As ICE steps up arrest efforts around the country, organizations such as Arise Chicago are working to educate communities with Know Your Rights toolkits that help them prepare for potential confrontations with ICE officers. The kits are available digitally and can be accessed through a QR code, making the information easy to disseminate.

To assuage concerns around election security, Ada County, Ohio created an online tool called Ballot Verifier that allows users to search every ballot cast in the county since 2022. County officials invited local election skeptics to be the first to test the new tool and received positive feedback on its level of transparency.

GARViS, Georgia’s new system for documenting voter records, stores information on roughly 7 million active voters and hundreds of thousands of inactive voters, including their addresses, assigned polling places, sample ballots, and early voting schedules. The George Secretary of State’s Office reports that the new system has helped cut down check-in time on election day from about a minute and a half per voter to about 47 seconds per voter, streamlining the process for both poll workers and residents.

Ahead of Nigeria’s general election, a group of 12 media platforms and civil society organizations worked together as the Nigeria Factcheckers Coalition to debunk false information targeting voters. The coalition, which provided training and tools to participating journalists, fact-checked 127 during the week of the elections.

Following violent disruption during campus elections in 2021, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, implemented an electronic voting process which allowed students to cast their ballots online via a university portal. Some students who had previously abstained from participating in elections due to safety concerns were able to vote, but the platform also experienced technical glitches and fears around cyberattacks, which left some students unable to cast their ballots.

In an attempt to address fraud and malpractice, Nigeria introduced the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and the INEC Result Viewing Portal, which verify voters' identities using voter numbers, fingerprints, and facial recognition, and publicly shares election results in real-time. The technologies were successfully implemented in 76 percent of voting locations in one state in 2022, but voters and local officials say there are still issues with disenfranchisement and technical glitches.