- 99.72% of registered Utah voters were confirmed as U.S. citizens after a state data review.
- 27 noncitizens were removed from rolls; legal repercussions expected for false attestation.
- 5,007 voters need to verify citizenship; many are legacy voters prior to ID requirements.
- Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said some improvements are needed to protect the future of voter registration in Utah.
After reviewing the citizenship status of more than 2 million registered voters, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson’s office found that while the vast majority were confirmed citizens, 27 were confirmed noncitizens and another 25 were flagged as likely noncitizens.
“Those voters do need to be held accountable for this,” said Daniel Wade, Utah director of election systems, on Wednesday of the 27 registered voters who falsely attested they were citizens.
Those residents have now been removed from voter rolls by their local county clerk. The lieutenant governor’s office said it will work with county clerks to investigate the false claims.
Penalties for these residents could include prison time, fines or forfeiting the ability to become a citizen.
The review also identified 25 registered voters as probable noncitizens, officials said in a media gathering at the state Capitol. These voters have 30 days to prove citizenship before being removed from voter rolls by county clerks.
While 99.72% of registered voters in Utah were confirmed to be U.S. citizens, another 5,007 voters, the citizenship status of less than a quarter of a percentage could not be confirmed. Those voters will be contacted via mail with instructions to verify their citizenship at their local county clerk’s office.
The lieutenant governor’s office estimates that about half of the unconfirmed voters are legacy voters, meaning they have been on the voter rolls for decades and registered before requirements for driver’s license or documentation were instated.
The other half are presumed to be voters who registered with improper information, such as a typo in their name or driver’s license number. Voters can correct their record by visiting their local county clerks.
The registration system has room for improvement
The review process identified errors in the registration system that Henderson and her office are now working to improve for future elections.
“In this process we did find some areas that were useful that needed to be improved,” Henderson said.
In some cases, noncitizens were able to register because of an issue in the online program that allowed them to check the box attesting they were a citizen when their drivers license showed they weren’t. That issue has now been fixed.
Human error also played a role in ineligible registration. The majority of illegally registered used a paper form, Henderson said. To address this problem, county clerks will receive improved training and guidance with instructions on how to prevent faulty registration.
“We’ve made a lot of improvements over the past few years, and we’ll continue to make improvements,” Henderson said. “In all, I think that Utahns can have a lot of confidence in what we do.”
“We have found ways to improve,” she continued. “But for the most part we are doing really well.”
What spurred the review?
Under federal law, only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote, but there is no requirement for voters to prove their citizenship status.
This has led to some accusations of voter fraud in national and local elections.
“Over the past few years, there’s been a narrative that there’s a lot of ineligible people voting in our elections,” Henderson said.
HB209, passed in March of last year, imposed a new requirement for all Utah voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship.
The following month, in April 2025, Henderson’s office began gathering information on the more than 2 million registered voters in Utah to verify their citizenship. This project was the first of its kind to ever take place in Utah.
The purpose was “to gain insight into the scope of any potential vulnerabilities and help identify any changes necessary to ensure that only eligible citizens are voting in Utah elections,” Henderson said in a statement.
Verifying citizenship required collaborating with the Driver License Division and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program for citizenship verification to cross reference voter information.
Protecting voter privacy
The results of the review were released just months after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of Utah over failure to deliver voter registration lists.
In March, the Utah Legislature passed SB153, which classifies voters names, addresses, party affiliation and voter status as public information, excluding those designated as at-risk voters.
The DOJ is seeking additional information on voters, including drivers license numbers, Social Security numbers and dates of birth. Henderson has said that she will avoid giving this information to the federal government if possible.
“I want to protect Utah voters’ data, and if I don’t have to send their records through a federal database, I’m not going to,” Henderson told reporters.
In an effort to preserve privacy, her office reviewed the information of more than 10,000 voters by hand instead of using federal systems.
Henderson said while the review of voter information may not dismiss the lawsuit, she hopes the results give Utah voters confidence in the election system.
“I don’t know if it’ll put the DOJ lawsuit to rest. I think the courts are going to do that. But I do hope that it helps people understand that we are doing things well. And when we see places we can improve, we go ahead and improve.”
What’s next for Utah voters?
Notices to voters who could not be confirmed will be mailed by the lieutenant governor’s office on Friday. Voters who make the necessary adjustments to registration information within the next 30 days should still be eligible to vote in the general election.
Henderson said her office will provide funding, resources, and training to local county clerks to assist in corrections.
Now, with the review completed, “we just have to worry about the new registrants moving forward,” Henderson said.
New laws will go into place in 2029, requiring Utahns to have a valid real ID to register to vote.
The federal law remains unchanged, and voters will not be required to show proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
Henderson emphasized that the review is not an effort to disenfranchise voters, but rather to ensure that Utah elections and fair and accurate.
“Moving forward, we have even better, stronger systems in place to make sure that the people who do register are in fact eligible,” Henderson said. “And we want to make sure that eligible citizens are voting. We want to make sure that we’re not disenfranchising people, violating people’s rights that way.”
She hopes the results of the review give confidence to Utah voters.
“This demonstrates that there is not a widespread problem. And that states and our county clerks, for the most part, do a very good job of making sure that our voter rolls are clean and that only eligible voters are registering,” she said. “The system is working. It’s working well.”
