The Latest American Citizens To Be Disenfranchised
September 30, 2026
By Paige Moskowitz
After losing the 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court election by 734 votes, Judge Jefferson Griffin contested the validity of over 65,000 mail-in ballots. Most of the ballots Griffin challenged came from voters with allegedly incomplete voter registrations and issues with ID requirements.
But a small portion of the challenged votes—260 ballots, to be exact—came from “never resided voters.” These are American citizens who were born abroad and have never lived in the United States, but inherited voting rights in North Carolina because it was their parent’s last domicile. Oftentimes, these are children of career military or foreign service personnel. While these citizens may visit the U.S. regularly throughout their lives, they have never lived long-term in the country.
The total number of never resided voters across the country is not tracked, but evidence suggests that the number is relatively small. For example, North Carolina’s 260 never resided ballots represent .005% of the 5.5 million ballots cast in the state Supreme Court race. Nebraska said it only has 116 never resided voters.
It’s important to note that not every state permits never resided citizens to vote. 38 states allow never resided voters to cast a ballot, meaning that a person’s right to vote hinges entirely on what state their parent or spouse last lived in. Some states say these voters are eligible to vote for both state and federal office, while other states permit voting in federal races only. Additionally, while state constitutions often outline residency requirements for voting, many never resided voters receive suffrage through a state’s implementation of the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which protects the voting rights of military and overseas voters.
However, these never resided voters are increasingly becoming a target of disenfranchisement. Since the 2024 election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and affiliate groups have filed lawsuits challenging the eligibility of these voters in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, and Virginia, in addition to North Carolina. All these states have statutes permitting never resided voters to inherit voting rights through their parents or legal guardian, or, in some states, their spouse. In each lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim that these laws violate the state’s constitutional requirement of residency to vote.
In June, the North Carolina Superior Court ruled that never resided citizens are ineligible to vote. None of the other lawsuits have been successful so far. And again, in the grand scheme of the tens of millions of votes cast in the United States every election, never resided voters represent an incredibly thin sliver of ballots. But singling out these voters attacks questions at the heart of American democracy—who gets to vote? And are we interested in expanding or limiting the franchise?
Assuming a person is at least 18 years old and has no disqualifying felony convictions, we tend to think of voter eligibility requirements in two parts: citizenship and residency. Nobody is questioning the citizenship of never resided voters, and furthermore, courts have long recognized that limiting the right to vote to only U.S. citizens is constitutional. So how do we determine residency?
If we borrow a domicile test from civil procedure, maybe we determine a person’s residency for the purposes of voting by their physical presence in a place and their intent to remain. But we don’t use that test for voters within the United States and precedent already permits some people to vote in a state different from their domicile. College students, for example, have the option to vote either at their campus address or their home address. Members of the military can register to vote with their base address, even if they know they won’t be there for long or may be deployed overseas.
Additionally, under the domicile test, minors are assumed to have the same domicile as their parents. And a person retains their domicile until a new one is gained—and there’s an incredibly high bar to prove a new domicile. Under this construction, a never resided citizen is assumed to have the same American domicile as their parents, until proven otherwise. This is the reasoning that a Nebraska court used to issue summary judgement in favor of the state in the RNC’s lawsuit challenging that state’s never resided law.
Maybe we’re concerned that these voters haven’t spent enough time in the United States to be connected to a community and be adequately informed about elections. That’s a reason the RNC cites in its Virginia lawsuit, highlighting the Virginia Constitution’s statement that all individuals “having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage[.]”
But again, those are not standards in-state voters must prove. And it would be a dangerous precedent to suggest that only people with evidence of “permanent” interest and attachment to a community can vote. Who determines how much evidence is necessary? And what type of evidence is accepted? Overseas citizens are still subject to U.S. taxes and likely have friends and family living in the states—is that sufficient to satisfy this requirement? You can imagine how impracticable and onerous it would be to add an evidentiary test like that to voter registration.
Ultimately, never resided voters’ ballots were not counted in the 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court election. Litigation continued for nearly six months after the election before Griffin conceded on May 7, 2025. But before then, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that never resided citizens do not have the right to vote in state elections. On June 9, 2026, the Superior Court of North Carolina held that never resided voters also do not have the right to vote in federal elections.
Litigation over never resided voters is active in seven states. State courts will continue to grapple with this issue, with the possibility of creating new “resident” definitions for the purposes of voting. North Carolina and Nebraska have provided different paths to determine the eligibility of never resided voters, and we will see if any states follow.