FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — This November, Kentucky voters approved an amendment to the state Constitution that prohibits non-U.S. citizens from voting in Kentucky elections.

Rep. Nima Kulkarni worries that this change could have unintended consequences, such as denying newly naturalized Americans the right to vote and disenfranchising U.S.-born Americans without documents proving citizenship.

“How can you prove your citizenship? I was naturalized when I was 14. I have a naturalization certificate from the government, but if you were born here, you can show it with your birth certificate. You can show it by having a U.S. passport, which not many people have.” said Kulkarni. “It’s not just that U.S.-born people have to have passports. The application fee to get a passport is $130, so it’s generally not the first document people have. There’s also the issue of people not having birth certificates. There are a significant number, millions of them, across the country and possibly birth certificates.” It is also proportionate in Kentucky, which does not have access to the document.”

“These are documents that are hard to obtain. When you start thinking about people who have no resources, who don’t really have a connection to those resources, and who don’t even know how to get those documents, you’re effectively disenfranchising all of those people. It has nothing to do with immigration,” he added. “They are U.S.-born citizens. They have the right to vote, but due to this change, they will not be able to vote due to documentation requirements that may be enacted at the state and local level.”

There is currently no documentation requirement in Kentucky, but Kulkarni worries that Amendment 1 “opens the door to state-level legislation where you have to prove your citizenship.”

Ahead of the election, supporters of Amendment 1 said they were concerned local cities might allow non-citizens to vote in local races such as school boards in the future. At a press conference in September, supporters said they were trying to take preventive action.

“We do not want illegal immigrants or noncitizens to vote in Kentucky elections, as is the case in some other states,” said Rep. Michael Meredith, who sponsored the amendment in the Kentucky House this year. “Not in state elections, no, in federal elections, but they do it at the local level. Voting in local elections. Voting in school board elections.”

Meredith points to cities like San Francisco as evidence that other parts of the country allow non-citizens to vote in school board elections. He believes all voting should be reserved for citizens.

“Citizens should be making the decisions about how the government is run,” Meredith said. “If you want to be a citizen, there is a path to it.”

He later added: “There are few things more important than the sanctity of our elections in the United States.” “This is the foundation of our democracy.”

But there is no evidence to suggest non-citizens voted in Kentucky, according to state election officials. To vote in Kentucky elections, a registered voter must be a U.S. citizen who has lived in Kentucky for at least 28 days before Election Day. Federal law already makes it a crime for a noncitizen to vote in a presidential election.

Kulkarni worries that the impact of Amendment 1 will be felt by U.S.-born citizens.

“The overall result will be a disenfranchisement of U.S. citizen voters, only U.S.-born voters leaving the polls, not new American voters, because that’s been the outcome of states trying to purge voter rolls of non-citizen voters because they don’t exist,” Kulkarni said. “So you’re going to see a lot of people in Kentucky being disenfranchised because they don’t have access to the documents they need to prove their citizenship. We’re going to have to put some processes in place to prove citizenship.”