Idaho

House election bill echoes Idaho voter citizenship laws

Published

9 months ago

April 15, 2025

House election bill echoes Idaho voter citizenship laws

A bill requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship just passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is advancing to the Senate.

Last Thursday, the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act. The legislation requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, including REAL ID driver’s licenses, to participate in elections. Standard driver’s licenses would no longer be accepted.

Last week, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane spoke on election security at the federal House Election Subcommittee in Washington. Before the hearing, McGrane told Boise State Public Radio what he planned to discuss.

“A really hot topic is just citizenship validation. In order for us to be able to do that, we can’t just do it as Idaho alone. We need our partners in the other states, as well as the federal government, to be able to do that,” McGrane said.

This includes implementation of the state’s 2024 Only Citizens Can Vote Act executive order, which requires all Idaho voters’ citizenship status to be reviewed each election cycle.

The order was followed by a constitutional amendment Idaho voters approved in fall that explicitly says only U.S. citizens can vote, even though existing laws already ban noncitizens from casting ballots.

At the hearing, McGrane said all 1.1 million Idaho voter registrations were audited by the state this last election. He said it the state is “easily determining citizenship for the overwhelming majority, but then really dialing it in to a case by case basis to narrow it down to 34 individuals who were non-citizens on Idaho’s voter rolls.”

That’s about .003% of the voting population in last year’s election.

Idaho checks the voter registry to purge inactive voters every two years.

The committee asked McGrane why Idaho recently banned student IDs for voter identification. He said it didn’t change voter turnout, and that Idaho is looking into requiring REAL ID Star Cards for voting.

“We have the real ID taking effect. We all see this when we travel. All of us experience it. This is something that we can do.”

Idaho’s REAL ID Star Card program takes effect on May 7.

A 2024 study by the University of Maryland finds roughly 21 million registered voters don’t have easy access to proof of citizenship. That’s 9% of the country’s voting population.

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Idaho

Looking forward to another year of East Idaho Sports – East Idaho News

Published

9 hours ago

January 4, 2026

Press Room

Looking forward to another year of East Idaho Sports – East Idaho News

Note: As a bonus to our readers who have followed us into Year 2, the East Idaho Sports staff will post a special story on Sundays – Could be a column, opinion, feature, or just something fun and goofy. Hope you enjoy, and thanks again for coming along on this journey.

EASTERN IDAHO — Dec. 31 marked the end of the first full calendar year of East Idaho Sports. It has been a pleasure to bring our readers coverage of local youth, high school, college and semi-pro sports.

Over the last 12 months, we have covered state champions, national champions, junior hockey league champions, record-breaking performances and so much more. Those of you who have followed along since we launched in August 2024 have seen how we have expanded our coverage to include some interactive features like this Sunday Special series, Game Balls and the Photo of the Week voting.

We look forward to the completion of the winter sports seasons — including some Winter Olympics stories — spring sports, the summer sports schedule and returning next fall to start it all over again.

But we also hope to continue adding to our coverage, and shine spotlights on even more of the great athletes and sports programs in eastern Idaho.

In order to do that, we would like some help.

With just two full-time reporters and one freelance photographer we will regrettably miss things. And while we try to fill those gaps ourselves, we are always open to tips.

If there was a sporting event or sports story that deserved coverage it didn’t receive, please email us at sports@eastidahonews.com. If there is an upcoming event that should be spotlighted, please email us.

Also, our Photo of the Week stories will continue to be posted midday every Monday. If you have photos from a local sporting event that you want to enter in the running, email those to us by Sunday morning. For those who follow the voting — on our public Facebook group East Idaho News – Sports — a reader-contributed photo was recently selected our Photo of the YEAR, and we would love to continue adding those on the weekly ballot.

This photo of West Jefferson’s Justus Burtenshaw during the first round of the state tournament, taken by reader Julie Hall, was selected out East Idaho Sports Photo of the Year.

Finally, we recently added a regular feature we are calling the “Whip-around”: A quick rundown of local high school sports action. In order to expand these stories to include more teams, we would love for coaches, players or parents to send us photos of game scorebooks. If you are linked to a local team and would like your team to be added to these stories, please email us, and we can let you know how to do so.

It has been a pleasure to highlight the many local athletes for their successes and hard work, and we look forward to another year of precisely that.

We will see you at a field, court, course, pool, etc., near you in 2026.