October 15, 2025 10:19AM # Election Policy Roundup By [Walter Olson](https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson) --- SHARE Listen to this article Generated with [ ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) AI technology. Loading the [Elevenlabs Text to Speech](https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech) AudioNative Player... Number sixteen in our [series of occasional roundups](https://www.cato.org/search?query=%22election+policy+roundup%22) on election law and policy: - “After reviewing state voter rolls going back to the 1980s, Louisiana’s Republican secretary of state announced this month that ‘non-citizens illegally registering or voting is not a systemic problem in Louisiana.’ That finding aligns with years of research.” \[[Gabriella Sanchez and Kevin Morris, Brennan Center](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/louisianas-chief-election-official-confirms-lack-widespread-noncitizen)\] New research on the topic from the Center for Election Innovation and Research is along the same lines \[[Miles Parks, NPR](https://www.npr.org/2025/07/30/nx-s1-5462836/noncitizen-voting-trump-ceir-review)\]. - At the same time, a Guyanese visa overstayer pretended to citizenship and other qualifications during a career of spectacular imposture that culminated in his being appointed school superintendent in Des Moines, Iowa; along the way he wound up a registered voter in Maryland (without apparently casting any actual votes), and some lawmakers in that state want to know how that happened \[[WBAL](https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/maryland-ian-roberts-voter-election-immigration-iowa-superintendent/)\]. - Audits typically find fake-person voter fraud extremely rare, one reason being that most people dislike felony raps. Even so, a Costa Mesa, CA, woman “has been charged with multiple felonies after she allegedly registered her dog to vote and cast mail-in ballots in her pet’s name,” according to the Orange County D.A. \[[KCRA/WYFF](https://www.wyff4.com/article/california-woman-accused-of-registering-dog-to-vote/66019280)\] According to court documents, political operators in Hamtramck, MI, outside Detroit, allegedly paid newly naturalized citizens and filled out their ballots \[[Hayley Harding, VoteBeat](https://www.votebeat.org/michigan/2025/08/11/hamtramck-city-council-election-forgery/)\]. - I know—because I hear from you—that some readers of these columns are interested in specialized voting systems such as Condorcet, approval, star, and Borda voting. Here is Alex Tabarrok explaining [why he likes the Borda Count](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/01/the-borda-count-is-the-best-method-of-voting.html). - “Lessons from the States: Building Trust in Georgia Elections” \[[Chris McIsaac and Scot Turner, R Street](https://www.rstreet.org/research/lessons-from-the-states-building-trust-in-georgia/)\]. “Georgia Republicans advance a plan to leave a bipartisan voter data group, despite warnings” \[[AP via ELB](https://electionlawblog.org/?p=148669)\]. - With the question of representation for Washington, DC, residents recently in the news, [here’s my piece](https://www.cato.org/blog/how-about-retroceding-washington-dc-maryland) from 2019 on the advantages of retroceding DC or at least its residential areas to the state of Maryland. ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Center for Representative Government](https://www.cato.org/center-representative-government) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).