Would voters from states that don't allow illegal aliens to vote in federal elections be able to file a class action lawsuit and sue a state if it were to allow illegal aliens to vote in federal elections?
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Would voters from states that don't allow illegal aliens to vote in federal elections be able to file a class action lawsuit and sue a state if it were to allow illegal aliens to vote in federal elections?
No.
They would not have standing to do so. The U.S. Supreme Court held on December 11, 2020 that a state does not have standing to contest the outcome of Presidential elections in another state. The reasoning of the ruling applies to individual and class action challenges by residents of one state to elections in another state as well.
Furthermore, federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections (without regard to the legality of their immigration status):
In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed a law prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections, including elections for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and presidential elections. This law does not apply to elections for state and local offices.
But, federal law does not prohibit a state from allowing a non-citizen from voting in a federal election. The U.S. Constitution does not impose that requirement. The U.S. Constitution vests eligibility to vote in state law, subject only to certain reasons that people cannot be prohibited from voting (former condition of slavery, race, sex, age greater than eighteen, for failure to pay poll taxes). For example, a state could legally limit voting to property owners under the U.S. Constitution (although the federal voting rights act might prohibit this practice). Congress has not passed a law regulating elections to require states to do impose the requirement that states bar non-citizens from voting in federal elections. The relevant law creates criminal liability on the non-citizen voter, rather than imposing a requirement on any U.S. state election laws.
However, in reality, no state actually does allow non-citizens to vote in a federal election. So, on the merits, apart from the standing issue, the lawsuit would be without merit. States don't allow non-citizens to vote in federal elections because doing so would expose any non-citizen that did vote in a federal election to easy to prove criminal liability.
Also, as a practical matter, the best available evidence is that the number of people who vote in federal elections when they are not legally permitted to do so under state law is on the order of one vote cast in one million, or less. The fear that would be at the foundation of such a lawsuit would be pure hysteria and delusion.
Most of the votes that are illegally cast in the U.S. are cast either by U.S. citizens voting more than once intentionally, usually in a misguided effort to counteract their false belief that voting fraud is widespread, or by people with criminal records or pending citizenship applications who mistakenly but in good faith believe that they are entitled to vote. Even among cases where someone does vote illegally, a vote by a non-citizen who knows that they are not entitled to vote is a tiny share of all such cases.
Finally, to be clear, states can permit non-citizens to vote in state and/or local elections if they wish to do so. This does not violate federal law. This has happened, legally, in the past and still does happen in isolated circumstances (such as in certain special district elections in which non-resident property owners are entitled to vote).
ohwilleke
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