Charrie Stambaugh has been a U.S. citizen for nearly three decades and has cast a ballot in every election since she became eligible to vote.
But this spring, after seeing a Facebook post encouraging people to check their voter registration status, she found her registration had been canceled.
Stambaugh signed up again — and got a letter from the Johnson County Clerk’s Office requiring her to provide proof of citizenship to retain her right to vote.
“Voting is important to me. … It is extremely important for me,” she told the Capital Chronicle. “… The minute I became a citizen, I knew that was one of the best parts of becoming a citizen, was being able to vote.”
Stambaugh’s mother married her U.S. Army veteran stepfather in the Philippines in 1988. They moved to Indiana afterward with assistance from the late U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar’s office, who helped secure Stambaugh special entry into the county.
She was five years old at the time. Stambaugh then became a U.S. citizen at 14 years old.
Since then, she has earned degrees from Purdue University and Indiana University, worked in nonprofit management, gotten involved in politics, launched her own photography business, married husband Jason and raised children.
But 28 years after her naturalization, Stambaugh was entangled by enforcement of state laws intended to block illegal noncitizen voting.
Indiana cracks down
House Enrolled Act 1264, approved in 2024, requires state election officials to compare the state’s voter rolls with a Bureau of Motor Vehicles list to identify registered voters who hold — or have ever had — a temporary driver’s license or temporary identification card.
“If evidence exists” that someone isn’t a U.S. citizen, state officials must notify the county in which that person is registered. That county mails out a request to provide proof of citizenship within 30 days or be stripped from the voter rolls.
Another law, 2025’s House Enrolled Act 1680, similarly requires county voter registration officials to request proof of citizenship from those who use a temporary credential number as part of their voter registration application.
Both provisions went into effect July 1, 2025, along with another requirement that counties remove voters within 48 hours of being notified that they haven’t provided proof.
One analysis found 981 existing voters have had their registrations canceled, and another 644 prospective voters have been rejected — or about 62% of the 2,602 people processed. Those figures include people who didn’t respond to the notice for any reason, including if the U.S. Postal Service returned the notice as undeliverable.
The study, conducted by Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, was included as an exhibit in an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging the statutes.
Voting rights advocates allege the laws unfairly burden naturalized and derived citizens — and enable the system to catch legal voters in its claws. The state has argued the laws don’t discriminate.
Stambaugh may have been counted among the 1,625 canceled and rejected voters identified in the analysis thanks to a “perfect storm” of factors, according to the state BMV.
Technical difficulties
After she bought a house and moved, Stambaugh went to her local BMV to update the address on her driver’s license and upgrade to a Real ID-compliant version. It was Oct. 20, 2025.
She brought along her Certificate of Citizenship, which the state lists as appropriate documentation to establish identity and legal status. But the paperwork, issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, triggered a database check.
“Under BMV Agency Policy, applicants who present a Certificate of Naturalization or Citizenship receive a Restriction 9 (Temporary Status) until their status is verified,” according to spokesman Greg Dunn. The agency uses the Department of Homeland Security’s Systemic Alien Verification Entitlements system.
But “intermittent outages” Oct. 14 through at least Oct. 20 “initially prevented the BMV from verifying Charrie Stambaugh’s citizenship status,” Dunn said in a statement.
“Because SAVE was down during her visit, the interim paper credential she received was issued with a Restriction 9,” Dunn continued. BMV verified Stambaugh’s citizenship Oct. 22, removed the “temporary status credential” flag and mailed her new driver’s license.
That resolution didn’t stop her voter registration from being canceled, however.
“I was not notified at any point that my registration had been revoked … I would not have known that had I not checked myself,” said Stambaugh, who thought it was unlikely other recent voters would randomly think to check their registrations without an election coming up. Indiana didn’t have elections statewide in November 2025.
“No eligible voter should have to discover by chance that their voter registration is no longer active,” she said. “And I worry about people that show up on Election Day … and they get turned away. … It’s scary for them not to be able to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”
BMV sends updated versions of its temporary status credentials list every night to the Indiana Election Division, which is housed within the Secretary of State’s Office. The list includes new additions, but nobody comes off — even if those listed obtain citizenship and unrestricted credentials.
The Secretary of State’s Office didn’t immediately respond to Capital Chronicle questions about how it uses BMV data.
Stambaugh recalled being “frustrated” by the requirement to provide proof of her citizenship — but more than anything, feeling the weariness of having “another thing on my to-do list.”
Less than a week after she got the notice in the mail, Stambaugh took her naturalization paperwork to the Johnson County Courthouse. The voter registration office there scanned her documents and told her they were able to override the system. She didn’t miss the May 5 primary election.
But she wouldn’t have been flagged and forced through the proof-of-citizenship process had she used a U.S. passport to update her driver’s license, according to BMV. Stambaugh, however, is among the half of Americans who don’t have a passport.
Proposed federal legislation would require proof of citizenship for voter registration nationwide. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, passed the U.S. House in February but hasn’t yet gotten through the U.S. Senate.
Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.
