The Republican National Committee has found a new group of American citizens whose votes it wants to throw out: U.S. citizens who live overseas.

On June 26, 2026, the RNC sued Colorado to block some of these citizens from voting. It's not a one-off. It's part of a coordinated national campaign to shrink the electorate one lawsuit at a time.

Who they're trying to silence

The people targeted by this lawsuit are Americans. Not "illegals," not non-citizens — U.S. citizens who happen to live abroad.

Under a federal law called the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), Americans overseas can vote in the state their family is tied to. Colorado lets a citizen living abroad vote based on the last Colorado residence of a parent, legal guardian, spouse, domestic partner, or civil union partner. Think of the child of a military family stationed overseas, or a kid born abroad to Colorado parents who has never had the chance to live in the U.S. Under Colorado law, that citizen gets to vote where their family is from.

The RNC has a name for these Americans: "never-residents." And it wants them off the rolls.

The argument

In its complaint, the RNC argues that Colorado's law violates the state constitution. "Residency is not inherited and cannot be established by proxy," the lawsuit says. It goes on: "An individual who has never personally made Colorado his or her home has not 'resided in this state' within the meaning of Article VII of the Colorado Constitution."

The RNC is asking a court to declare Colorado's law unconstitutional and to force Secretary of State Jena Griswold to strip these voters from the rolls.

Strip that down and here's what it means: a party is going to court to cancel the votes of American citizens because of where they happen to live. These aren't people accused of doing anything wrong. Their only "offense" is being an overseas citizen whose connection to a state runs through their family.

This isn't just about Colorado

The Colorado suit is one front in a much bigger campaign. The RNC has now filed the same kind of lawsuit against Nebraska, Virginia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Michigan — arguing in each that the state is unlawfully letting "never-residents" cast ballots.

Six states. Same playbook. The goal isn't to fix some epidemic of fraud — there's no evidence overseas citizens are voting illegally. The goal is to find a category of voters, cast them as suspect, and go to court to knock them off the rolls.

The same story, over and over

If this feels familiar, it's because it's the pattern. When Republicans can't win an argument, they work to shrink the pool of people allowed to vote.

We've watched it again and again this year: the SAVE Act, which would put up new paperwork hurdles that could block millions of eligible Americans; the Trump executive order to limit mail-in voting; the DHS threats aimed at voter rolls. Now it's American citizens overseas — including the families of people serving this country abroad.

Voting-rights advocates have warned that these overseas-voter suits threaten protections that Americans abroad have counted on for decades. And they're right to worry. Once a party decides that some citizens' votes don't count because of where they live, the only question left is which group is next.

Every one of these fights is sold as being about "election integrity." What they actually do is take the vote away from real, eligible Americans. We deserve better.

Source

Republicans sue Colorado in surging attack on overseas voters, Democracy Docket, June 2026. Photo: AP.