Congresswoman Claudia Tenney called on May 14 for the Department of Justice to review New York State Senate Bill S88A, which would require the state’s Medicaid program to automatically register applicants and enrollees to vote unless they opt out.
Tenney said this request is important because she believes flaws in New York’s Medicaid enrollment verification systems could lead to improper voter registration and threaten election integrity. In her letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Tenney pointed out that a September 2025 audit by the New York State Comptroller found about $509 million in managed care premiums were paid for over 155,000 individuals who may have lived outside the state. The audit also revealed that hundreds of thousands of enrollees were not properly submitted for federal data matching due to problems with data integrity.
The letter further notes that many noncitizens, both legally and illegally present, are served by New York’s Medicaid and related health coverage programs but are not eligible to vote in federal elections. Tenney argued that strong verification safeguards are essential before any voter registration data transfer occurs.
Tenney asked the Department of Justice to evaluate whether Senate Bill S88A complies with federal requirements for maintaining accurate voter rolls and whether it has enough safeguards against improper registrations. “New York Democrats want to use a taxpayer-funded Medicaid system already plagued by verification failures to automatically register voters,” said Congresswoman Tenney. “State audits have already exposed serious failures in New York’s Medicaid enrollment and residency verification infrastructure. Using this same broken bureaucracy for voter registration creates an unacceptable risk of ineligible individuals being added to the voter rolls, compromising the integrity of our elections. New Yorkers deserve secure elections and confidence that our election laws are being enforced.”
Claudia Tenney is currently serving in Congress representing New York’s 24th district after replacing Anthony Brindisi in 2021; she previously served in the State Assembly from 2011 through 2016 according to U.S. House of Representatives. She was born in New Hartford, graduated from Colgate University with a BA, earned a JD from University of Cincinnati, and now lives in Canandaigua.
