A new CityKey ID available to all Chicago residents – regardless of immigration status, criminal record, housing situation or gender identity – will be considered as a valid form of identification to register to vote, according to the State Board of Elections.

“I believe, from what I’ve read, the Chicago municipal ID would live up to the qualifications under state statute for what a government-issued ID is,” Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the election board, told WQAD. “So that would be a legal form of ID for the board of elections to accept.”

The new CityKey ID is designed to provide legal identification for illegal immigrants, as well as the homeless and folks recently released from prison. Dietrich acknowledged there is no state law that requires proof of citizenship to vote. Residents are simply required to check a box, though Dietrich contends there’s no reason to believe anyone would lie to vote illegally.

“When you go to register to vote, you do check a box that attests to your citizenship,” he said. “You are signing a legal document that says, ‘Yes, I am a citizen.’ But no one who registers to vote is required to bring in, for example, a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship. That’s something that you check the box, you attest to it.”

Dietrich told WQAD that local officials – the same ones defying federal immigration law to shield illegal immigrants from immigration enforcement – will keep things straight.

“There are 109 local election authorities in Illinois,” Dietrich said. “They’re the ones who actually handle the registration, the checking of IDs, and keeping the documentation. We maintain an electronic database of voter registrations we get from them.”

State officials aren’t worried about illegal immigrants voting because they could be deported if they do, Dietrich said.

“The main thing that would happen is deportation,” he said. “If you’re not a citizen, and you have any thoughts of ever attaining citizenship, registering to vote is almost an instant trigger that when you apply for citizenship, you will be deported. That’s one of the first things they check.”

That hasn’t been the case in Pennsylvania.

WND reports:

Dietrich’s confidence that the threat of deportation is sufficient to deter illegal registrations has not been borne out in Pennsylvania where the state is being sued after an analysis identified more than 100,000 active registrants who are noncitizens.

Following revelations last year by a Philadelphia city commissioner of a “glitch” at the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles that enabled noncitizens to register to vote when applying for or renewing driver’s licenses, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an election integrity group, requested to inspect the data relating to noncitizens on the state’s rolls.

PILF is now suing the state in hopes of revealing the full scope of the problem.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson also highlighted the broader problem with illegal immigrant voters this week.

“The Justice Department doesn’t seem to be doing anything about any of this, and it’s not just happening in the city of Chicago,” Carlson said. “In the state of California, illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses – hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them – and they can use those to register to vote, and some doubtless do.

“In the state of Maryland, some towns are trying to legalize voting for illegal immigrants,” he said. “How much longer until that’s a Democratic Party platform plank? How long until some federal judge in, I don’t know, Hawaii, declares that preventing illegal aliens from voting is racist and demands they get to vote immediately nationwide?

“It’s coming, of course it is. The left wants power and this will give it to them.”