McDonald

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

McDonald lived in Hawaii with her U.S. Citizen husband and their U.S. Citizen child. When McDonald applied for a Hawaii driver’s license, under Hawaii’s Motor Voter proce- dures, she also registered to vote by completing the bottom of the license application. In doing so, she checked a box indi- cating that she was a United States Citizen. McDonald testi- fied that she checked the box “because at the time [she] wasn’t sure if [she was] a citizen.”1 McDonald’s husband tes- tified that at that time, he too was “quite uncertain” about his wife’s citizenship status. McDonald attributed part of her con- 1 McDonald accurately indicated on the registration form that she was not eligible to vote in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Election. The form asked if she considered herself “Hawaiian,” defined as “any descendant of aboriginal people inhabiting the Hawaiian islands which exercised its sov- ereignty and subsisted in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, and which peoples thereafter have continued to reside in Hawaii.” MCDONALD v. GONZALES 2449 fusion to friends having told her that, having married a U.S. Citizen, she became one herself,…