Hundreds of thousands of people may not be able to vote in next year’s US presidential election because of a huge citizenship application backlog.

The agency says becoming a US citizen usually takes about seven months, but the current paperwork backlog could take between 15 and 18 months to work through.

“We are going to process these cases as responsibly and as quickly as we can, but we’re not focused on any of the election cycle,” Michael Aytes, associate director of the agency, told the Washington Post.

For the fiscal year ending 30 September 2007, a total of 7.7m applications were filed, compared with 6.3m during the previous fiscal year, the agency said.”*

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