A new voter ID bill aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from voting for President Biden in the 2024 election has passed the House of Representatives, with the help of several Democrats.
The SAVE Act would require election officials to verify voters’ citizenship. It has the strong backing of Donald Trump, who urged the House of Representatives to pass it or else “go home and cry yourself to sleep.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted that legislation to require voters to prove their citizenship could be one of the “most important” bills passed in Congress in a lifetime.
“This will be one of the most important votes that members of this chamber will take in their entire careers,” he said on the House floor Wednesday.
“It’s an issue we never thought we’d have to address, but that time has now come,” he added.
Interestingly, five Democrats helped the bill reach the finish line in the House of Representatives by a vote of 221 to 198. But it faces certain death in the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Biden has also threatened to veto the legislation.
Migrants walk through the Chihuahua desert in Juarez, Mexico, on July 5, 2024
House Speaker Mike Johnson, joined by Rep. Chip Roy, insisted that legislation to require voters to prove their citizenship could be one of the “most important” bills passed in Congress in his lifetime.
The speaker added: “Should Americans and only Americans determine the outcome of American elections? Or should we allow foreigners and illegal immigrants to decide who will occupy the seats in the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate?”
Most ballots require some form of proof of identity to register to vote, such as a driver’s license. Not all such proof of identity requires citizenship: the bill would specifically mandate identification requirements such as passports or birth certificates.
A sample of more than 1 billion ballots taken between 2002 and 2022 found fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud.
Democrat Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., said the bill is a “blatant effort” to “make Americans believe that elections are riddled with falsehoods” and called it a “scare tactic.”
Johnson joined Trump’s global heavyweights Stephen Miller and Hogan Gidley and Rep. Chip Roy in getting the legislation across the finish line in the House.
The president was unable to previously disclose the exact number of non-citizens who voted in the election, but warned that the number could be “dangerously high.”
“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegal immigrants vote in federal elections, but it’s not something that can be easily verified. We don’t have that number. This legislation will allow us to do exactly that,” he said at a press event in May.
Non-citizens who vote in federal and state elections are already breaking the law and risking jail or deportation. A small handful of municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.
However, federal law currently prohibits requiring documentary proof of citizenship in federal elections. Arizona requires it for state elections.
A migrant walks through the Chihuahua desert in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
“We now have so many non-citizens in the country that if just one in a hundred voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes,” Johnson told reporters. “That’s a dangerously high number.”
“If a nefarious actor wants to interfere in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name. That’s it. That’s all that’s required,” Johnson said.
Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, called the bill “the most important vote most members of Congress will take in their entire careers.”
“If this bill does not become law, Joe Biden and the Democrats will have engineered one of the largest interferences in any democratic nation in the history of the world.”
The bill would aim to close any loopholes that allow people to register to vote without proof of U.S. citizenship or photo ID, require all 50 states to remove any illegal immigrants from their voter rolls, add penalties of up to five years in prison for election officials who register noncitizens to vote, and require proof of citizenship for those who vote abroad.
Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, called the bill “the most important vote most members of Congress will take in their entire careers.”
There is little evidence that non-citizen voting is affecting election results, and illegal immigrants often avoid giving personal information for fear of being caught by immigration authorities.
However, it is possible to vote illegally as an undocumented immigrant.
