- “If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name,” Johnson insisted.
- Noncitizens who vote in federal and state elections are already breaking the law and risking jail or deportation.
President Mike Johnson insisted that legislation to force voters to prove their citizenship could be one of the “most important” bills to pass Congress in his lifetime.
The SAVE Act aims to force election officials to verify citizenship in elections. It is not yet clear when it will be put to a vote.
Johnson, speaking alongside Trump global heavyweights Stephen Miller and Hogan Gidley, and Rep. Chip Roy, did not give a full accounting of how many non-citizens have voted in the election, but warned that the number could be “dangerously high.” high”.
‘We all know, intuitively, that many illegals vote in federal elections. But it has not been something that is easily demonstrable. We don’t have that number. “This legislation will allow us to do exactly that.”
Noncitizens 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.
But federal law currently prohibits requiring documentary proof of citizenship in federal elections. Arizona requires it for state elections.
President Mike Johnson, flanked by Rep. Chip Roy, insisted that legislation to make voters prove their citizenship could be one of the “most important” bills to pass Congress in their lifetime.
“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. “This is a dangerously high number”
‘If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name. That’s all. That’s all it takes,” Johnson said.
Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, called the bill “the most important vote most members of Congress make in their entire careers.”
“If this bill does not become law, then 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 loophole that allows people to register to vote without proof of U.S. citizenship or photo identification, require all 50 states to remove illegal immigrants from their voter rolls, and add penalties of up to five years in prison for electoral officials. that register non-citizens 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 make in their entire careers.”
There is little evidence that noncitizen voting is impacting election results, and illegal immigrants often avoid giving out personal information for fear of being caught by immigration authorities.
However, it is possible to vote illegally as an undocumented immigrant.
Most ballots require some type of proof of identity to register to vote, such as a driver’s license. Not all such identification proofs require citizenship: the bill would specifically require identification requirements such as passports or birth certificates.
A sample of more than one billion ballots taken between 2002 and 2022 found fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud.
Still, former President Donald Trump is likely pushing the bill hard. Johnson and Trump held a joint news conference on the issue last month.
