Legislation requiring proof of US citizenship when registering to vote passed in the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support Wednesday afternoon, however the vast majority of Democrats voted against the commonsense measure.
A majority of 216 Republicans and five Democrats voted to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to prevent non-citizens from casting ballots in federal elections. Swing-district Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Don Davis (D-NC) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) crossed party lines to vote in favor of the measure.
The bill was strongly opposed by 198 Democrats, and faces an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate.
“The Democrat Party you grew up with is buried and gone,” said former Trump speechwriter and America First Legal founder Stephen Miller on X. “There is only the Progressive Democrats now. The entire Progressive Democrat Party just voted to let illegal aliens vote in the 2024 election.”
Joe Biden’s aides put out a statement on Monday opposing the SAVE Act and vowing that Biden will veto it if it comes to his desk.
“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 8281, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act … The alleged justification for this bill is based on easily disproven falsehoods,” the statement said.
While it’s indeed illegal to falsely claim U.S. citizenship or for a non-citizen to cast a ballot in a federal election, there is currently no requirement on federal voting forms to provide proof of US citizenship to stop it from happening.
Welfare offices and other agencies in at least 46 US states have reportedly been providing voter registration forms to non-citizens without requiring proof of citizenship, the New York Post reported last month.
“Millions of migrants with humanitarian parole, refugee or asylum status are eligible for benefits that would bring them to the offices where voter registration takes place,” according to the report.
The SAVE Act was designed to remedy this looming problem.
While there is proof of thousands of non-citizens casting or attempting to cast ballots in federal elections, some argue that’s beside the point.
“Illegal aliens are not being imported to vote themselves,” independent journalist Kyle Becker recently argued on X. “They are here to provide Democrat operatives with the opportunity to ballot harvest and o drop the ballots off at inner city drop boxes in swing states.”
Becker said that’s why “Democrats universally oppose voter IDs, oppose cleaning voting rolls, oppose single-day elections, endorse mass mail-in ballots, endorse electronic voting machines, endorse unchecked illegal immigration.”
In a statement after the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) made clear that Republicans are on to the Democrats’ illegal vote harvesting scam.
“Today 198 House Democrats voted against preventing illegal aliens from voting in American elections,” Johnson said. “Over the past four years, Joe Biden has welcomed millions upon millions of illegals into the country knowing that noncitizens only have to check a box to vote in a federal election.”
More than 10 million aliens have entered the United States since Joe Biden took office in Jan 2021, an influx that surpasses the populations of 41 out of 50 states.
“We have long known this was an intentional effort to turn them into voters, and now the American people know where every member of Congress stands on this critically important issue,” Johnson added. “House Republicans believe that only Americans should vote in American elections. House Democrats have now proven they believe that illegal aliens should vote in American elections.”
I turned 18 in December, 1972, missing the November election by one month. I was a high school student at the time. When the school returned from Christmas break in January, 1973, I registered to vote. One of the secretaries in the front office, was authorized to do voter registrations. I had to provide a certified copy of my birth certificate, as well as a notarized voter registration application. Conveniently, one of the other secretaries was a notary, so I signed the application in her presence, and she notarized it. There was no motor-voter debacle back then. You had to physically prove you were a US citizen, not “certify under penalty of perjury,” on a driver’s license Motor Voter application, with no document verification.