House pass bill to block noncitizens from voting
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WASHINGTON – House Republicans, with the help of some Democrats, passed voter ID legislation Wednesday that would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections — a regulation supported by former President Donald Trump, though it is already already illegal for noncitizens to vote.
The bill, titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, would prohibit individuals from voting in a federal election if they do not provide proof of citizenship and will require states to purge non-citizens from their official eligible voters lists.
All voters would be required to present either a valid passport, a U.S. birth certificate, or government-issued ID or naturalization card proving citizenship.
Data shows that non-citizens voting in federal elections is virtually non-existent.
The bill passed the chamber with a 221-198 vote, and will head to the Senate where it will likely stall due to opposition from Democrats.
Five Democrats voted for the bill: Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez Jr. of Texas and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.
House Speaker Mike Johnson in April said he would introduce the bill during an event with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where he warned without evidence the fear of non-citizens voting in federal elections.
Noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections under federal law.
Several other states are also introducing their own measures to stop noncitizens from voting in elections.
Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin will have ballot measures to amend their constitutions to ban noncitizen voting in November, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Statewide Ballot Measures Database.
In the battleground state of Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Thursday his office is in the process of conducting a SAVE audit of potential noncitizens who may have registered to vote.
Despite new legislation being introduced to stop noncitizens from casting ballots, there have been very few cases of that happening.
A 2017 study from the Brennan Center found that only two of 42 jurisdictions studied had improper noncitizen voting. There were 30 cases, out of more than 23 million votes cast, accounting for .0001% of the votes in those places.
Rachel Orey, senior associate director of Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project, said the bill is a “messaging bill” at this point as Democrats would not pass it in the Senate and President Joe Biden would not sign it. Orey, however, noted that it shows what the priorities are for Congress if Republicans take control of both chambers.
“It indicates what Republican legislators might move on if they were to take majorities in the House and Senate next to Congress,” Orey said.
Orey said the big change to federal law if this bill was to pass would be that it would require documentation to be provided at the time of registering to vote, rather than presenting citizenship identification under penalty of perjury.
In addition, Orey said a 2013 Supreme Court ruling deemed it illegal to require additional citizenship documentation in order to register to vote.
“Pretty big portions of the American public, even a conservative estimate, is about 9% of individuals, don’t have documentation that they could prove their citizenship with on hand,” Orey said.
Republicans, including Rep. Chip Roy, who introduced the act, rejoiced over the bill’s passage.
“We will only be able to keep this republic as a republic as long as our citizenship as Americans remains meaningful,” Roy said in a statement.
Erin Mansfield contributed to this story.
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