As the Republican-controlled House is expected to take up a bill Wednesday aimed at making sure only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections, President Joe Biden is signaling he would kill the measure should it miraculously survive the Democrat-led Senate. Biden isn’t likely to need the veto pen.
Democrats will, however, be forced to explain why they oppose the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which requires documentary proof of citizenship to vote for president and members of Congress.
And while they have gotten plenty of cover from corporate media in asserting that foreign nationals — including illegal aliens — are rarely ever caught voting in federal elections, such explanations may not sit well with U.S. voters who overwhelmingly support prohibitions on noncitizens voting in federal elections. Most Americans, too, according to polls, are deeply concerned about the tsunami of illegal immigrants that has swamped U.S. communities on Biden’s watch. Exactly why the Biden administration has kept the border door wide open isn’t lost on anyone who has been paying attention for the past three and a half years.
“Democrats say it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. That’s true. It’s also illegal for someone to illegally enter our country, but that hasn’t stopped millions and millions of people,” U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., told me Tuesday during an interview on the “The Vicki McKenna Show” in Milwaukee and Madison.
‘Petri Dish’ for Noncitizen Voting
Steil, the chairman of the House Committee on Administration, which passed H.R. 8281 in May, wants to remind anyone who will listen that Democrats already support foreign nationals voting in local elections, as they are allowed to do in Washington, D.C. Most House Democrats earlier this year voted against a measure that would have barred illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from voting in local elections in the nation’s capital. The bill is deemed dead on arrival in the Senate.
Not surprisingly, just 28 of the 500-plus foreign nationals voting in last month’s D.C. primary elections registered as Republicans, according to The Washington Post.
Steil said Democrats want to use noncitizen voting in local elections, currently allowed in a handful of states, as a “Petri dish” to test on the American people.
“In a period of time that we know that millions of legal and illegal immigrants in the country are not eligible to vote in federal elections, it’s important to enforce the laws on the books,” the congressman said.
Honor System
As it stands under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as the “motor voter law,” voters may simply check a box on the federal form affirming they are U.S. citizens and meet other eligibility requirements. Democrats prefer the honor system. In opposing the SAVE Act, they have noted the tough penalties for foreign nationals who lie about their citizenship status in registering to vote: a fine, up to five years in prison, or both, according to federal code.
But Democrats know it is difficult to track false claims of citizenship, a longtime problem. A 2014 story by WHYY, a Philadelphia public radio station, reported on a fact that remains a significant issue in the Biden presidency a decade later: “Illegal immigrants lie to get asylum status in U.S.”
But they certainly wouldn’t lie to vote in federal elections, Democrats insist.
“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at the May 8 press conference in introducing the SAVE Act.
‘The Only Reason’
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has introduced a similar measure in the Senate. He cut to the chase in a post Tuesday on his X account.
“The SAVE Act would prevent non-Americans from illegally voting, protecting the votes of American citizens. The only reason to oppose it is because you want non-Americans illegally voting,” Lee wrote.
Biden, meanwhile, is pushing Democrat legislation loosening voter integrity laws.
“The President has been clear: he will continue fighting to protect Americans’ sacred right to vote in free, fair, and secure elections,” the White House said in its opposition statement to the SAVE Act.
But how “free, fair, and secure” are U.S. elections without documented proof of citizenship?
Biden and his fellow Democrats in D.C. appear to be backing a losing issue. A national poll conducted last year for Americans for Citizen Voting by RMG Research Inc. found that 75 percent of respondents opposed allowing foreign nationals to vote in their local elections. A recent poll found 68 percent of North Carolina voters supported a state constitutional amendment barring foreign nationals from voting in elections. North Carolina voters will vote on the citizens-only question on November’s general election ballot.
“This is a moment in time that we should all realize that we should maintain U.S. elections for U.S. citizens, and requiring documentary proof of that citizenship is how you actually enforce the law,” Steil said.
Listen to the interview with Rep. Bryan Steil below.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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