A new voter ID bill aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from voting for President Biden in 2024 has passed the House of Representatives, with the help of several Democrats.
The SAVE Act would force election officials to verify voters’ citizenship. It has strong support from Donald Trump, who urged the House of Representatives to pass it or “go home and cry yourself to sleep.”
Chairman Mike Johnson stressed that legislation requiring voters to prove their citizenship could be one of the “most important” bills Congress will consider in a lifetime.
“This will be one of the most important votes that members of this chamber will ever hold in their careers,” he told the House plenary on Wednesday.
“It’s a problem we never thought we would ever have to address, but that moment has now arrived,” he added.
Interestingly, five Democrats helped pass the bill in the House of Representatives by a vote of 221-198. But it faces certain death in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Biden has also threatened to veto the legislation.
Migrants walk through the Chihuahuan Desert in Juarez, Mexico, on July 5, 2024
Speaker Mike Johnson, flanked by Rep. Chip Roy, insisted that legislation to require voters to prove their citizenship could be one of the “most important” bills ever to pass Congress
The speaker added: “Should Americans and Americans alone determine the outcome of American elections? Or should we let foreigners and illegal aliens decide who sits in the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate?”
Most ballots require some form of ID to register to vote, such as a driver’s license. Not all IDs require citizenship — the bill would specifically require IDs such as passports or birth certificates.
A sample of more than 1 billion ballots from 2002-2022 found fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud.
Democrat Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) said the bill is an “open attempt” to “make Americans believe elections are fraught with fraud” and called it “fear mongering.”
Johnson joined Trump’s top Republicans Stephen Miller and Hogan Gidley and Rep. Chip Roy to push the legislation across the finish line in the House.
The president was previously unable to disclose the exact number of non-citizens who voted in elections, but warned that the number could be “dangerously high.”
“We all know, intuitively, that there are a lot of illegal immigrants who vote in federal elections. But that’s not something that’s easy to prove. We don’t have that number. This legislation will allow us to do just that,” he said at a news conference in May.
Noncitizens who vote in federal and state elections are already breaking the law and risk imprisonment or deportation. A small number 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.
A migrant walks through the Chihuahuan Desert in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
“We now have so many non-citizens in the country that if just one in a hundred of them voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes,” Johnson told reporters. “That’s a dangerously high number.”
“If a bad 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 take in their entire careers.”
“If this bill does not become law, Joe Biden and the Democrats will have accomplished one of the greatest invasions of a democratic country in the history of the world.”
The bill aims to close loopholes that allow people to register to vote without proof of U.S. citizenship or photo ID. It would also require all 50 states to remove illegal immigrants from their voter rolls. It would also impose penalties of up to five years in prison on election officials who register noncitizens to vote, and require proof of citizenship for people who vote abroad.
Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, called the bill “the most important vote most members of Congress take in their entire careers.”
There is little evidence that non-U.S. citizen votes affect election results. Illegal immigrants often do not give out personal information for fear of being caught by immigration authorities.
However, it is possible for undocumented immigrants to vote illegally.