NEW YORK — One political party is holding urgent press conferences and congressional hearings on the subject. The other says it is a dangerous distraction designed to sow doubt before this year’s presidential election.
In recent months, the specter of immigrants voting illegally in the U.S. has emerged as a major talking point for election-year Republicans. They argue that legislation is necessary to protect the sanctity of the election as the country faces unprecedented levels of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Voting by people who are not U.S. citizens is already illegal in federal elections, and there is no evidence of it happening in large numbers anywhere. Still, Republican lawmakers at the federal and state levels are throwing their energy behind the issue, introducing legislation and reducing voting measures. This activity ensures that the issue remains front and center in voters’ minds in the coming months.
Republicans in Congress are pushing a bill called the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in at least six states have included voting measures for noncitizens on the Nov. 5 ballot, while at least two other states are debating whether to do so.
“American elections are for American citizens, and we want to keep it that way,” said Bryan Steil, chairman of the House Administration Committee of Wisconsin, during a hearing he convened on the subject last week.
Democrats on the committee blasted their Republican colleagues for focusing on what they called a “non-issue,” arguing it was part of a strategy with former President Donald Trump to lay the groundwork for election challenges this fall.
“It appears the lesson Republicans learned from the fiasco the former president created in 2020 wasn’t ‘Don’t steal an election’ — it was just ‘Start sooner,'” said New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the committee. ‘The coup starts here. This is where it starts.”
Concerns that immigrants who are not eligible to vote are voting illegally have been prevalent on the right for years. But it gained renewed attention earlier this year when Trump began suggesting without evidence that Democrats were encouraging illegal migration to the US so they could register the newcomers to vote.
Republicans who have spoken out about voting by those who are not citizens have demurred when asked for evidence that it is a problem. Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson, during a press conference about his federal legislation to require proof of citizenship for voter registration, was unable to provide examples of the crime that occurred.
“The answer is it’s unanswerable,” the Louisiana Republican said in response to a question about whether such people were voting illegally. “We all know intuitively that many illegals vote in federal elections, but it’s not something that’s easy to prove.”
Election administration experts say that not only is it demonstrable, but it has also been shown that the number of non-citizens who vote in federal elections is infinitesimally small.
To be clear, there have been cases over the years of non-citizens illegally registering and even voting. But states have mechanisms to deal with that. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently found 137 suspected noncitizens on the state’s rolls — out of about 8 million voters — and is taking action to confirm and remove them, he announced last week.
In 2022, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger conducted an audit of his state’s voter rolls, specifically looking for noncitizens. His office found that 1,634 people had tried to register to vote over a 25-year period, but election officials had intercepted all the registrations and none had been able to register.
In North Carolina in 2016, an election audit found that 41 legal immigrants who had not yet become citizens had cast ballots, out of a total of 4.8 million votes cast. The votes made no difference in any state election.
Voters must certify, under penalty of perjury, that they are citizens when they register to vote. If they lie, they could face fines, jail time or deportation, said David Becker, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research.
In addition, anyone who registers provides their Social Security number, driver’s license or ID, Becker said. That means they have already shown proof of citizenship to receive these documents, or if they are a non-citizen with an ID or Social Security number, they are clearly classified that way in the state’s records.
“What they’re asking for is additional evidence,” Becker said of Republicans pushing Johnson’s bill. “Why should people have to go to multiple government agencies and ask them, ‘Show us your papers,’ when they have already shown them?”
Democrats fear that adding more ID requirements could disenfranchise voters who don’t have their birth certificate or Social Security card on hand. Republicans counter that the extra step could provide a new layer of security and boost voter confidence in an imperfect system that has historically included non-citizen voters.
The national focus on noncitizen voting has also drawn attention to a related but different phenomenon: how a small number of local jurisdictions, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, have begun allowing noncitizen immigrants to vote in a number of local jurisdictions. competitions, such as for school board and municipal council.
The number of non-citizen voters who cast their votes in the towns and cities where they are allowed to do so has so far been minimal. In Winooski, Vermont, where 1,345 people voted in the recent local elections, only 11 people were not citizens, the clerk told The Associated Press. Still, the gradually growing phenomenon has prompted some state lawmakers to introduce ballot measures that would deter cities from trying to do so in the future.
In South Carolina, voters in November will decide on a constitutional amendment that supporters say will close the door to noncitizens voting. The state constitution currently says that any citizen 18 and older who is eligible to vote can do so. The amendment changes the wording to ‘citizens only’.
Republican Senator Chip Campsen called it a safeguard to prevent future problems. California has similar language to South Carolina’s current provision, and Campsen cited a California Supreme Court ruling that found “any” did not prevent noncitizens from voting.
Democratic state Sen. Darrell Jackson asked Campsen during the debate last month: “Do we have that problem here in South Carolina?”
“You only have the problem when the problem occurs,” Campsen replied.
On Friday, legislative Republicans in Missouri passed a November ballot measure that would ban both noncitizen voting and ranked-choice voting.
“I know there have been scary hypotheses thrown out there: ‘Well, what about St. Louis? What about Kansas City?” said Senator Lauren Arthur of Kansas City. “It’s not a real threat because this is already banned. It is already illegal in Missouri.”
When asked by a Democrat on Thursday for examples of noncitizens voting in Missouri, Republican Rep. Alex Riley said he doesn’t have “specific data or a scenario that it has happened” but that he wanted to “disturb the concern eliminate the possibility that this could happen in the US.” future.”
In Wisconsin, a key presidential swing state where the Republican-controlled Legislature also put a noncitizen voting measure on the ballot this fall, Democratic state Rep. Lee Snodgrass said at a hearing earlier this week that she couldn’t understand why someone who that is not a legal citizen would vote.
“I’m trying to wrap my head around what people think would be the motivation for a non-citizen to go to enormous lengths to actively commit a crime by voting in an election that will ultimately land them in jail or deported. ,” she said.
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Associated Press writers Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
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