House Republicans and a handful of Democrats on Wednesday approved a bill that seeks to expand proof-of-citizenship requirements to vote in federal elections and impose voter roll purge requirements on states, legislation that has been touted by former President Trump.
The legislation — formally titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — cleared the chamber in a 221-198 vote, with five Democrats voting yes. It now heads to the Senate, where it is all but certain to be ignored amid opposition from Democrats.
President Biden has vowed to veto the measure.
Opponents of the bill say its core idea — establishing noncitizen voting as illegal — is redundant, and argue that its provisions will more likely lead to U.S. citizens being denied their right to vote than to preventing votes by foreign nationals.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), meanwhile, argued on the House floor Wednesday that the legislation is necessary because noncitizens have voted in U.S. elections despite it being illegal to do so.
“Even though it's already illegal, this is happening,” Johnson said.
In May, Johnson told reporters, “we all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable. We don’t have that number.
“This legislation will allow us to do exactly that — it will prevent that from happening. And if someone tries to do it, it will now be unlawful within the states,” he added.
But most researchers who have studied voting patterns have said Johnson’s intuition is wrong.
One study by the Brennan Center for Justice found 30 suspected — not confirmed — cases of noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million.
The claim that noncitizens are voting — and that Democrats are willfully importing undocumented immigrants to vote — is the bill’s raison d’etre.
Johnson, nonetheless, brought the legislation to the floor as a show of unity between himself and members of the right flank on an issue that’s also a Trump favorite.
The Speaker backed the idea of banning noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections through legislation during a joint press conference with Trump in April, at a time when the House leader was trying to drum up GOP support as a small group of Republican lawmakers threatened to oust him.
The former president urged GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, writing: “Republicans must pass the Save Act, or go home and cry yourself to sleep.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who introduced the bill in May, said at the time, “Radical progressive Democrats know this and are using open border policies while also attacking election integrity laws to fundamentally remake America.”
Roy and Johnson have butted heads in the past, particularly over the Speaker’s bipartisan budget efforts, but the two former Judiciary Committee colleagues see eye to eye on immigration.
In an op-ed in May, Roy wrote that “radical progressive Democrats aren’t even trying to hide it anymore — they’re publicly admitting their intention to leverage open borders and the tens of millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. to fundamentally remake America by cementing one-party rule.”
Roy’s stated evidence for that claim was a verbal flub by President Biden on a radio show in May — widely picked up by right-wing media — where Biden appears to refer to Hispanic immigrants as “voters.”
Roy also criticized Democrats for voting against a bill that would have changed census apportionment to exclude non-U.S. citizens.
“I think they believe in their own heads, that somehow immigrants are bad and you know, we're terrible and we're always going to do bad things, when we know that's not true. We know the data actually shows that immigrants commit less crimes. That, you know, communities with lots of immigrants actually are safer,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who emigrated from Peru at age 5.
And advocates say the bill would make it harder for some U.S. citizens to register to vote, and would purge more citizens than noncitizens from voter rolls.
“We’re seeing heightened threats against elections officials and voters at the polls, especially in places where Latinos are a growing and significant part of the eligible voting population,” said Juan Espinoza, senior civil rights adviser at UnidosUS.
“Harmful and false rhetoric of noncitizen voters also spreads disinformation that targets and undermines Latino voters. This bill is a dangerous political ploy being used to suppress the vote in communities of color and further undermine voting rights in this country.”
