The Protecting American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, set to be debated in the House on Wednesday, would provide safeguards to prevent foreign nationals from voting in federal elections, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said. Breitbart News Daily.
Although it’s already illegal for foreigners to vote in federal elections, Roy explained, there are no real safeguards to stop them from doing so — a situation that he noted will only get worse if the Biden administration allows millions of illegal immigrants into the U.S.
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“You know, there’s an entire industry based on helping illegal aliens,” Roy said when asked about reports of them getting Social Security numbers, “so of course they vote.”
“And it’s important to note that our federal government [is] “Under federal law, they automatically register these people through Medicaid and through mandatory DMV registration. And, of course, they register them, but then they say, ‘Oh, but they don’t vote in federal elections so don’t worry about it,'” he said.
The problem, Roy said, is that there are no systems in place to stop that from happening.
“It’s absurd. It’s not even fiction. Federal law has been interpreted to prohibit states from verifying whether someone is a citizen, when technically the law says they must be a citizen,” he said, citing Arizona as an example that has no safeguards to verify individuals’ citizenship when voting.
“Arizona passed a law that said only citizens can vote in federal, state and local elections. That law went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, ‘Sorry, you can’t do that in federal elections because federal law takes precedence.’ So Arizona has two systems: one that checks state and local elections, it checks the whole system, and the other system is for federal elections, it doesn’t check citizenship,” he said. “Literally, that’s the state of the law right now.”
The SAVE Act would not only solve that problem, but would also require all states to verify citizenship in federal elections, lawmakers said.
“We still believe in federalism. This is a federal election. We have a parliament, a senate. [and the] “We can’t abolish the presidency. We need to at least unify this country around the simple idea that elections can be trusted and that only citizens vote for federal candidates,” he said, explaining that there would be no burden on people who are already registered to vote.
“We wanted to keep this simple, so we drafted it primarily to follow existing state law. So what’s going to change? First of all, nothing’s going to change immediately for people who are already registered. They’re going to be allowed to go and vote. What we’re asking for is for the next person to register, whoever that is, [who] “If this bill passes, anyone going to register to vote tomorrow would have to bring a passport, a Real ID that verifies citizenship, or if the system doesn’t have that, a driver’s license, photo ID, a copy of their birth certificate or naturalization papers,” he said, explaining that there are other options if people can’t obtain a birth certificate.
Moreover, the bill would effectively place the remaining burden on states, requiring them to clean up their voter rolls and ensure procedures to ensure that only citizens are registered to vote.
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“That’s our job: We’re trying to make it as minimally burdensome as possible, but powerful enough to ensure only citizens can vote,” he explained, noting that the law allows states to determine how best to vet their voter rolls. Virginia did a similar effort in 2023 by checking it against a federal database, he said. It found that 1,500 noncitizens were registered to vote. Texas did a similar effort a few years ago and found 25,000 noncitizens in its system, he continued.
“So if your name is registered and something doesn’t match up, then when you go to vote or register, they could come back to you and say, ‘We need your passport or some other document that proves you’re a citizen, and then we’ll allow you a provisional ballot or some other mechanism so that your vote will count.’ So it should be a minimal burden, but it does have at least one more requirement,” Roy continued, emphasizing the importance of having “some sort of criteria to ensure that only citizens can vote.”
Roy reminded the audience that under federal law, it is already a crime for non-citizens to vote, and it is also a crime to conspire to encourage non-citizens to register. But the state “does not recognize the mechanism for proving that,” he reiterated, and therein lies the main problem.
“That’s what this bill is about. And this bill takes it to the next level and makes it mandatory for federal elections,” he added.
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