On July 10, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would prevent states from granting foreigners the right to vote in federal elections. The bill passed with a vote of 221 to 198, with only five Democrats voting in favor. The vote highlighted the stark difference in the two major parties’ respect for the rule of law and the integrity of the electoral process.
Currently, in some US states, foreigners cannot vote in federal elections but can vote in local elections. American Voter Eligibility Protection Act The bill would require voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. The bill also directs states to remove non-citizens from their federal voter registration rolls.
Making it easy to register to vote also means making it easy to register falsely, unless states make special efforts to eradicate it.
The media has called the bill unnecessary, an “election year hot potato,” and a “broader, long-term solution.” Trump’s election strategy “If he loses, it will call into question the legitimacy of the election,” the Associated Press said.
The argument that this bill is unnecessary because illegal voter registration is already illegal is patently false. Enforcing the law“This is already illegal and yet it’s happening,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana).
The Biden administration is clearly more concerned with increasing registration than with ensuring the legitimacy of the vote, saying in a statement that the SAVE Act “will make it much harder for all eligible voters to register to vote, increasing the risk that voters will be removed from the voter rolls.” Similarly, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said, “The Whip Question“He told House Democrats that the bill’s proof of citizenship requirement ‘would prevent Americans from registering to vote with just their driver’s license,'” The Center Square reported. report.
The news agency added that the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), “disputed this, arguing that Democrats oppose the bill because they want non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote.”
Of course, making it easy to register to vote also means making it easy to register falsely, unless states make special efforts to eradicate it. Fake registrations do occur, and there are a lot of them.
In California, for example, the Election Integrity Project found that there are 1.8 million more people registered to vote in the state than there are eligible voters. 23 counties The results show that “the number of registered voters exceeds the number of eligible voters.” [were] “In California’s Nov. 3, 2020 election, about 124,000 more votes were counted than were recorded,” the California Globe reported. report 2021. The number of ineligible voter registrations in California has nearly doubled in just four years since 2017.
California is a one-party state, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans in the state legislature by more than 3 to 1 and in the state House by 4 to 1. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence.
California is just one of many places where voter rolls are poorly managed: in 2017, the US had “3.5 million more registered voters than adults,” says columnist Deroy Murdock. report Published in National Review magazine, Murdock found that, according to U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Election Assistance Commission data collected by Judicial Watch, “there were 462 counties with registration rates above 100 percent.”
Murdock uncovered massive numbers of false voter registrations in battleground states at the time, including Colorado (159,373), Florida (100,782), Iowa (31,077), Michigan (225,235), New Hampshire (8,211), North Carolina (189,721), and Virginia (89,979).
Fake registrations are certainly still plentiful and growing. In an article criticizing the Republican bill, the Associated Press wrote: Admitted The National Voter Registration Act “actually leans toward empowering voters by requiring that old records remain in the system for several years after they are flagged as potential concerns to prevent voters from being deregistered.”
Joe Biden, of course, is committed to voter registration, directing his entire administration to help bolster the nation’s voter rolls. In response, Indiana’s Republican Secretary of State, Diego Morales, responded earlier this month by “warning more than 120 federal agencies operating in Indiana not to provide voter registration services outlined in a three-year-old executive order without state approval,” according to the state’s attorney general’s office. Greenfield Daily ReporterOther states should follow his example.
Many who advocate simplified voter registration probably just want to help old women get to the polls, but others might want to use simplified voter registration to enable political organizations to “find” enough votes to win an election. There is no logical reason to deny the latter’s existence or to label it as rare.
Of course, the SAVE Act will never pass the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate, and if it somehow reaches Biden’s desk, he would likely veto it, meaning the bill is essentially a formality.
But that doesn’t make the law unnecessary.
