WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on a proposal to require proof of citizenship for voters, an initiative that Republicans have prioritized in this election year but that Democrats oppose, arguing is unnecessary.
If the bill passes the Republican-controlled House, the legislation is unlikely to advance in the Democratic-led Senate. President Joe Biden’s administration has also said it strongly opposes it, saying safeguards are already in place to verify voter eligibility and enforce the law on noncitizens trying to vote.
The House vote, however, will give Republicans a chance to draw attention to two of their central issues in the 2024 race: the border and election security. Republicans argue that Democrats have encouraged the surge of illegal migrants so they can get them to register and vote, which would be illegal. Noncitizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections, or in any state elections.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has registered more than 10 million undocumented immigrants since Joe Biden took office.
House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, a leading proponent of the bill, said at a news conference earlier this week that Democrats oppose it because “they want illegals to participate in our federal elections, they want them to vote.”
Decisive moment
In a speech Wednesday ahead of the much-anticipated House debate, Johnson called the vote “a defining moment for a generation.”
“If just a small percentage, a fraction of a fraction of all these illegals that Joe Biden has brought here to vote, if they vote, it wouldn’t just change one race,” he said, “it could potentially change all of our races.”
On his Truth Social platform this week, Trump suggested that Democrats are pushing to give noncitizen immigrants the right to vote and urged Republicans to pass the legislation — the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act — or “go home and cry yourself to sleep.”
Democrats and voting rights advocates have said the legislation is unnecessary because it is already a felony for noncitizens to register to vote in federal elections, punishable by fines, prison or deportation. Anyone who registers must declare under penalty of perjury that they are a U.S. citizen. Noncitizens also cannot vote at the state level. A handful of municipalities allow them to vote in some local elections.
Democrats have pointed to polls showing that millions of Americans do not have easy access to up-to-date documentary evidence of their citizenship, such as a birth certificate, naturalization certificate or passport, and so the bill could disenfranchise U.S. citizens who can no longer prove their status.
If the bill were to pass, it would “fail to safeguard American voter eligibility, but would instead immediately disenfranchise millions of American citizens,” argued Sean Morales-Doyle, voting rights director at the Brennan Center for Justice.
But Republicans who support the bill say the recent unprecedented surge of migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border creates too great a risk that noncitizens will slip through the cracks. They could break the law on purpose or inadvertently to cast votes that would swing elections by narrow margins.
If passed, the bill would force the removal of noncitizens from state voter rolls and require new applicants to provide documentary proof of their U.S. citizenship. It would also require states to set up a process for applicants who cannot prove it to provide evidence other than their citizenship declaration, though it is unclear what evidence that might include.
The House vote comes days after the Republican National Committee released its party platform, which emphasizes border security issues and opposes Democrats granting “voting rights” to migrants living in the country illegally.
Republicans are expected to air their concerns about immigration and election integrity at next week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is scheduled to accept his third consecutive presidential nomination.
Source: With information from AP
