Photo: Alamy
One month ago, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., told Americans that House Republicans would be introducing legislation aimed at barring non-citizens from voting in U.S. elections by requiring nationwide voter ID.
This week, House Republicans moved to introduce the “SAVE Act,” which would amend a federal law to require proof of U.S. citizenship in order to vote in American elections. SAVE stands for “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility.”
During a press conference on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Speaker Johnson told reporters, “We are here this morning for a very important reason as you all know – because there is currently an unprecedented and a clear and present danger to the integrity of our election system and that is the threat of non-citizens and illegal aliens voting in our elections.”
He continued, “Americans are deeply concerned about this [election security]…and due to the wide open border that the Biden administration has refused to close, in fact, that they engineered to open, we now have so many non-citizens in the country that if only one out of a hundred of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Speaker Johnson noted that this was a “dangerously high number” and that “millions” of Americans are greatly worried about the threat that this poses to election security in the U.S.
“Some have noted that it’s already a crime for non-citizens to vote in a federal election, and that is true,” he continued. However, he added that there were four major reasons why the legislation was necessary:
- No mechanism currently exists to ensure that those voting are verified U.S. citizens,
- Joe Biden has welcomed millions of illegal aliens into this country. Speaker Johnson stated that he believed the number of migrants here illegally is close to 16 million,
- A growing number of localities are blurring the lines with non-citizens by allowing them to vote (like in California and Vermont),
- Democrats have expressed a desire to turn non-citizens into voters.
This week, House Republicans took action in Congress to vote to include a citizenship question for the U.S. census that is coming up in the Equal Representation Act, per the New York Post.
This move is significant because if millions of illegal migrants are counted in the U.S. census, this will affect how Electoral College votes are doled out and how district lines are redrawn.
Last month, Speaker Johnson said that House Republicans would work toward establishing legislation that would codify nationwide voter ID and require states to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.
The SAVE Act appears to be Republicans’ first step toward accomplishing those goals ahead of the November 2024 election, although such a bill would face a murky future in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
