This week, officials in Oregon announced the state had made a major mistake: Oregon automatically registered 1,259 noncitizens to vote. Last week, Arizona election officials realized they had for years failed to catch a software “coding oversight” that allowed nearly 100,000 people to vote without providing proof of citizenship.
If you are wondering how this could happen, you are not alone. After all, Democrats and most major media outlets spent the last few weeks insisting noncitizens cannot and do not register or vote in American elections. These news stories put the lie to those claims—claims peddled specifically to kill a bill in Congress that would ban noncitizen voting.
That bill, the SAVE Act, is designed to fix problems with federal law that let noncitizens illegally register and vote in federal elections. Speaker Mike Johnson tried to pass it alongside a spending measure, igniting a firestorm of liberal and media misinformation claiming that Republicans are risking a government shutdown over a bill to make it “harder to vote.”
That’s an absurd claim, even by today’s standards. The SAVE Act simply requires that states verify citizenship before allowing someone to register and vote in federal elections. To register, citizens can use the photo ID they use every day to drive, buy a beer or board a plane. Other records would work, too, like naturalization documents or birth certificates. And there are protections for any citizens who have none of these. The only people who would find it hard to vote under the SAVE Act are people who should not be voting at all.
Only progressives can find the controversy in that. The rest of America — nearly 90% of the public — rejects noncitizen voting. That hasn’t stopped Democrats from opposing the bill. When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act earlier this year, just five Democrats voted yes. This time around, the opposition may be unanimous.
Democrats insist that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote. That’s true. But it is also against the law for anyone to enter the country illegally, and that has not stopped millions — including criminals, rapists and drug traffickers — from crossing our southern border in just the last few years.
Laws only work when they are enforced, and the left has done everything possible to make sure they are not. Liberal lawyers have used the courts to twist federal law into a straitjacket that limits states to simply asking voters to check a box that they are a citizen before registering. When states take action, left-wing groups sue them. Arizonans, for example, had to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend a proof of citizenship law after liberal groups filed suit.
Liberals also claim that noncitizen voting never happens, but there are countless documented examples of noncitizens who have registered and cast votes across the country. This year, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose identified nearly 600 noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls, 138 of whom appeared to have cast ballots. Just since 2022, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration has removed more than 6,000 noncitizens from state voter rolls. In Texas, the problem is just as severe: Texas Governor Greg Abbott reported removing “over 6,500 potential noncitizens,” including more than 1,900 with voter history.
Clearly, the left knows noncitizen voting happens. For proof, just look to the past. When congressional Democrats crafted HR1, their signature bill to stage a partisan takeover of elections, they included provisions granting amnesty to noncitizens who illegally vote. Fortunately for our Republic, HR1 failed to pass, but Democrats on Capitol Hill have already made it a top priority next year if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected president.
Turning a blind eye to illegal voting is bad enough. What’s worse is that liberal politicians in places like Washington, D.C. and New York are actively pushing for noncitizens to vote. As more cities cave to left-wing activism and allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, there is a growing risk that some noncitizens will slip through the cracks and wind up being given federal ballots. Others can get mistakenly registered due to clerical errors. Refusing to address these problems is an invitation for fraud, but it is also a trap for the unwary. If an unsuspecting noncitizen casts an illegal vote, he is committing a federal crime and could wind up being deported.
Across America, Democrats are fighting to keep it easy for foreigners to register and vote. Even for today’s left, that’s a new low. American elections should be decided by American voters.
Jason Snead is the Executive Director of Honest Elections Project Action.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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