Last week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) launched an election integrity Hail Mary when he attempted to tie the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to the latest government funding bill.
In a nutshell, the SAVE Act would require “individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections” and “states to remove noncitizens from their official lists of eligible voters.”
The SAVE Act is not a controversial piece of legislation. Its primary intention is to guarantee that only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections, which is currently the law of the land under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
Unfortunately, Johnson’s Hail Mary heave fell incomplete due to staunch Democrat opposition in both the House and Senate. Unsurprisingly, congressional Democrats have grossly misrepresented the bill, ridiculously calling it a “modern poll tax.”
In reality, the SAVE Act would do nothing more than ensure that only American citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections.
Under current election rules, states hold the power to register voters. While some states, such as Florida, have taken great pains to guarantee that only citizens are registered to vote in local, state, and federal elections, several other states have intentionally ignored this provision.
In many blue states, non-citizens can easily register to vote because these states offer photo IDs such as driver licenses to non-citizens. Although one would assume that these states have measures to verify that only citizens can register to vote in federal elections, this is not the case.
In my home state of Illinois, for example, non-citizens can register to vote in local elections. However, here is the rub: Once they are eligible to vote in local elections, there is nothing to stop them from voting in state and federal elections as well. Aside from the honor system, states like Illinois are simply hoping these non-citizens only cast votes for local officials while abstaining from voting for statewide and federal offices.
The SAVE Act would solve this problem by making it illegal for non-citizens to cast votes in federal elections. Specifically, as Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) notes, “First, it mandates that states must obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and identity in person when registering an individual to vote in a federal election. Second, it requires the states to remove non-citizens from their existing voter rolls and gives states no-cost access to the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration databases to do so.”
With less than two months before the 2024 election, the odds of the SAVE Act becoming law prior to Election Day are basically zero. But this does not mean that election integrity efforts should be abandoned.
Because federal lawmakers have failed to ensure that only citizens can vote in federal elections, it is up to the states to rectify this problem.
The good news is that some states, particularly Florida and Georgia, have been at the forefront of this issue. After the controversial 2020 election, both Florida and Georgia passed laws intended to address many of the concerns associated with the mass mailing of absentee ballots, ballot harvesting, unattended ballot drop boxes, non-citizens voting in federal elections, and outdated and inaccurate voter registration rolls.
The Florida law, which many experts consider to be the cream of the crop when it comes to combating voter fraud, also created an investigatory unit solely dedicated to examining potential cases of voter fraud.
Another measure taken by states in recent weeks to buttress election integrity is to purge their voter rolls of non-citizens. Already, we’ve witnessed states like Texas and Virginia rid their voter rolls of thousands of non-citizens.
Make no mistake, public confidence in the veracity of elections is absolutely essential to a well-functioning nation. For more than two centuries, federal elections in the United States have generally been free and fair. However, this changed in 2020, when the pandemic was used as an excuse to transform how most Americans cast their ballots.
In 2024 and beyond, we must return to our traditional, time-tested methods of election procedures. As such, it is incumbent upon the states to guarantee that non-citizens do not vote in federal elections while encouraging citizens to vote in person as close to Election Day as possible. It is not xenophobic to prevent non-citizens from voting in federal elections. Rather, it is the law of the land and ensures that American citizens are not disenfranchised by having their vote canceled per se by someone who is not eligible to vote in federal elections under current law.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
