By Don Schmitz
The House has passed a bill requiring proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. In the final vote, 216 Republicans voted for the bill, with only five Democrats crossing party lines, and 198 Democrats voting in opposition.
Republicans have theorized for years that the Democrats’ open border policies were designed to import millions of future votes to bolster their party, which increasingly is a minority, in registration. At least 6.4 million illegal migrants entered the country during the Biden/Harris administration, despite the admonishment from border Czar Kamala Harris saying, “Don’t come.”
Our government transported them to sanctuary cities and states around the country, put them up in hotels and schools, fed and clothed them, and enrolled their children into our schools. In sanctuary states like California, they also receive free medical care on the taxpayer’s dime, and their children pay in-state tuition for college, whereas an American kid from, say, Utah must pay out-of-state tuition. Of course, they know who their benefactors are, and of course they willreward them by voting to keep them in office given the chance.
A Yale study in 2018 estimated that there were 22.1 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Add the Biden/Harris surge, and the numbers are staggering. That is more people than the states of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North and South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, Montana, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Idaho, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Mississippi COMBINED. Polling consistently shows that immigration is the top concern of Americans in the upcoming election, but only 37 percent of Americans are confident that the upcoming election will be honest and open. Some states like Ohio and Tennessee are working to restore voter confidence, and SAVE is a federal effort to assuage Americans’ concerns. Suspiciously Democrats are fighting the effort, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) calling the bill an “extreme MAGA Republican voter suppression bill,” while the White House promised a veto. It is already illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, but federal investigations have shown that thousands have tried. A growing trend of allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections increases the risk to our national sovereignty.
Non-citizens can vote in certain elections in San Francisco, nine Maryland cities, and several cities in Vermont. Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., and New York City have considered legislation allowing non-citizens to vote. California has a “motor voter” law which allows someone to sign up to vote when they get a driver’s license. Illegal immigrants are allowed to obtain driver’s licenses in California by law, along with 18 other states. Homeland Security has an E-Verify system for employers to check on workers’ status, but a 2009 Westat audit found that 54 percent of undocumented workers skirt the regulation by simply submitting another person’s documentation, with some borrowing or stealing IDs.
Naturally, Americans are jumpy about election integrity. Deliberating on the bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson rightfully pointed out, “We have so many non-citizens in the country right now that if only one out of 100 of those illegal aliens voted, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of votes being cast,” adding that the number could“determine the future of this great Republic.”
In a 2014 electoral study by Science Direct utilizing representative sampling to measure non-citizen voting, it concluded, “We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections.” Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission stated it was “difficult to predict the actual numbers of aliens that may vote because so many states do absolutely nothing to verify the citizenship of registered voters.”
SAVE would require the states to clean up voter rolls by verifying citizenship through federal databases at the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security. Irresponsibly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has declined to call SAVE to a vote, and he probably won’t. Classic.
The more Democrat leadership drags its feet on reassuring the American people that our elections are fair and honest,and that only Americans are voting, the more they generate suspicion and distrust. These are the same folks that positedrequiring ID to vote was racist. Apparently, Democrat leadership believes that blacks and Latinos who show ID to open a bank account, buy an airline ticket, take out a loan, buy alcohol or cigarettes, apply for a job or unemployment, buy or rent a car, adopt a pet, get married, or rent a hotel room, would be intimidated by showing ID to vote.
How condescending and inane. The more they sandbag us, the more they garner distrust, which is very, very dangerous.SAVE would restore electoral faith and should become law. Democracy is indeed on the ballot.