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OPINION

House Must Pass SAVE Act to Ensure Election Integrity

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File

ObamaCare may well have been enacted on the strength of unlawful votes cast by noncitizens.

You read that right – it may only have been because of illegal votes cast by people who had no right to vote in our elections that Democrats had enough senators in December of 2009 to defeat a filibuster and enact Barack Obama’s signature law.

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That’s my answer to the naysayers who dismiss the threat of noncitizen voting. Noncitizen voting can make a difference – a big, big, big difference.

The assertion relies on “Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?,” a 2014 academic study by Jesse T. Richman, Gulshon A. Chuttha, and David C. Earnest that studied the 2008 and 2010 elections. The authors declare, “We find that some noncitizens 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. Noncitizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.”

That passage is found in a white paper prepared and distributed by the office of Speaker Mike Johnson, “To Restore Confidence in U.S. Elections, Congress Must Pass the ‘Safeguard American Voter Eligibility’ (SAVE) Act.”

This week, the House of Representatives will vote on that bill. The bill is designed to enhance election integrity by requiring states to obtain documentary proof of citizenship before registering an individual to vote in a federal election, and by giving states access to existing federal databases to allow the states to clean up their voter rolls by removing noncitizens who have been improperly registered.

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There’s a big difference between requiring someone to attest that he or she is a citizen before being allowed to register (as current law requires) and requiring someone to provide documentary proof that he or she is a citizen (as this bill would require). Anyone who says he cannot see the difference is either blind or being deliberately obtuse.

Nevertheless, liberals in the mainstream media have dismissed the legislation by wrongly asserting that the bill “outlaws” noncitizen voting. “Noncitizen voting, already illegal in federal elections, becomes a centerpiece of 2024 GOP messaging,” wrote the Associated Press. “Republicans are pushing legislation to crack down on voting by noncitizens, which happens rarely and is already illegal in federal elections … “ wrote The New York Times. In a particularly bad example, USA Today falsely asserted in its headline, “Noncitizens can't vote in federal elections.”

Of course noncitizens are able to vote in federal elections – they just cannot do so legally. And doing it they have been, to some effect – as the authors cited above conclude, “In 2008 there were 22 House races and two Senate races in which the Democratic candidate’s winning margin was small enough that less than 100 percent turnout among noncitizens could account for Democratic victory and in 2010 there were 24 such House districts and three Senate races.” 

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The evidence that noncitizens have been voting in U.S. elections isn’t confined simply to academic studies, though. In recent years, state officials in Massachusetts,  Ohio, and  Virginia have removed noncitizens from their state’s voter rolls after finding that noncitizens had voted.

And, despite their denials, Democrats in Congress know that noncitizens have been voting. That’s why whenever they introduce a bill to provide for amnesty for illegal aliens, they make sure to include a provision that overturns current law that prevents any alien who ever voted illegally from being admitted legally to the United States.

For instance, earlier in this Congress, Democrat Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia of Texas introduced the Democrats’ big amnesty bill, H.R. 16, the so-called “American Dream and Promise Act of 2023.” As Speaker Johnson’s white paper notes, “Section 102(b)(2) of Garcia’s legislation includes a provision entitled ‘waiver of grounds of inadmissibility’ which would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive grounds of inadmissibility, including ‘paragraph … (10)(D) of section 212(a)’ – the provision that bars admission for aliens who have illegally voted.”

Why waive illegal voting by noncitizens from grounds for inadmissibility if it hasn’t been happening?

The fact that Democrats insist on waiving this crime from grounds for inadmissibility for citizenship shows not only that they know it’s happening, but that it’s just not that big of a deal for Democrats.

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The Biden administration has allowed the worst influx of illegal immigration into our country in history. Since Biden took over, millions of illegal aliens have entered our country and been allowed to settle. The vast majority of them have settled in and around big cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago – but also like Philadelphia, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Milwaukee, which all just happen to be located in key battleground states, where the addition of just a few thousand votes here and there could well make the difference between winning and losing a state’s critical Electoral College votes.

To ensure the integrity of American elections, this critical legislation must pass – and American citizens must see who supports and who opposes it.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action 

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