The U.S. House returns today after a six-week recess and plans to start a government funding battle with a partisan salvo.
House Speaker Mike Johnson acceded to his right flank and attached a bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote to an unrelated short-term funding measure that would run into March. It’s something the far-right House Freedom Caucus has been calling since leaving in July without passing 12 individual appropriations bills.
GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Freedom Caucus member, told CPR News before the August recess that she would support a short-term funding measure if it included the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act.
More recently, Boebert wrote on social media that no one should oppose this bill. “If you’re not a citizen of our country, you should not vote in our country. This isn’t controversial. It’s common sense.”
It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections and many election experts and officials warn the requirements in the SAVE Act could disenfranchise eligible voters.
“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “It is essentially a piece of legislation that would require people to continue to show their papers to government authorities even though they've already shown their papers to government authorities at motor vehicles agencies or at a naturalization ceremony.”
The SAVE Act would require voters to show proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate, a passport or social security card, documents most Americans don’t carry around with them — in order to be able to register to vote in federal elections.
“[The SAVE Act] is totally unnecessary. It shifts burdens from government — who already have the tools to ensure non-citizens don't vote — it shifts the burden from government on to citizens,” Becker said.
Becker and other critics argue the bill is primarily an election-year maneuver. One, critics said, that combines two forces: anti-immigrant rhetoric and distrust, by the right in particular, in the integrity of elections.
States already have guardrails to prevent non-citizens from voting
States already have numerous safeguards in place to ensure that non-citizens don’t cast ballots. Colorado automatically registers people to vote through the DMV and other government offices. During that process, they have to provide a social security number, birth certificate, or otherwise affirm their citizenship.
The state also uses a variety of data to keep its voter rolls up to date, from state-level information from the Department of Revenue and the Department of Corrections to the National Change of Address database and ERIC, the multi-state Electronic Registration Information Center.
“We haven’t had a significant issue with non-citizens trying to register to vote,” said Denver Clerk and Recorder Paul López. “It’s a non-issue.”
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office also affirmed to CPR News, “We have no evidence of non-citizens voting in Colorado elections.”
A non-citizen faces significant repercussions if they’re caught casting a ballot in a federal election, including potential fines, jail time and deportation. López and other election officials don’t think immigrants in search of the American Dream would risk deportation to cast a single ballot.
Former Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams agrees that non-citizen voting has not been an issue in Colorado or the rest of the country but doesn’t see any issues with the SAVE Act.
The checks that he instituted, and that current Secretary of State Jena Griswold continues, work, Williams said. He recalled removing more than a dozen individuals from the voter rolls who were not citizens but had registered.
But with the recent influx of new immigrants crossing the border, “you do see a concern that some of those may attempt to influence an election.”
“I don't have that same concern with those who enter legally because many of them may want to be on the path of citizenship and voting illegally will eliminate their opportunity to do that,” Williams said. “But you don't have that same disincentive with someone who is in the country on an illegal basis.”
If voters in Colorado don’t have the needed citizenship documentation with them, Williams argued, they could fill out a provisional ballot. He added the state has an easy process called TXT2Cure where people could use their phones to send a copy of their ID or fill out necessary certifications to ensure their vote is counted.
Instead of reassuring voters, critics fear the SAVE Act could feed distrust of the system
During a May press conference in support of the SAVE Act, Speaker Johnson did not provide any evidence that noncitizens were voting.
“We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Johnson said. He pointed to some local governments that allow non-citizens in their elections, and that it’s possible for non-citizens to get a driver’s license.
Colorado does license non-citizen drivers, but elections officials note holders of that license are excluded from the voter registration system. Voters in the state amended the constitution four years ago to explicitly prohibit noncitizen voting.
Audits in several states turned up very small numbers of non-citizens who had registered to vote, usually by accident, before being found and removed from rolls before ever casting a ballot. A multi-year effort by one Colorado Secretary of State to root out foreign nationals from the voter rolls ended with his office identifying just a handful of non-citizen registrations and yielded no prosecutions.
“(Johnson)’s justification for doing it is intuition, you know, like vibes,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program with the Brennan Center. “And that's just not a good enough reason, to me, to disenfranchise millions of eligible American citizens overall.”
Morales-Doyle makes the argument that the SAVE Act does the opposite of reassuring voters when it comes to the security of elections.
“I think it actually feeds people’s distrust. It is sending a message to people that there's a problem that needs to be fixed, that there actually is a problem with non-citizens voting in our elections, that there are lots of non-citizens voting in our elections when that's not true,” Morales-Doyle told CPR News. “It actually gives credence to the lies about our elections and further adds to the distrust that people have in our elections.”
In a statement, Secretary of State Griswold was blunt in her assessment of the Republicans’ push for the SAVE Act. “Speaker Mike Johnson is an election denier who has pushed out election conspiracies. I remain significantly concerned by federal and state officials who use conspiracies as a pretext for changing election laws.”
Denver Clerk and Recorder López offers a direct solution for voters worried about the security of elections: reach out to your local election office.
“I would ask anybody who has any kind of question whatsoever about our process and how we ensure that that is fair, that it's secure, that it's transparent or as accessible, if there's any questions, to reach out to your county clerk and recorder,” he said. “I know that there's a lot of buzz all over social media. You're gonna see a lot of misinformation.”
And López extended that invitation to Speaker Johnson, as well, to learn about the safeguards in place already to prevent non-citizens from voting and how Denver ensures a secure and transparent election.
Because he said their job is to make sure all eligible Americans can vote.
“I always worry about some of the rhetoric that's out there and especially rhetoric like this that is aimed to create a chilling effect on the democratic process and frankly that that's what it intends to do,” said Lopez.
The SAVE Act, which already passed the House in July as a standalone bill, is not expected to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Appropriations committee chair Sen. Patty Murray said Johnson is wasting time by attaching the SAVE Act to a temporary funding measure.
“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands,” they said in a statement.
Congress must pass a funding measure by Sept. 30 to keep the government open.
