One of Republicans’ top priorities in Congress is preventing noncitizen participation in elections, a problem that Democrats argue is nonexistent.

With the 2024 election quickly approaching, Republicans say it is a growing worry among their constituents and that a federal crackdown is the best way to eliminate their concerns.

The solution, according to Republicans, is to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, a national proof of citizenship bill that Democrats largely oppose. The legislation is dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but House Republican leaders have made it their sole condition of passing a temporary funding bill to prevent a government shutdown.

As that fight plays out in Congress this week, some legal and policy experts have also championed the SAVE Act, saying it would have real-world consequences to better secure elections.

“That is what we need,” Chad Ennis, a longtime attorney and Honest Elections Project vice president, told the Washington Examiner. “We need to require, like Arizona’s tried … that when you register to vote, you show that you’re a citizen as well, as part of your qualification.”

The SAVE Act is a ‘mainstream ideal’

The SAVE Act encapsulates two issues that have dominated the Republican Party: secure elections and immigration.

Republicans have since 2020 had a heightened sensitivity to voter fraud. In the last presidential election, when former President Donald Trump narrowly lost his race, the defeat came after many states loosened their voting laws on an emergency basis in the name of COVID-19.

Additionally, the Biden administration has been defined in part by exorbitant illegal migration numbers. Federal data indicate that since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office, more than 5.6 million migrants who have crossed into the country illegally have been released into the United States, often under the promise that they will appear at a later date in an immigration court.

Federal law prohibits all noncitizens from voting regardless of whether they are in the country legally or illegally. However, noncitizens have routinely appeared on voter registration lists, known as “voter rolls,” exacerbating anxieties about their abilities to access a federal ballot.

The SAVE Act, backed by Trump, would require people who register to vote to provide documentation that they are a U.S. citizen when they register to vote. At present, they are only required to check off a box asserting that they are a citizen. The bill would also give election officials better access to federal databases that states currently have to pay to use.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told Congress in a hearing last week that in the last year alone, his office identified nearly 600 noncitizens who were registered to vote. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) recently announced that because of diligent purging, 6,303 noncitizens had been removed from Virginia’s voter rolls since January 2022. Other states, including Texas and Oregon, have recently uncovered noncitizens on their voter registration lists.

LaRose described “list maintenance” as one of a state administration’s “most important responsibilities” and warned that sloppy voter rolls are what open the door for noncitizen voter fraud to occur.

The documented incidents of noncitizens going as far as to cast a ballot are scant. A study by the conservative Heritage Foundation, as well as records from the Department of Justice, indicate that in the last two decades, there exist a couple dozen cases of noncitizens voting. Studies by the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that compared to the millions of eligible voters casting ballots, instances of noncitizens voting are so uncommon that their effects are negligible.

But, House Republicans, who hosted two separate congressional hearings on the topic last week, have repeatedly asked their Democratic counterparts why they oppose stronger enforcement of the law, even if studies show it would not change the outcome of elections.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a border state Republican, told the Washington Examiner he “absolutely” supports the SAVE Act and that Democratic opposition to it is “revealing.”

“They’ve refused to support its mainstream ideal, arguing there is zero problem,” Issa said. “But after only brief review, we know noncitizens have cast votes in our elections. My constituents tell me illegals voting is a concern, because it’s wrong, and we know now it’s not the hoax Democrats have claimed.”

A senior Republican aide observed that Democrats view election laws “the way a big corporation looks at the tax law.”

“Every provision, regulation, and even word should be exploited to the fullest extent,” the aide said, noting that requiring an up-front documented proof of citizenship would shut down an avenue of such exploitation.

Arizona case study

Arizona, a state that has for years been ravaged by illegal migration, is unique in that it is the only state to offer a glimpse into how the SAVE Act would translate in the election process.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act, also known as the “motor voter” law, required every state to use a common federal form to register people.

However, Arizona offers an unusual state registration form in addition to the required federal form, resulting in a two-tiered voter registration system. The state form requires documented proof of citizenship from a registrant, while the federal form is the standard form offered across the country that has only the checkbox. If registered under the federal form without documented proof of citizenship, that voter can only participate in federal elections and not state or local elections.

The state form was the centerpiece of a recent legal battle before the Supreme Court, in which Ennis’s group and the Republican National Committee urged the high court to keep the state form option intact. Democrats and the Department of Justice fought against it. The Supreme Court sided with Republicans on the form question, though it denied other provisions.

Amid the lawsuit, court papers revealed that about 42,000 people were registered under the federal form without having provided documented proof of citizenship. One study found that many of these registrants were concentrated in areas of college campuses, suggesting they were students.

During last week’s hearings, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, an elected Democrat, blasted his state’s system for causing disenfranchisement and warned that the SAVE Act would cause this on a grander scale.

Fontes said the state form’s attempt to address the “vanishingly rare noncitizen voting that is alleged to be happening” has resulted in what he has found to be at least 47,000 eligible Arizonans being denied the right to vote.

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Ennis said disenfranchisement is the “same argument [Democrats] used on voter ID. It’s the same argument they use on virtually everything.” He added that states should focus their efforts on helping eligible voters obtain documentation of their citizenship, such as transient college students.

“Look, if someone doesn’t have documents that prove citizenship, we should help them get those documents,” Ennis said. “That’s a document you need in this country. So these are things we can easily get around and easily solve.”