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Republicans push for “only citizens can vote” law
Republicans in Congress are attempting to push through the SAVE Act. The bill would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and require individuals to prove their citizenship when registering to vote. Congressman Tom Tiffany, a Republican who represents Northern Wisconsin in the U.S. House of Representatives, says the bill would require states to verify that only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections. So when they register people to vote under the SAVE Act, they have to get proof of citizenship in order for that person to register. And then they are also required. The second step in the bill is that they must go back and purge their roles of anyone who is here illegally. Tiffany joined a press conference at the Wisconsin State Capitol yesterday to advocate for the bill at an event hosted by the MacGyver Institute, a conservative Wisconsin-based think tank. Critics say the SAVE Act is redundant. Citizenship has already been a requirement to vote in federal elections. The registration process includes attestation of citizenship under penalty of perjury. But Representative Tiffany alleged yesterday that non-citizens are listed on voter rolls across the country. And when you look at 10 million people having come into this country illegally in just the last four years, this is something that's really right to be abused. And especially if you get people that are very zealous about they want their candidate to win at any cost, I just say to illegal aliens that are here in Wisconsin and across America, don't do this. In 2019, an initial review of registered voters in Texas found 95,000 non-citizens. But on a second look, they found that the review used outdated information. Many of the "non-citizens" had since earned their citizenship, reports the Texas Tribune. Dale Schmidt is the sheriff in Dodge County. He was at the state capital, too. I am a United States citizen. I've been a United States citizen since I was born. As a United States citizen, I want my vote to count. But he couldn't point to any examples of people with non-citizenship status voting in elections. And that's a credit to the clerks, the voter ID process that we have in place in the state of Wisconsin. And our fraud that we have is actually quite minimal. Some people voting twice is typically what we're hearing. Voters have needed to show photo ID, like a Wisconsin driver's license, a passport, or military ID card for more than a decade. It's required by a 2011 bill passed by the Republican-led legislature and signed by former governor Walker. At the time, critics described the bill as one of the harshest in the country. The ACLU, which sued to remove it, argued that the bill violated the Voting Rights Act. They said the law had a disproportionate impact on black and Latino voters, who were more likely to lack acceptable photo ID compared to white voters. Proponents of the bill said it prevented election fraud. Since 2019, only three non-citizens in Wisconsin have been prosecuted for voting, according to data from the state elections commission. One reporter asked yesterday if these cases are evidence that the state's election officials already catch and prosecute voter fraud. Here's Rep. Tiffany again. So, yeah, those cases were handled, but they have some process in place. Some states don't have a process. The SAVE Act passed in the House in July, but is still in committee in the Democratic-led Senate. Meanwhile, Congress has until the end of the month to approve a government spending bill, and Republican lawmakers have floated pairing it with the SAVE Act, risking a government shutdown if Democrats don't approve. Current laws already bar anyone who is not a U.S. citizen from voting in elections for federal or statewide Wisconsin offices, but some Democrats and advocates have pushed to allow voting in local elections, like school boards. Republicans are attempting to head that off, too. This November, voters will see a referendum on the ballot to prevent non-citizens from voting locally. The question will change one word in describing who's allowed to vote, from every United States citizen age 18 or older, to only. For WORT News, I'm Faye Parks.
Republican lawmakers and interest groups from Wisconsin are backing a federal bill that would require states to verify that only U.S. citizens vote in elections. But voting experts say the bill is redundant.
Image courtesy: Chali Pittman / WORT News.