WASHINGTON – The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would require voters who register to vote to provide proof of citizenship in order to participate in federal elections.
The legislation, adopted 221-198would also require states to check their voter rolls for registered non-citizens.
The Act to Protect American Voting Rightsor SAVE, is intended to prevent non-citizens from voting. This law is already illegal because under current US law only citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections, but the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits states from confirming citizenship status.
Electoral laws vary by statewith some states, such as Georgia and Wisconsin, requiring photo ID and others, such as Pennsylvania and New Mexico, requiring no documents at all.
In states where photo ID or other documentation is required, driver’s licenses, military IDs, student IDs, birth certificates, tribal IDs, or even a recent utility bill will suffice.
The SAVE Act, introduced in May by Chip Roy, a Republican representative from Texas, would require most people to have a passport to register to vote.
Only about 48% of US citizens have a passportaccording to the State Department. Driver’s licenses and tribal identification cards generally do not prove a person’s citizenship and cannot be used to register under the SAVE Act.
The data also suggests that noncitizen voting is not a dominant issue, as many Republicans in the House have stated.
According to the Related PressStates like North Carolina, GeorgiaArizona, California and Texas audited their voter rolls between 2016 and 2022. These audits found that fewer than 50 non-citizens voted in each state in the last election, out of a total of over 23 million votes per state.
It is unlikely that the measure will pass in the Democratic-dominated Senate.
Party political divide
Republicans in the House of Representatives have strongly supported Roy’s bill. HR8281.
On the House floor on Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson urged his colleagues to pass the bill, saying it was “one of the most important votes the members of this chamber will ever take in their entire careers.”
Last month, Johnson’s office released a 22-page report and stressed that the SAVE Act is critical to the integrity of American elections.
Johnson accused the Democratic Party of keeping America’s “borders wide open to every country on the planet” and claimed that Democrats “want illegal aliens to vote in our elections.”
On Monday, the Biden administration released a opinion The head of the administration spoke out against the bill, saying there was no reason to be concerned about non-citizens voting and that it would only affect the right of eligible Americans to vote.
Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, urged his colleagues in the House during debate on Wednesday to vote against the bill because it would have devastating consequences for all American voters.
“This bill is designed to terrify Americans, it is designed to silence Americans, it is designed to disempower Americans,” he said. “This bill is designed to further damage the foundations of our democracy.”
But House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil supported the bill during a Rules Committee hearing.
“Over the past few decades, Americans’ faith in the integrity of our elections has eroded, and it is Congress’s responsibility to restore faith in our election system,” said Steil, a Wisconsin Republican. “The SAVE Act would do just that.”
Louisiana Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise described the bill in a press conference on Monday as “a safeguard to ensure that only American citizens vote in American elections.”
Impact on the election
Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York alluded to the broader implications of the SAVE Act during Wednesday’s floor debate, looking ahead to the November election and the possibility of a second term for President Joe Biden.
He said Republicans could operate the bill “as a smokescreen and try to create a pretext now for what could happen in November.”
Voting rights activists have expressed concern about the SAVE Act, saying it contains many falsehoods and conspiracy theories that promote extreme views.
At a press conference on Tuesday, hosted by America’s VoiceSean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants, said the bill speaks to larger issues such as racism and xenophobia.
“It is also a very damaging lie with an ulterior motive: to lay the groundwork for a later challenge to legitimate election results,” he said.
One congressman compared the bill to a “Jim Crow poll tax” during the debate. Jennifer McClellan, a Democrat from Virginia, said she was “not aware of a single certificate of citizenship that costs nothing to issue.”
Wesley Hunt, a Republican from Texas, responded: “Jim Crow is over.”
