Johnson and Stephen Miller launch war against illegal immigrant voting

• ‘If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name,’ Johnson insisted 
• Non-citizens who vote in federal and state elections are already breaking the law and putting themselves at risk of jail or deportation

Speaker Mike Johnson insisted legislation to make voters prove their citizenship could be one of the ‘most important’ bills to go through Congress in a lifetime.

The SAVE Act aims to force election officials to verify citizenship in elections. It’s not yet clear when it will come up for a vote.

Johnson, speaking alongside Trump world heavyweights Stephen Miller and Hogan Gidley and Rep. Chip Roy, did not give a full accounting of how many non-citizens have voted in elections, but warned the number could be ‘dangerously high.’

‘We now have so many non citizens in the country that if only one out of a hundred of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes,’ he told reporters. ‘This is a dangerously high number.’

Non-citizens who vote in federal and state elections are already breaking the law and putting themselves at risk of jail or deportation. A small handful of municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.

But federal law currently prohibits requiring documentary proof of citizenship in federal elections. Arizona requires it for state elections.

Speaker Mike Johnson insisted legislation to make voters prove their citizenship could be one of the ‘most important’ bills to go through Congress in a lifetime

‘If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name. That’s it. That’s all that’s required,’ Johnson said.

Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, called the bill the ‘most important vote that most members of Congress take in their entire careers.’

‘If this bill does not become law then Joe Biden and Democrats will have engineered, one of the greatest interferences in any democratic nation in the history of the world.’

The bill would aim to close any loopholes that allow people to register to vote without proof of US citizenship or photo ID, require all 50 states to remove any unlawful immigrants from their voter rolls, add penalties of up to five years in prison for election officials who register non-citizens to vote and require proof of citizenship for those who vote overseas.

There’s little evidence that non-citizen voting is impacting election outcomes, and unlawful immigrants often steer clear of giving out personal information for fear or being caught by immigration authorities.

It is possible to vote illegally as an undocumented immigrant, though.

Most voting ballots require some kind of proof of identity to register to vote, such as a driver’s license. Not all of those proofs of ID require citizenship – the bill would specifically require ID requirements like passports or birth certificates.

A sampling from 2002 to 2022 of over 1 billion ballots found fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud.

Still, the bill is likely being pushed heavily by former President Donald Trump. Johnson and Trump gave a joint news conference on the issue last month.

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