President Trump got a boost in his quest to enact the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act last month from an unlikely source—Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who unintentionally revealed the depth of opposition to honest elections that exists in some state governments.
The SAVE America Act would require states to verify registrants’ citizenship using documents such as a U.S. passport, a birth certificate, or a REAL-ID compliant form of identification and remove anyone found not to be a U.S. citizen from the rolls. Voters would also have to show ID when casting ballots at the polls, a requirement that enjoys broad public support.
At an appearance at the Kennedy Center earlier this year, the president touted the bill as crucial to ensuring the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and charged that the only reason for opposing the legislation is a desire to allow electoral fraud.
Enter Jocelyn Benson. Just days later, the Macomb County, Mich., county clerk’s office found evidence of noncitizens registered to vote in that jurisdiction. “Noncitizens are coming through at an alarming rate. Our jury service summons are based on random draws from the driver’s license bank. Frequently, noncitizens slip through because citizenship was not flagged in the Secretary of State database,” said Clerk Anthony Forlini.
Dutifully, Forlini’s office reported their concerns to Secretary Benson’s office. The response from the state official charged with running free and fair elections was both odd and disturbing. “We’re not gonna touch this one,” was the reply Macomb County officials received from the secretary of state – reinforcing President Trump’s assertion that some election officials are, at best, indifferent to fraud.
The attitudes of people like Secretary Benson notwithstanding, electoral integrity is essential to a functioning democracy. When a non-citizen casts a ballot, your individual vote is effectively silenced, canceling out your voice in the democratic process. Americans have always been willing to accept the outcome of elections so long as they believe that it truly represented the will of the majority of their fellow citizens.
On February 11, the House of Representatives took a significant step toward securing public confidence in federal elections by passing the SAVE America Act. A Senate version of the bill introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has been cosponsored by 47 Republican members, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune. The bill is currently awaiting action in the Senate.
Opposition to the bill is being led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who vowed that Democrats “will not let it pass in the Senate.” Reminiscent of the Democrats’ meltdown over a voter ID law enacted by Georgia in 2021 that former President Biden dubbed ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ Schumer trotted out the same scurrilous accusations. Republicans “don’t want poor people to vote. They don’t want people of color to vote because they often don’t vote for them,” he claimed without evidence. Notably, the Georgia law actually resulted in increased voter turnout, including among minority voters.
Demagoguery aside, the need to protect the integrity of U.S. elections has never been greater. Laws such as the National Voter Registration Act require state motor vehicle departments to offer driver’s license applicants the opportunity to register to vote, even while 19 states and the District of Columbia provide driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. All an applicant needs to do to register is to check a box attesting to their eligibility without any need to provide proof of citizenship.
The problem of noncitizens on voter rolls is not even a partisan one. Last year, Texas, which, unlike Michigan, has made an affirmative effort to protect voter integrity, purged some 6,500 noncitizens from voter rolls. A few months later, the state discovered an additional 2,724 potential illegal aliens who were registered to vote. Basic logic would indicate the likelihood that there are many more such ineligible voters to be found in Texas and every other state in the nation.
The SAVE America Act would not only protect against new ineligible voters being registered but would give states the tools and the impetus to purge any who might have found their way onto the rolls, fraudulently or inadvertently. State and local registrars would be required to use existing federal databases to verify citizenship status. And to deter local officials from taking a ‘we’re not gonna touch this one’ attitude, the bill creates a private right of action for citizens to bring civil suits against election officials who fail to uphold proof of citizenship requirements.
President Trump announced his hope to sign the SAVE America Act into law ahead of the midterm elections. The House has already done its part by passing the bill. It is now up to the Senate to follow suit and, at the very least, put every member on record supporting or opposing legislation that enjoys overwhelming public support, and would ensure that American citizens – and American citizens alone – determine the outcome of our elections.’’
Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, D.C.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.