Despite Little Evidence of Non-Citizen Voting Being a Problem, Republicans in Congress Leaning Into Issue

The current Republican push concerning alleged non-citizen voting in American elections is running up against the reality that even suspected instances of non-citizen voting are exceedingly rare.As part of a wider effort to lean in on the issues of asylum seekers and immigration that most polls show Americans growing increasingly concerned about, Republicans have begun focusing on the specter of non-citizen voting ahead of the 2024 election, teeing up multiple pieces of legislation in the House.One bill would override a recent measure passed by Washington, D.C., aimed at allowing non-citizen residents of the city to vote in local elections there. The Washington law allows for residents of the District who are 18 and older and have lived in the District for more than 30 days to vote in school board and municipal elections.The District law mirrors laws passed at New York and a handful of other municipalities around the country — some of which have already been struck down by courts as unconstitutional — allowing local residents to vote in municipal elections or school board elections regardless of their immigration status.The move by Republicans in Congress is only the latest example of federal lawmakers attempting to use their power to steer the governance of the District, an issue which has often broken down along partisan lines with Democrats whipping votes against the GOP bill, according to Axios.Even if the House passes the bill, it is unlikely to pass the Democratic Senate or be signed into law by President Biden. A similar bill passed the House last year and wasn’t taken up in the Senate.Still, the bill has proven fruitful for Republicans on the messaging front, with a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman, Will Reinhart, saying that Republicans “will be watching and holding these frauds accountable if they try to pull the wool over voters’ eyes.”“Extreme House Democrats are already on the record supporting giving illegal migrants the right to vote and any change in their position is just disgusting election-year politics,” Mr. Reinhart said in a statement.Another bill, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would ban non-citizen residents from voting in federal elections, something that is already prohibited by federal law.At a hearing on the bill, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, Joseph Morelle, said, “This hearing is about preemptively covering Donald Trump’s lie.”“The hearing isn’t about laying law and order. It’s about laying the foundation for the next big lie,” Mr. Morelle said. “It’s about saying that illegal voting is the cause of an election defeat.”Despite the Democrats’ dismissal of the issue, GOP leaders like Speaker Johnson are ramping up their rhetoric.“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Mr. Johnson told reporters earlier this month. “We don’t have that number. This legislation will allow us to do exactly that. It will prevent that from happening.”At a press conference, Mr. Johnson did not present any evidence of non-citizen voting in a federal election and acknowledged that the practice is already illegal. He expressed concern about the issue nonetheless. “We now have so many noncitizens in the country that if only one out of 100 of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes,” he said.A representative of the speaker’s office, when asked by the Sun, suggested that certain non-citizen residents could obtain voter registration forms at welfare offices. Voter registration forms are also widely available online, and many states allow people to register to vote online as well.Part of the reason that non-citizen voting is so rare is that every state except North Dakota has a voter registration requirement, and in every state with registration a voter must be a citizen to register to vote. While the process of registering to vote varies by state, potential voters generally either need to supply a valid photo ID or a Social Security number in order to do so. Once a potential voter supplies the required ID or Social Security number, a state or local election official can then confirm their identity and check their immigration status, though the specific process varies by state.Those non-citizens who do attempt to register to vote in federal elections face criminal penalties in every state in the union as well as up to five years in prison under federal law.One analysis of studies that claimed to have uncovered non-citizen voting by the libertarian Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh found that most claims about non-citizen voting rest on over-reliance on faulty survey data.“There are likely many problems with America’s voting system and there is no doubt that a non‐zero number of non‐citizens illegally voted, but there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections or even change the number of electoral votes,” Mr. Nowrasteh wrote.Another analysis of non-citizen voting by the liberal Brennan Institute examined the rate of suspected cases of non-citizen voting in federal elections. The analysis of 42 jurisdictions, which oversaw some 23.5 million votes, found that there were only about 30 instances where authorities suspect a non-citizen resident may have cast a vote in a federal election.

Despite Little Evidence of Non-Citizen Voting Being a Problem, Republicans in Congress Leaning Into Issue

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