Dozens of them Donald TrumpHis allies and election deniers, including extremists like attorney Cleta Mitchell and ex-counsel Stephen Miller, are promoting a bill to ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections, even though it is already illegal and proves that noncitizens voted in federal elections . races is virtually nil.
The push for the bill is seen as further evidence of extremist tactics that ex-President Trump and his Maga movement have used to shore up his supporters ahead of the 2024 elections with outlandish claims designed to strike fear mongers about election fraud and far-right rhetoric. detached from reality.
It also fits a pattern that many Trump allies appear to be laying the groundwork for false complaints of election fraud if Trump were to suffer another election defeat in 2024 – raising fears that the US could face a civil crisis similar to what followed the 2020 election campaign, when his allies attacked the Capitol in Washington DC.
The rationale for the legislation, which Trump praised last month at a Mar-a-Lago event with House Speaker Mike Johnson, has drawn sharp criticism from voting experts and even some Republicans.
At the bill’s formal unveiling on May 8, Johnson was joined by Mitchell, Miller and leaders of right-wing groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Arizona Freedom Caucus, who have formed the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, with about 70 members pushing the measure . .
Johnson hyped the Save Act – or Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act – and cast illegal citizens voting as a more serious threat than Trump’s false accusations that Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 due to voter fraud.
Johnson — whose May 8 press conference drew the bill’s lead sponsors, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas — conceded that “we all know intuitively that many illegals vote in federal elections. But it’s not something that’s easy to prove.”
As a lawyer and key ally of Trump, Johnson played a central role in Trump’s baseless drive to reverse his 2020 defeat. Johnson led an amicus brief that more than 100 House GOP members signed in support of a lawsuit in Texas that sought to block the results in four key states that Biden won.
“Even if you weren’t worried about the drop boxes and the ballot collection and the mail-in ballots and 2020,” Johnson said on May 8, referring to some of the false fraud claims Trump and his allies made about Biden’s victory : “You should definitely be concerned about illegal aliens voting in 2024.”
In fact, studies have shown that non-citizens are extremely unlikely to vote in federal elections, and that the minuscule number who attempt to vote has no impact on the outcome.
A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, which focused on the 2016 election, found that only 0.0001% of votes in 42 jurisdictions, with a total of 23.5 million votes, were likely to include votes from non-citizens included, or 30 incidents in total.
A more recent study in Arizona shows that less than 1% of noncitizens try to register to vote, but the vast majority of those are mistakes, as the Washington Post initially reported.
“These lies about widespread non-citizen voting fuel xenophobic fears and unfounded doubts about the integrity of our elections. They appear intended to lay the foundation for unfoundedly contesting any election results. Americans must have confidence that our elections are secure,” said Andrew Garber, an election consultant at the Brennan Center.
Even some Republican supporters say the bill is intended to generate more votes for Trump and his allies in Congress by raising the specter of a bogus election fraud issue.
“This is all politics,” said veteran Republican consultant Charlie Black. “The people who advertise it know it’s already illegal. But they hope by promoting the issue they will convince voters that illegal immigrants are voting. “
Other Republicans agree. “This is a messaging bill,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent, noting that it is “already illegal” for noncitizens to vote. ‘They are trying to link this to the border issue. It is completely campaign driven by challenging Democrats to vote against it.”
Critics warn that the Save Act, which is unlikely to pass the Senate if the House passes the bill, would make it more difficult to register people to vote because it would require proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport , which many Americans don’t have. .
Federal law now only requires voters to fill out a form swearing they are U.S. citizens.
No wonder the legislation has strong support from many well-funded Trump-affiliated election denial groups and their leaders.
Right-wing attorney Mitchell, who heads the election integrity network at the Conservative Partnership Institute, where she is a senior legal fellow, has been at the forefront of promoting conspiracies about non-citizen voting.
Mitchell raised the specter of non-citizen voting on a conservative radio talk show in Illinois in February, where she said: “I absolutely believe this is intentional, and one of the reasons the Biden administration is already allowing these illegal immigrants are flooding the country. They take them to counties across the country so they can get those people registered and vote for them.”
A little-known group that Mitchell quietly founded last year called the Fair Elections Fund, which she chairs, is listed as a member of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition.
Mitchell, a longtime election conspirator, was speaking to Trump with Georgian Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, when Trump urged him to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn Biden’s victory there.
Similarly, Stephen Miller, who heads the right-wing litigation organization America First Legal and served as Trump’s hardline immigration adviser, has worked diligently to promote fears of illegal voting by noncitizens.
“Democracy in America is under attack,” Miller said at the May 8 press event. Miller denounced the “wide open border and the obstruction of any effort to verify the citizenship of those who vote in our elections.”
Despite the lack of evidence that non-citizen voting poses a real threat, Miller has repeated false conspiracy theories that Democrats are bringing voters to the US to boost Biden’s victory in November.
The Maga world’s obsession with non-citizen voting was palpable last month at an event in Las Vegas hosted by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who heads the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which has a number of sheriffs and other elected officials from the Maga world. multiple states. Mack, a former board member of the extremist Oath Keepers, said in April that “election fraud and the border go hand in hand,” a claim for which there is no evidence.
Voting experts are alarmed by growing efforts by Trump allies to spotlight a virtually nonexistent threat and advance legislation that would require voters to show registration documents that millions of Americans do not have.
“Millions of eligible U.S. citizens do not have easy access to a passport or birth certificate, so requiring eligible voters to show that either has registered to vote would create a significant hurdle with no real benefit to the election security,” said Garber of the Brennan Center.
Other voice specialists express similar concerns.
“Rather than taking meaningful action to strengthen our critical election infrastructure, Speaker Johnson is adding fuel to the fire by tying immigration policy to election security,” said Carah Ong Whaley, director of election protection at Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.
Instead, Whaley urged Johnson and his allies to work in a bipartisan manner “to increase federal funding to ensure officials have the resources they need to protect against growing concerns about foreign interference and threats to cyber security”.
Republican figures also express strong doubts about what drives the bill’s proponents.
“Since Trump has surrounded himself with the losing 2020 election narrative of fraud, he needs to change the narrative,” said Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin. “Proposals like this from his allies are crucial for him to trick American voters into voting for him again.”
