While a critical voter verification bill languishes in the backbone-lacking U.S. Senate, election fraud rolls on nationwide. And Blue state New Jersey is Exhibit A.
Don’t expect any movement on the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) America Act anytime soon. Congress is out on another extended break — just three weeks after its nearly two-week Easter recess. House members are scheduled to be in their respective districts this week for another “district work period,” and senators also are taking a break from their grueling 3 1/2-day work week.
To no one’s surprise, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. and crew have opted not to reopen a “marathon” debate on the SAVE America Act during the downtime, which would make Democrats pay for their truculent opposition to an election integrity bill the vast majority of Americans support.
Establishment Republicans have for more than a month stalled their half-hearted effort to keep their focus on the bill in hopes of convincing enough Democrats to vote for it. Of course, it’s hard to make liberals defend their unpopular stance if you don’t make them defend their unpopular stance.
The Federalist reached out to Thune’s office on Monday. No answer on the status of the SAVE America act, which would amend the flawed National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to cast a ballot in a federal election. Majority Republicans could push for an end to the bill-killing filibuster to pass the legislation. Several senators and President Donald Trump have urged Senate leadership to do just that. But they won’t, apparently trusting that Democrats wouldn’t do the same when they control the upper House again.
In the meantime, the thing that the left says never happens — election fraud — is happening with greater frequency. Election integrity trouble in New Jersey alone is making the case for the SAVE America Act.
‘Knowingly Circumvented’
Last week, New Jersey U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer announced charges against four noncitizens for illegally voting in U.S. elections in three different counties and making false statements when applying for U.S. citizenship. The District of New Jersey’s Election Integrity Task Force arrested the individuals after determining they had falsely certified and attested that they were U.S. citizens, according to a press release. As The Federalist has extensively reported, the citizenship “honor system,” checking a box on an election form, is all that stands between noncitizens disenfranchising legal voters. And noncitizens are doing just that.
Fraser said the suspects voted in at least one federal election between 2020 and 2024.
“The subjects are alleged to have knowingly circumvented one of our most sacred rights as citizens, the right to vote. The FBI and our partners will continue to pursue justice for those in violation of federal law, and keep the integrity of our elections intact,” FBI Newark Special Agent in Charge Stefanie Roddy said in the press release.
In January, two Pakistani foreign nationals, Muhammad Muzammal, 37, and Muhammad Shakeel, 62, were found to have registered to vote in the Garden State, according to the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office. Their registrations were approved, and both men went on to cast ballots in 2020’s presidential election, a press release states.
The men also are charged with lying to an Immigration Services Officer during an interview, the noncitizens again falsely asserting that they had never voted in any federal, state, or local elections, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The indictments came down in December.
‘Numerous’ Fraudulent Voter Registration Applications’
Also in New Jersey, former Plainfield mayoral candidate Henrilynn Ibezim, a Democrat, pleaded guilty last week to one count of 3rd-degree forgery nearly five years after law enforcement officials said he attempted to file “numerous” fraudulent voter registration applications in the Democratic Party primary. By “numerous,” New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, also a Democrat, means about 1,000.
In June 2021, Ibezim, 71, “created and attempted to submit false voter registration applications containing the personal identifying information of individuals without their authorization,” Davenport’s office wrote in a press release. “Many of the applications had the handwriting of only three or four writers. The applications did not state, as required, that they were completed by anyone other than the voter for whom the application was purportedly submitted,” the press release states.
Thanks to a plea agreement, the state dismissed seven other counts, including election fraud and witness tampering, in the indictment. Prosecutors will recommend the convicted candidate serve a term of probation, which will be set by the court at sentencing.
Left-leaning “voter rights” groups like the Brennan Center insist “Illegal voting, including by noncitizens, is routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate authorities …” It is not. The Trump administration, some red state attorneys general, and relatively few local law enforcement officials have prioritized investigations and prosecutions of election fraud, but most prosecutors feel they have other fish to fry. The foundational crimes have not been a primary concern in no small part because of the left’s other big lie: “There is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome.” The Brennan Center can’t definitively say that because tracking the numbers of noncitizens voting is difficult thanks to the “honor system” in election law.
‘That’s Not A Crack, That’s A Huge Gap’
“We know from talking to people who work in elections for the counties that they do no checking for citizenship. If you check the box that’s it. They don’t do anything,” Mark Demo, co-founder of Citizens for New Jersey Election Integrity, a nonpartisan organization whose mission is in its name, told The Federalist in a phone interview.
“That’s not a crack, that’s a huge gap,” Demo added.
An open records lawsuit filed last year by the Republican National Committee accused New Jersey’s Division of Elections of “slow walking” the release of voter machine and voter roll records related to last June’s primary elections. The RNC also sought vote-counting data. The state argued that under the Open Public Records Act it does not need to turn over copies of records that don’t exist. A County judge earlier this year agreed.
But in making its case, the state made some stunning admissions about what it doesn’t do.
“They don’t check for people who have moved in state. They don’t check for people who have moved out of state. They don’t check for people in prisons. They don’t check for citizenship,” Demo said.
In a letter to the RNC’s attorneys, dated July 29, 2025, Donna Barber, executive director of the New Jersey Division of Elections, asserts that data on individuals deleted from the voter rolls on the basis of noncitizenship “can neither be searched for nor output into a report.” Doing so, the Barber contends, would require a manual review and compilation of each individual voter record, which would be burdensome. Besides, there is no requirement to do so under the state’s open records act, she noted.
The letter also states that neither the Division of Elections nor New Jersey’s county commissioners of registration receive any information about the death of registered voters from the usual sources: the Department of Corrections, Department of Motor Vehicles, the Social Security Administration or U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service, among others. Why? The letter doesn’t state. It just tells the RNC that they won’t fill the records request because the information is not available.
It’s a transparency problem to say the least.
‘The Blood of Our Country on Our Hands’
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is among the most vocal proponents of nuking the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act. Johnson would like to at least test Senate Democrats to see if they would support an end to the 60-vote cloture wall, just as they invoked the “nuclear option” in 2013 to quickly move through liberal judicial nominees with a simple majority vote. (The republic is paying dearly for that decision today through a federal court soft coup against the Trump agenda.) The filibuster stands otherwise. Democrats at the time claimed that they needed a way to get around the “unprecedented obstruction” of Republicans, as has been the claim of Democrats in the current session.
“This is not the Senate you revered as the great deliberative body,” Johnson told The Federalist in a phone interview. He’s betting that Democrats will nuke the filibuster when they’re back in power. Many of his colleagues are hoping — or trusting — that they won’t, the senator said.
Johnson said the SAVE America Act is worth the nuclear option. But he understands why many of his colleagues do not share his sentiments.
“We’re very reluctant to be the ones to kill it when Democrats would use [the nuclear option] to destroy the country,” the senator said. “We don’t want the blood of our country on our hands.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
