Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) threatened Monday to shut the government down unless Republicans drop their efforts to secure elections and keep noncitizens from voting.
Schumer said in a post on X: “The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0. It would disenfranchise millions of Americans. Every single Senate Democrat will vote against any bill that contains it. Speaker Johnson should tell SAVE Act Republicans to stand down or else this shutdown will be on them.”
The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. While the House previously passed the legislation (including with the support of four Democrats) it has stalled in the Senate. But as Congress debates a new spending bill ahead of a possible shutdown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested there could possibly be efforts to vote on the SAVE Act as a standalone bill in the Senate.
While noncitizen voting is already illegal, current federal law is largely toothless. Prospective voters check a tiny square box on a federal voter registration form attesting under penalty of perjury that they are a citizen. Such an insecure system has led to thousands of noncitizens to either register to vote or even vote.
[READ NEXT: 5 Common Lies About The SAVE Act — And How To Refute Them]
Such a system has led to people like Clayton County, Georgia resident Melanie Pickett to vote multiple times despite being a noncitizen. A Bahamian native, Pickett admitted in December that after getting a driver’s license, she started receiving voting-related information in the mail. Pickett said she “maybe” voted three times. Similarly, a Georgia audit found 20 noncitizens registered to vote — nearly half of which cast a ballot in previous elections, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Pennsylvania previously found 11,198 noncitizens to registered to vote despite, as Democrats have made clear, it being illegal for noncitizens to vote, according to the Washington Times. Oregon’s Secretary of State found nine noncitizens who had voted in past elections after discovering “more than 300 noncitizens were erroneously registered to vote.”
Meanwhile, Alabama’s Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen announced in January that his office found 186 noncitizens who were registered to vote, 25 of whom had allegedly cast ballots illegally.
When elections are decided on razor-thin margins, like that of Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks who won her 2020 election by just six votes, then every mote matters. But that doesn’t mean that every vote should count — like those cast by noncitizens, which is why the SAVE Act is so important.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
