Kerri Tolochko
Tonight, the presidential candidates will have their first debate. But there is one critical election issue that Americans are not debating at all. They agree that non-US citizens should not vote in US elections.
This is a comfortable position for Americans because it is also the law.
National Voter Registration Act 1993 (NVRA) and other federal codes and state constitutions require that only citizens vote in our elections. That is unambiguous. It is in writing. It is common sense.
The problem with the law is that people break it — including foreigners who commit one federal crime by registering to vote and then another, Actually voting. But because federal statutes are hushed on requiring proof of citizenship at every stage, states have not required proof of citizenship to register voters on federal forms.
These registration forms are provided to people applying for a driver’s license or ID card regardless of whether the person is a citizen or not. And the entire process of “verifying” citizenship is a harmless checkbox on a federal form that many registrants fill out simply because it’s there.
Newly arrived foreigners who do not speak English know only that a government official handed them a form to fill out with a check mark — or that a group of liberal activists told them to check it.
Elections at risk
Earlier this year, the Patriotic Tea Party commissioned vote citizens who regularly vote, and 86 percent of them believe that “proof of U.S. citizenship should be required to register to vote in U.S. elections” and that “only U.S. citizens should vote in American elections.”
Who are the other 13 percent who know nothing? Left-wing political elites, their friends in the dishonest media, and the current occupants of the White House and the vice president’s mansion, that’s who.
How do we know this? By following SAVE Act and see who opposes it.
The Protecting Americans’ Voting Rights Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July, circulated in an idle Senate for a while, and now could return to the House as a companion piece to must-pass legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and congressional Republicans are acknowledging that foreigners are registering to vote in unprecedented numbers — and those illegal votes cast in specific cities or counties could affect the entire federal election.
The SAVE Act closes federal loopholes that allow noncitizens to register to vote by requiring election officials to ask about citizenship when registering and for would-be registrants to provide proof of citizenship. It gives states unfettered access to existing federal databases to check citizenship status on voter rolls.
This is “necessary” in and of itself—to protect our constitutional republic in which People the will should be of the utmost importance.
SAVE your vote
Noncitizens are not the only ones who face consequences for registering and voting illegally. Penalties include imprisonment, fines, and immediate deportation proceedings. Naturalization is also permanently denied to applicants who appear on the electoral rolls and are subject to deportation.
And then there’s the American voter. Every time a foreigner votes illegally—intentionally or unintentionally—the citizen’s vote is removed from the count. Americans have made it clear that they know this is happening, they don’t like it, and they don’t want to pay the price.
But there is nothing in the law that allows action against election officials who fail to follow the citizenship requirement or DMV bureaucrats who knowingly give voter registration forms to noncitizens. The SAVE Act would allow citizens to file civil lawsuits in such cases and would provide penalties for people who enable or encourage noncitizens to register and vote.
Progressive politicians and their media friends present two misleading arguments about foreigners voting.
One of them is, “It’s against the law anyway.” Stealing a car, committing murder, and jaywalking are also against the law. But perhaps worse is their casual joke, dripping with moral relativism, that illegal immigrants “don’t get a wide vote.”
Both of these ridiculous ideas are easily debunked.
Evidence
Federal government recently accused a group of foreigners from 15 countries accused of participating in federal voting. Virginia 6,500 non-citizens were recently removed from the voter register. Texas 6,300 people were removed — 30% of whom had voting records. A 2014 academic journal reported that 6.4% foreigners voted in 2008.
It’s about 24 million foreigners currently in the US If they voted Just If this year the percentage was 6.4%, which was in 2008, they would receive 1.5 million votes.
In the 39 months since the Biden/Harris Administration (including our “border czar”) took office, the number of foreign-born people in our country has increased by 6.6 million; at least 4.6 million of them are illegal immigrants.
Flyers were found widely distributed on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border, urging illegal immigrants to vote for Biden in 2024. Biden issued Executive Order 14019 in March 2021, demanding that anyone applying for federal services (without citizenship qualifications) be given a voter registration form. The Biden/Harris Administration Officially Opposes the SAVE Act. Is This All a Coincidence? And What Could Go Wrong?
If the 2020 presidential election taught us nothing, it is that Americans of both political parties are deeply concerned about any form of foreign interference in our elections.
Voting from outside the country is foreign influence.
We live in a representative republic. Our representatives have long since begun to listen to what we tell them about the sanctity of our elections. Let us work to ensure that only Americans vote in American elections.
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Kerri Toloczko is the executive director Election Integrity Network and Senior Advisor Only Citizens Vote CoalitionBoth of these nonprofits are dedicated to protecting all votes and ensuring that elections are legal. They are also the main organizers of Citizens Only Voting Week 2024, which runs from September 15-21.
Photo “Voting Line” by GPA Photo Archive.CC BY-NC 2.0
