Congress Must Do More To Prevent Noncitizens From Voting

As the Nov. 5 Election Day approaches, the threat of illegal voting by noncitizens looms large. Democrats say that’s impossible, because it’s “already illegal for noncitizens to vote.” Yes. It is. And bank robbery, exceeding the speed limit, murder, and crossing the U.S. border without proper documentation — all of those things are “already illegal,” and yet people do those things anyway.

Federal statutes are responsible for much of the chaos when it comes to ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in our elections. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was construed by the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade ago to preclude states from requiring documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote using the federal voter registration form (which all but six states are required to “accept and use”).

The Biden-Harris Department of Justice is now suing Alabama and Virginia for removing noncitizens from the states’ voter rolls, citing (wrongly) the NVRA’s list maintenance provisions as prohibiting the removal of noncitizen registrations in the 90 days preceding an election. The DOJ is wrong on the law because the NVRA was not intended to apply to registrations that were never valid in the first place. The administration’s lawsuits merely confirm that Democrats view illegals and noncitizens as a key component of their political base.  

It is not just the NVRA that is problematic: the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires states to confirm the identity and residency of any applicant seeking to register to vote in any state. Notice anything missing in that list? How about confirming an applicant’s U.S. citizenship status? That was not included in the law passed by Congress in 2002 because no one could have imagined a day in the future when an administration would adopt a “whole of government” policy that ignores the nation’s immigration laws and rewards those who come across the borders illegally.

The two methods prescribed by HAVA for verification of identity and residency are a driver’s license or a Social Security number, both of which are issued to noncitizens and neither of which confirm citizenship status. Every state issues driver’s licenses to noncitizens, and 19 states issue driver’s licenses to illegals. Couple that with the Biden-Harris administration’s current efforts to push millions of illegals into categories of persons eligible for Social Security numbers, and one realizes that HAVA has no provisions to review or confirm citizenship status of voter registration applicants.

The third federal law that is being exploited by Democrats and their leftist allies is the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which was enacted to make it easier for active-duty military members and their families to vote, regardless of where in the world they were stationed. Over time, however, UOCAVA has completely morphed from its original purpose of facilitating military voting. In the 2020 presidential election, 63 percent of the UOCAVA votes were from civilians, not members of the military.

In addition, many state election officials have failed to ensure that basic UOCAVA eligibility requirements are met. For instance, in North Carolina UOCAVA voters must show some prior relationship to the state, and the law directs the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) to modify or create a declaration attesting to the voter’s eligibility to vote under UOCAVA. But the NCSBE has not complied with that directive, and there is no verification of citizenship or the eligibility of a person to vote in North Carolina via UOCAVA. The North Carolina practice is not unusual or unique.

In Pennsylvania, election officials have contended that there is no requirement to validate eligibility or identity before registering UOCAVA voters in their state, which directly contradicts both federal and state law.

These are not insignificant threats to the integrity and validity of the 2024 general election. Democrats are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to gather UOCAVA registrations and votes from people living in countries all over the world, regardless of whether they can prove their citizenship status or their eligibility to vote in a particular state. Why? Because in recent presidential elections, the civilian overseas votes have largely benefited Democrats.

Clearly, changes in federal and state laws are necessary to protect our elections from being overrun with ineligible votes cast by noncitizens who have made their way onto state voter rolls because of these problematic federal laws.

Congress took the first major step this year to address the crisis of noncitizen voting in U.S. elections when Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced the Save American Voter Eligibility Act (“SAVE Act”), which was embraced and endorsed by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La. Johnson made passage of the SAVE Act a top priority and helped push the bill through the House, which passed on July 10, 2024, with all Republicans and five Democrats voting aye.

Johnson then made another valiant effort in September to pass the SAVE Act as part of a six-month continuing resolution for temporary funding of the federal government. Unfortunately, several Republican House members could not get past themselves (and, in some cases, their own personal issues) to realize the urgent need to support Johnson’s plan to pass the combined measure in the House and force Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to explain to the American people why he and his Democrat colleagues oppose keeping noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections.  

House members who voted against the Speaker’s proposal, even some members I normally respect, were a terrible disappointment. They utterly failed the country when they killed the CR+SAVE Act, not only because it was good policy, but also because it denied us the opportunity to make noncitizen voting a key differentiating topic for the national election conversation this fall.

Those members offered a variety of excuses, all of which I found to be feeble. But the most irritating excuses came from members who simply oppose continuing resolutions “on principle,” no matter what. That reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on self-reliance, in which he wrote that ”a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  

It is virtually impossible to move forward when members of your own team insist on putting themselves and their own self-importance above the greater good and the vital need to address a serious national threat.

Congress has work to do next year, and my hope is that Speaker Johnson will have an expanded majority to help repair the damage to America’s elections caused by the language and loopholes in these flawed federal laws.

Noncitizens should have no voice or vote in U.S. elections — any of them. It is well past time for Congress to fix the problems it has created over the past 30 years. I am praying that those statutory loopholes do not cost America a lawful election on Nov. 5 by allowing U.S. citizens’ votes to be diluted and overwhelmed by the votes of people who should have no say in our elections. 

Cleta Mitchell is an election attorney and founder of the Election Integrity Network