Democrats Are Terrified Of Trump’s Plan To Make Elections Secure

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to secure elections, including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to vote — mirroring a bill set to be voted on in the House. While noncitizen voting is already illegal, the current law is largely toothless. Trump’s order, along with the House legislation, would simply add some teeth.

But Democrats are terrified that Republicans are finally taking the needed steps to enforce the law and protect our elections from violations that have been long ignored.

“Trump and Congressional Republicans are escalating their assault on American democracy through the noxious SAVE Act,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “Congressional Republicans are pushing a proposal that would coerce states into instituting policies that would effectively prevent millions of American citizens from voting …”

But how does Schumer know these “millions” of people are American citizens? Is he just taking their word for it?

The truth is, Schumer doesn’t have proof — and neither does anyone else. Taking someone’s word for their citizenship status isn’t confirmation, and our elections should never hinge on the honor system when so much is at stake. That’s why Republicans introduced the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.

The act would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to require prospective voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship in order to register. While noncitizen voting is already illegal, the only thing standing between a noncitizen and secure elections is a small square box on the federal registration form that requires applicants attest to their citizenship status under penalty of perjury.

It’s a system ripe for fraud.

Take, for example, that a Chinese college student cast an illegal vote this past election cycle despite being a noncitizen. His vote was ultimately counted because ballots are secret and once a vote is cast and run through a tabulator, it is impossible to identify who cast the ballot. In Iowa, Jorge Oscar Sanchez-Vasquez was charged for “registering to vote and illegally voting on the same day, July 16, 2024, in a special election of the Marshalltown City Council,” according to the state’s attorney general. An October Georgia audit found 20 noncitizens registered to vote, and nearly half of them reportedly previously voted in an election.

Oregon’s secretary of state similarly found nine noncitizens who had voted in past elections, as well as “more than 300 noncitizens [who] were erroneously registered to vote,” as The Federalist’s Logan Washburn explained. Meanwhile, six noncitizens were indicted in Ohio for allegedly voting in past elections.

The examples are endless — and dangerous. When elections are decided on razor-thin margins (Rep. Maryanne Miller-Meeks won her 2020 election by just six votes) every vote matters — but not every vote should count. Votes cast by ineligible voters, like noncitizens, should not count. In fact, they shouldn’t even be cast in the first place. One way to prevent that from happening is by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — that way noncitizens are unable to even get on the voter rolls.

But Schumer has vowed to “make sure” the SAVE Act is blocked by Senate Democrats. His comments were echoed by Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who said his party would “overwhelmingly” oppose the legislation.

Without requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, there’s no real way of knowing whether noncitizens are making it on voter rolls or casting a ballot. And, as reported by The Federalist’s Breccan Thies, data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows “the federal government decided to only go after 35 criminal cases of aliens voting in American elections from 2001-2021…”

Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation Hans von Spakovsky told The Federalist that he spent four years at the DOJ and that the department is “filled with left-wing ideologues, and they just had no interest — they have no interest in going after aliens to prosecute them.”

The DOJ won’t do its job, which makes the SAVE Act and Trump’s order even more necessary.

Anyone who cares about election integrity should get behind the legislation. Those who don’t? Well, they have their reasons.

For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.

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