Sen. Mike Lee introduces laws to require proof of citizenship to vote in US

WASHINGTON — Utah Sen. Mike Lee is one among a number of Republicans in Washington pushing for a invoice that will require proof of citizenship to vote in the USA.

Lee appeared at a press convention on the steps of the Capitol alongside Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, Wednesday, to tout the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, of which Lee is the Senate sponsor. Though federal legislation already bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections, the invoice would require potential voters to indicate proof of citizenship with a purpose to vote.

The proposal comes as many Republicans proceed to query the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election and former President Donald Trump has claimed Democrats are permitting undocumented immigrants into the nation and “signing them as much as vote.”

Johnson mentioned “lots of illegals” are voting in elections, however did not provide any proof.

“I imply, the reply is that it is unanswerable,” he mentioned. “That’s the drawback. … Everyone knows, intuitively, that lots of illegals are voting in federal elections. However it’s not one thing that’s simply provable. We do not have that quantity. This laws will enable us to do precisely that. It’ll stop that from taking place. And if somebody tries to do it, it can now be illegal throughout the states. We’ll have a mechanism to show whether or not they’re or not.”

“One citizen, one vote, and that is the way it’s speculated to work,” Lee mentioned.

Analysis and audits of previous elections have discovered it’s uncommon for noncitizens to attempt to vote, and most makes an attempt to register to vote by noncitizens are caught by election staff.

“There are seemingly many issues with America’s voting system and there’s no doubt {that a} non-zero variety of noncitizens illegally voted, however there isn’t any good proof that noncitizens voted illegally in giant sufficient numbers to really shift the result of elections and even change the variety of electoral votes,” the Cato Institute wrote in 2020.

Current on the press convention have been a number of key gamers within the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election that was received by Joe Biden, together with Cleta Mitchell, a conservative activist who was current on the January 2021 name when Trump requested Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “discover” sufficient votes to overturn Biden’s win within the state. Johnson led an amicus temporary in help of a Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the leads to a number of swing states received by Biden that greater than 100 Home Republicans signed.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas — the Home sponsor of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — and Lee each texted a prime Trump aide following the 2020 election to problem the outcomes, with Lee pledging his “unequivocal help so that you can exhaust each authorized and constitutional treatment at your disposal to revive People’ religion in our elections.” Within the days earlier than the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Lee appeared to distance himself from a number of the efforts to maintain Trump in workplace and finally acknowledged Biden’s Electoral School win.

On the press convention Wednesday, Lee mentioned an estimated 10-12 million undocumented immigrants have entered the nation since Biden took workplace in 2021, with a complete variety of noncitizens “someplace approaching 30 million.”

“If these estimates are correct, that will imply that roughly one in 11, or one in 12 individuals presently residing in the USA occurs to be a noncitizen,” he mentioned. “This isn’t an educational train, particularly when you think about that in some components of the nation, their numbers could also be disproportionately represented. There’s not a superb, reliable motive to oppose this invoice. The truth is, there are every kind of issues that will be improper with this establishment if it failed instantly to move this invoice and ship it to the president for his signature.”

Actual estimates for the variety of undocumented immigrants within the U.S. are laborious to pin down, and even Roy has mentioned he has seen “wildly various numbers.”