EPEC Team Newsletter: The bill would need to be attached to other legislation in the Senate to make citizenship proof the law when registering to vote. Plus, DNI drops a bombshell over election security investigations.
The second time is the charm for the SAVE Act, H.R. 22, that requires proof of citizenship to register in federal elections. It passed out of the House Thursday (220-208).
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act is a major reform of the National Voter Registration Act (“Motor Voter”) that has been in the works for years.
It provides many ways to supply proof of citizenship, which is required for federal and most (if not all) state elections; it opens up federal databases for states to check eligibility and legal status to register.
Four Democrats joined the Republican conference on the vote this time, one less than a similar bill they passed in 2024.
Republicans’ 53-vote majority in the Senate is still short of the 60 votes needed to pass the bill on its own. It would likely have to be attached to other legislation to lower the threshold votes and get it to the desk of President Trump to sign.
Reforms NVRA to Stop the Auto-Registration of Noncitizens
For over 30 years since “Motor Voter” (NVRA) was signed into law, voter-registration systems in most of the nations’ Dept. of Motor Vehicles have been adding noncitizens to voter rolls automatically when they acquire a driver’s license.
It has also created problems for citizens who just want to update their driver’s license or change their car registration — only to discover they were registered somewhere else when they showed up to vote.
The NVRA also requires voter-registration forms be available at social services agencies, which were offering foreign nationals public assistance once they arrived in the country illegally.
As millions of foreign nationals flooded into the country during the past four years, the Biden administration signed an executive order (since rescinded) that ordered all federal agencies to push voter registration.
It was the last straw for the election integrity movement. Groups mobilized to raise awareness of the issue — and demand reform to the NVRA to require proof of citizenship when offering voter-registration forms.
Right now, NVRA is an honor system on citizenship verification. Voter roll datasets show it is not working.
Noncitizens With a Voting History Grows
EPEC Team has been tracking whether noncitizens who fess up to Virginia’s Department of Elections and admit they are not eligible to vote are leaving a voting history when they are removed from the rolls.
Technology executive Jon Lareau, who volunteers as EPEC Team’s CTO, recently posted on his blog:
Using the data provided by the VA Department of Elections (ELECT), we have identified at least 4,400 unique registrations that were self-identified as “Declared Non-Citizen” and removed by ELECT from the voter rolls since May of 2023.
Of those 4,400 removals there were 683 that also had corresponding records of recent ballots cast at some point in the official Voter History record that we could observe. There were 1,775 associated ballots cast identified since Feb of 2019.
After our March 2024 post on this topic, we submitted all of the relevant information that we had at the time to the VA AG’s office. We have not heard any response or update on the matter since that time, besides this being considered an active investigation.
We subsequently sent our July results as well to the same contact at the AG’s office, but have had no response.
Read Lareau’s full analysis here.
The chart below shows some of Virginia’s localities EPEC Team analyzed. We left out removals that were later reinstated. Even smaller counties such as Hampton City show high rates of repeated balloting among noncitizens who are later removed from the voter rolls.
The SAVE Act reforms “Motor Voter” loopholes to instead require proof of citizenship up front at the registration process.
It makes it easier for states to maintain accurate voter rolls as required under NVRA — freeing them from adding more processes to weed out ineligible noncitizens after they are automatically registered.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who sponsored the bill, pointed to federal law that has “currently been interpreted to prohibit states from being able to check citizenship.”
That’s the truth, he said during floor remarks before the bill passed.
“That’s why the state of Arizona has two systems, one for state and local, one for federal. They check for citizenship for state and local, but are unable to check for federal elections.”
The Democrat left has been ginning up a fear campaign, even resorting to outright falsehoods about the SAVE Act. Media allies were calling the bill “an attack” on voting systems.
One claim is that married women whose birth certificates do not match their married names would be blocked from registering. Not true. The bill makes accommodations for name changes, and allows attestations with the help of federal databases, too.
The rise of absentee balloting has only created more vectors for potential ballot fraud as millions of noncitizens are currently being added to the voter rolls automatically.
By wide margins, Democrat voters, Independents and Republican voters support proof of citizenship to register, and picture ID to vote.
In the Senate, Republicans have 20 seats to defend in the next midterm cycle; this is a huge issue for their voters. Swing state Democrats will have to respond as well.
If they did not realize how many people are watching the bill, they will now as it arrives in the Senate.
For now, the SAVE Act represents a moment of clarity for what it means to be a citizen — to direct the future of the country with accurate ballot counts. #
DNI Gabbard Sparks Buzz Over Election Machine ‘Investigation’
Election watchers were also abuzz across social media Thursday following remarks by Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, during a White House cabinet meeting. She said:
“We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time, and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes being cast.”
Her remarks were addressing the recent Executive Order President Trump issued about securing the nation’s election systems.
EPEC Team has much more to follow on that bombshell news — on a big day for election integrity.
For now, that’s a wrap. #
Post a comment