The upcoming 2024 presidential election is under threat as illegal immigrants and noncitizens could potentially cast votes, raising concerns among Republicans.
A top U.S. senator is sounding the alarm about the strong possibility or even likelihood.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a member of the Senate Budget and Judiciary Committee appeared Sunday on the Fox News Channel and said: “We’ve seen it in various jurisdictions around the country. There are a handful of states including, I believe, Virginia, Louisiana, Alabama who have done some investigating into their own voter registration files, and they’ve found a lot of noncitizens including a whole lot of illegal immigrants registered to vote.”
Lee told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that these states, “to their great credit, they’re doing their best to cull through those and to remove those who they believe to be illegal immigrants. And I hope other states will do the same.”
He pushed for passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, which requires individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections.
Specifically, the bill prohibits states from accepting and processing an application to register to vote in a federal election unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.
The measure also indicates:
Each state must take affirmative steps on an ongoing basis to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote, which shall include establishing a program to identify individuals who are not U.S. citizens using information supplied by specified sources.
Additionally, the bill requires states to remove noncitizens from their official lists of eligible voters.
The bill allows for a private right of action against an election official who registers an applicant to vote in a federal election who fails to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.
The bill establishes criminal penalties for certain offenses, including registering an applicant to vote in a federal election who fails to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.
Lee explained: “It must come up for a vote in the House and in the Senate. And the way to do that is for us to attach it to the next spending bill, likely a continuing resolution that’ll come up in September.
“Look, the American people agree overwhelmingly, Maria, like by a margin of 3 out of 4 that, that first of all, only U.S. citizens ought to vote in federal elections and, secondly, when you register to vote in a federal election, you ought to have to be able to prove who you are, that you’re a U.S. citizen, just as you have to do when you fill out an I-9 in America, you’ve got to provide proof of citizenship.
“So with the SAVE Act, what we’re saying is we should require nothing less to vote in federal elections than you have to establish when you start a new job. When you attach that to a spending bill, and that’s the best way to move that through to make sure that the 10 million plus illegal immigrants who have come in in the last three and a half years and the estimated roughly 30 million noncitizens total in the United States aren’t voting in this November’s election.”
On the same broadcast, Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of Donald Trump and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, sounded her own warning to anyone engaged in voter fraud:
“Whether you’re talking about ensuring illegals are cleaned off the voter rolls, they can’t register to vote in certain states or generally sending out the message, Maria, that if you’re a person who’s attempting to cheat in our elections or an illegal citizen attempting to illegally vote in our elections, we will find you, track you down and prosecute you to the full extent of the law. We’re watching everything, we’re filing lawsuits when necessary, and we’re making sure we have people everywhere votes are being cast and counted to have eyes on everything.”
Lara Trump said the 2020 election “certainly taught us a lesson, and that is that we have to pay attention.”
“It is integral to who we are as a country to have faith in our electoral process. And so we have gone above and beyond anything that you’ve ever seen from the RNC this election cycle, obviously. We have our election integrity operation underway,” she continued.
“We’ve already recruited 165,000 volunteers to be poll watchers, poll workers working at tabulation centers. We have pledged 500 lawyers on the ground in every battleground state. And, in addition to that, we have had to go unfortunately but we have had to go state by state and make sure they’re cleaning up their voter rolls making sure there are no illegals on their voter rolls.
“We had to file a lawsuit last week in the state of North Carolina to do that. You just referenced the Supreme Court decision in the state of Arizona. This is a huge win. Look… when a federal election is underway you can only have American citizens voting in that election. Should go without saying but there are some states that try to push back on that.
“We took it to the Supreme Court because Democrats in the state of Arizona were attempting to let people register without ID. We said you need be able determine whether or not these are U.S. citizens before they register vote. The Supreme Court agreed with that great news sets precedent across country so other states can take utilize well.
“You look at state like Michigan very important state Donald Trump won 2016 fighting tooth nail make sure wins believe free fair transparent he will.”
“I’ll give example way Democrats like operate try swing election had 700 trained poll workers Republican side apply Wayne County know many actually took Fifty Guess Democrat poll workers took 2 300 filing lawsuit Detroit make sure parity between Republicans Democrats.”
Bartiromo responded: “Unbelievable tell hard keep all these political dirty tricks.”