Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) does not believe there is an underlying issue in the country of illegal immigrants voting, making the remark when asked about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would provide safeguards to ensure non-citizens are not voting in federal elections.
The SAVE Act is back on the scene following chatter of attaching it to a continuing resolution. While it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, conservatives say the bill is necessary as there are no concrete safeguards to check it.
However, Kelly sees no issue.
“There is no evidence that undocumented migrants vote,” Kelly told Fox News’s Chad Pergram, adding, “This is a solution looking for a problem.”
“The problem doesn’t exist,” he added.
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Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who is heading up the SAVE Act, explained during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily that it is a problem, as “our own federal government [is] registering these people automatically — through Medicaid, through forced DMV registration — under federal law.”
“And, of course, they’re registering them, and then they’re saying, ‘Oh, but they won’t vote in federal elections. Don’t worry about it,’” Roy said, explaining that there are no safeguards to ensure these non-citizens are not voting in federal elections.
“That’s the absurdity. You can’t even make it up. Federal law has been interpreted to prohibit states from checking to see if you’re a citizen even though, technically, the law says you must be a citizen,” he explained, using Kelly’s state of Arizona as a prime example.
“Arizona passed a law saying they wanted to make sure that only citizens vote in federal and state and local elections. That went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, ‘No, sorry, you can’t do that for federal elections because federal law preempts it.’ So, they have two systems in Arizona: one system for checking state and local elections, where they go through the whole system, and then another system for federal, where they don’t check citizenship,” he said. “Literally, that’s the current state of the law.”
The law would, in part, place the burden on the state, ensuring that their voter rolls are clean. This move alone has proved that non-citizens are registered to vote, despite Kelly denying the issue.
As Breitbart News detailed [emphasis added]:
“That’s what we do. We try to make it minimally burdensome but strong enough to ensure that only citizens vote,” [Roy] explained, noting that the law would allow each state to determine how it would be best to go through voter rolls. Virginia, he said, made such an effort in 2023, checking against federal databases. It found that 1,500 non-citizens were registered to vote. Texas, he continued, also did something similar a few years ago and found 25,000 non-citizens in the system.
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Roy reminded listeners again that federal law already makes it a crime for a non-citizen to vote, as well as for people to conspire to encourage the registration of non-citizens. However, the congressman stressed again that the country does not “allow the mechanisms for proving it,” and that is where the main problem lies.
“So, that’s what this bill would do. And then, again, this bill would step up that next level and require it for federal elections,” he added.
All of this coincides with news of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opening an investigation into reports of organizations possibly registering illegal immigrants to vote in the Lone Star state, all while Kelly remains in denial.
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Randy Clark / Breitbart Texas