The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, presented the report with the intention of providing prior evidence of the voting of people without US citizenship in federal elections, focusing on what it cataloged as “gaps in state and federal law that allow this prohibited practice to occur.”
The text, titled “To restore confidence in U.S. elections, Congress must pass the SAVE Act.“The SAVE Act” refers to the law known as the Protecting American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which Johnson said would be a federal solution to an issue that “affects voters in nearly all 50 states.”
The high number of immigrants who have arrived mainly through the southwest border has been a spearhead for Republicans against the administration of President Joe Biden, whom they accuse of carrying out a highly permissive immigration policy.
“As the times approach, 2024 elections“It is imperative that Congress do everything in our power to protect the integrity of our nation’s electoral system,” the statement said.
Johnson again criticized Democrats and the press.
“Despite false claims by Democrats and the media, the issue of non-US citizens voting in federal elections represents a clear threat to our system, especially considering that the Biden Administration has released millions of illegal aliens in our country since he took office,” the text reads.
Democrats, for their part, are emphasizing the reluctance of Congress (led by Republicans) to approve the necessary funds to allow for a true overhaul of immigration law.
Voting by people who are not US citizens is considered an illegal act in federal elections.
“American elections are for American citizens, and we intend to keep it that way,” House Administration Committee Chairman Rep. Bryan Steil said during a hearing he hosted on the issue last month. May and reviewed by the agency The Associated Press.
There is no indication so far that this has occurred anywhere in significant numbers, the agency said then. AP.
Citing a 2014 study of the 2008 and 2010 elections, Johnson’s report asserts that “not only have non-citizens voted illegally in U.S. elections, but their votes likely determined the outcome in certain contests.”
He also claims that in states such as Massachusetts, Ohio and Virginia, “people without U.S. citizenship have recently been removed from the voter rolls, and that many of them had voted.”
The SAVE Act seeks to require a voter to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. It also seeks to give states access to existing federal databases, so that “they can clean their voter registration lists and remove non-citizens from the lists.”
“It seems that the lesson that Republicans learned from the fiasco that the former president [Donald Trump] caused in 2020 wasn’t ‘don’t steal an election’… it was just ‘start earlier,’” Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the Administration Committee, said in an accusatory tone.
For this Thursday the presidential debate between Democratic President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump, and in which the immigration issue will probably be one of the main topics.
[Este reporte contiene también información de The Associated Press]
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