Speaker Johnson: Bill Ensures Only US Citizens Vote

House Speaker Mike Johnson, accompanied by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on Wednesday introduced legislation that they said will ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in U.S. elections by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

"Some have noted that it's already a crime for noncitizens to vote in a federal election, and that is true," Johnson said during an event at the Capitol announcing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. However, he said, there is "no mechanism to ensure" that only citizens are registering or voting."

"It is true that [President Joe] Biden has welcomed millions and millions of illegal aliens, including sophisticated criminal syndicates and agents of adversarial governments, into our borders and even on humanitarian parole," Johnson, R-La., said. "It is true that a growing number of localities are blurring the lines for noncitizens by allowing them to vote in municipal elections [and] it is true that Democrats have expressed a desire to turn non-citizens into voters."

Johnson said that in his travels to cities nationwide, the first or second question he's asked in every forum is about election security. 

"Americans are deeply concerned about this and it doesn't matter where you live or whether you're in a blue state or a red state," Johnson said. "Due to the wide-open border that the Biden administration has refused to close — in fact that they engineered to open — we now have so many noncitizens in the country that if only one out of 100 of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes."

Johnson called that a "dangerously high number" that could change the outcome of the nation's elections. 

Johnson added that nearly 16 million immigrants have entered the country since Biden entered office, including on humanitarian parole, "and that means the millions that had been paroled can simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV and register to vote there."

The speaker also pointed out that there has been a growing number of people in the United States on student visas who have staged protests at the nation's colleges, threatening law-abiding students. 

"If they're willing to take over buildings and physically terrorize their fellow students, why would they not be willing to lie on a voter registration form?" Johnson said. 

The speaker was accompanied by several advocates for the legislation, including Cleta Mitchell (FAIR Elections Fund and Election Integrity Network), Jenny Beth Martin (Tea Party Patriots Action), Stephen Miller (America First Legal), Ken Cuccinelli (Election Transparency Initiative), Rosemary Jenks (Immigration Accountability Project), Andy Roth (State Freedom Caucus  Network), and Hogan Gidley (America First Policy Institute).

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