Election officials in all 50 states urged to halt non-citizen voter registration: ‘Time to act is now’
A conservative legal group fired off letters to officials in every state in the country Monday urging them to enforce existing laws that prevent non-US citizens from registering to vote or casting ballots in elections, The Post can exclusively reveal.
America First Legal (AFL) wrote to chief elections officers, secretaries of state, attorneys general, lieutenant governors and governors on Monday, calling on them to verify immigration statuses on voter rolls using Department of Homeland Security data — and boot any non-Americans they find.
“If DHS fails to respond to an inquiry, you can sue in federal court to obtain the necessary information that Congress has required DHS to provide,” AFL Executive Director Gene Hamilton said in the letter.
“Given widespread public concern over the presence of foreign nationals on voter rolls in jurisdictions across the United States and unprecedented levels of illegal immigration across our southern border since January 20, 2021, the time to act is now,” he added.
Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, states must provide applicants for welfare benefits with voter registration forms that do not require proof of US citizenship.
The US Election Assistance Commission sheet only asks for a signed attestation, under penalty of perjury, that the applicant is a citizen.
It is illegal for foreign nationals to register to vote or cast ballots in federal elections, but tens of thousands of non-citizens have been discovered on voter rolls, recent audits and investigations have shown.
Hundreds have later ended up voting without being discovered beforehand — not nearly enough to decide election results even in battleground states like Pennsylvania.
But at least 8 million more migrants are expected to be living in the US by October of this year, many of whom are eligible for welfare benefits that would put them within reach of voter registration opportunities.
AFL President Stephen Miller in a statement accused the Biden administration of a “direct effort to sabotage the 2024 election through potential mass illegal alien voting.”
A little more than half of non-citizens (59%) take advantage of at least one major federal welfare benefit, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Nineteen states and Washington, DC, also allow non-citizens to obtain driver’s licenses, a move that Biden backed during his 2020 presidential campaign.
When trying to verify whether a person is a non-citizen who has registered to vote, state officials have also been hampered by being unable to submit driver’s license numbers or other easily identifiable information to DHS.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) processes its own agency’s identifier numbers, Form I-94 arrival or departure numbers, Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) ID numbers, naturalization cards, visa numbers or foreign passport numbers — none of which are requested on voter registration forms.
On top of that, just five US states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Virginia — are coordinating with CIS through memoranda of understanding to verify the citizenship status of voter registration applicants.
But the Help America Vote Act of 2002, according to Hamilton’s letter, requires officials to “perform list maintenance” of voter rolls to ensure their accuracy, which can be accomplished using DHS’ Person Centric Query System database.
“It allows agency employees to look up individuals and quickly and easily verify their citizenship status using only a name and date of birth,” wrote Hamilton.
“This means that, right now, DHS can answer all inquiries from State and local elections officials about the citizenship status of all presently registered voters and all persons attempting to register to vote and do so at no cost to the States.”
Another piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, sailed through committee deliberation in the House and could come up soon for a full floor vote, forcing registration forms to include proof of citizenship questions in the future.
