Heritage Action Scores SAVE Act as Key Vote

Amid the border crisis, Heritage Action for America is scoring the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, legislation to compel proof of citizenship for voters, as a key vote in the House. 

The House is set to vote this week on the SAVE Act, sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. 

More than 10 million illegal immigrants and millions more paroled aliens have entered the country since President Joe Biden took office Jan. 20, 2021. 

Roy’s bill has the support of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., as well as that of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. 

Heritage Action is the grassroots advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think tank. 

“Democrats in Congress and the media are quick to scoff that it’s already against the law for illegal aliens to vote,” Ryan Walker, executive director of Heritage Action, said in a formal statement. “However, they’re also vocally opposed to ensuring states actually check the ID or citizenship status of voters. It’s curious that lawmakers would simultaneously oppose commonsense election integrity proposals and support the current administration’s mass illegal immigration scheme. The connection is not lost on the American people.”

Heritage Action endorsed the SAVE Act in May, but now has elevated it to a “key vote,” meaning a lawmaker’s score on the Heritage Action Scorecard will be affected. 

House Democrats leaders oppose the legislation, claiming it would impose “an extreme burden [on] countless Americans” to vote, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., reportedly told caucus members in a memo. Clark added that “there has been zero evidence of the widespread fraud that this bill purports to target.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is the sponsor of a Senate version of the legislation, which has 120 cosponsors in both chambers. 

Although it’s already illegal for illegal immigrants to vote in federal elections, Johnson said, election officials have no mechanism to deter them from registering to vote. 

“Without the SAVE Act, states will continue to provide aliens with IDs, automatically register voters with no proof of citizenship, and hold elections with zero identification requirements,” Heritage Action’s Walker said. “This gap in election law should be fixed before Americans head to the ballot box in November. Heritage Action thanks Rep. Roy and Sen. Lee for leading this fight and urges every lawmaker to vote for the SAVE Act.”

The legislation would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “motor voter law,” to require that states obtain documentary proof of citizenship from someone before he or she may register to vote. It also would require states to remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls.

The legislation also would empower citizens to bring civil suits against election officials who don’t uphold proof of citizenship requirements for federal elections. The bill allows for the integration of existing databases at the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to facilitate a new requirement for states to remove aliens from the voter rolls. 

Several states make illegal aliens eligible for driver’s licenses and other benefits, providing ample opportunities for them to register to vote illegally in federal elections. 

Roy has argued that federal law generally has preempted and undermined state laws requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in such elections. 

In 2017, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes resigned after the state admitted that it registered illegal immigrants to vote for several years. 

Heritage Action noted that more than 70% of Americans oppose proposals to allow noncitizens to vote, while more than 80% support requiring proof of identity at the ballot box.