House Republicans Tee Up Vote On Bill Addressing Fake Voter Fraud Threat

WASHINGTON ― House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has attached a bill aimed at keeping non-citizens from voting in federal elections to a must-pass government funding bill set for a vote this week.

It’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, but Republicans want to amplify former president Donald Trump’s lies that Democrats are using illegal voters to steal the 2024 election from him.

Johnson has been stoking voter fraud fears for months, insinuating in press conferences and news articles, without evidence, that millions of undocumented immigrants will steal the election from Trump.

“The threat is very real,” Johnson wrote last month in an opinion piece for Fox News , noting that noncitizens can walk into their local department of motor vehicles and fill out a registration form. “That noncitizen can then cast a ballot and help decide the direction of America.”

Available evidence suggests noncitizens generally don’t cast ballots, partly because voter registration forms warn it’s a crime to do so.

When Trump created a commission to investigate his own claims that as many as 5 million illegal ballots were cast in the 2016 election, investigators failed to find the fraud and the commission disbanded . Trump didn’t have any luck substantiating fraud claims from 2020 either, though he said on his website over the weekend that when he wins in November, “those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law.”

According to the National Task Force on Election Crises, which calls itself a “cross-partisan” group of election, cybersecurity, voting rights and emergency response experts, states already have methods in place, like checks of Social Security, department of motor vehicle