Save the SAVE Act: A Necessary Solution to a Real Problem

Democrats desperately want to crush the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. The SAVE Act would limit federal elections solely to U.S. citizens and require new applicants to prove their U.S. citizenship before registering to vote. The Left will have none of this. When the U.S. House passed this measure on July 10, all 216 Republicans voted Yea. While five Democrats agreed, 198 Dems opposed the idea of American-citizen-only federal elections. This measure has languished in the Senate ever since. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) treats it as warmly as week-old sushi.

The American people overwhelmingly align with Republicans on this issue. McLaughlin & Associates surveyed 1,000 general-election voters for Tea Party Patriots Action. The Feb. 16 poll found that 87 percent believe “proof of United States citizenship should be required to vote in American elections.” This includes 96 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of independents, and 76 percent of Democrats! (READ MORE: ‘The Democratic Party Left Me’: A Fireside Chat With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)

The Left moans that the SAVE Act is a solution seeking a problem. In an e-mail blasted Sept. 18 to the soft-on-vote-fraud crowd, Chris Crawford of the National Task Force on Election Crises claimed that foreign-citizen voting in federal races “is virtually non-existent and has never been common enough to determine the outcome of elections.”

Virtually non-existent?

Foreigners Are Voting. It’s Hardly a Non-Existent Problem.

Texas has removed at least 6,655 foreigners from its voter rolls since 2021. Among them, 1,930 had voted in federal elections. Under Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, Virginia has unregistered 6,000-plus foreign citizens. Secretary of State Frank LaRose has pinpointed 597 foreigners on Ohio’s voter rolls this year. Of these, 138 had cast ballots.

“So what?” the loose-ballot lobby snaps. “Just 138 foreigners voting here; 1,930 casting ballots there. Who cares?”

Every American should care. Elections have been decided by fewer votes than these.

• The 2000 presidential race ended with a 537-vote victory by George W. Bush in Florida. The Sunshine State boosted Bush from 246 Electoral College votes to 271, one more than he needed to defeat Democrat Al Gore.
• In 1998, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D–Nev.) won his third six-year term by 428 votes among 435,790 ballots cast. Reid eventually became Senate majority leader and a ferocious one at that.
• Minnesota Democrat Al Franken seized Norm Coleman’s GOP U.S. Senate seat by 312 votes (largely thanks to felons without voting rights). Franken’s 2008 victory gave Democrats the 60-seat filibuster-proof majority required to approve ObamaCare.
• In 2020, Republican Claudia Tenney beat Democrat Anthony Brindisi in New York’s 22nd Congressional District by 109 of 319,638 votes.
• That year, Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks buried Democrat Rita Hart beneath a six-vote landslide among 394,625 total ballots in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.

This situation also exists at the state level. 

• In 2022, Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Judy Seeberger outran her GOP rival by just 321 votes in Minnesota’s State Senate District 41. This gave Democrats a 34-33 majority and, thus, control of the State Senate, State House of Representatives, and the governor’s mansion for the first time since 2014. Now fully controlling St. Paul, after a decade of divided government, Democrats got busy.

The legislature passed and sent to Gov. (and possibly Vice President) Tim Walz a host of far-Left dreams come true: gun control, mandatory carbon-free electricity by 2040, automatic voter registration, pre-registration to vote from age 16, and permanent-absentee-voter status, the latter will keep unsupervised mail-in ballots flying around forever. (READ MORE: Why We Shouldn’t Expect a Return to the Trump Economy)

Also enacted and signed: Abortion rights up to and beyond delivery. This included Walz’s repeal of the requirement to report on children who survive botched abortions, are born alive, and then left to die. So far, such infanticide has killed at least eight babies on Walz’s watch.

• The 2017 showdown in Virginia’s Commonwealth House District 94 between Republican David Yancey and Democrat Shelly Simonds boiled down to 11,608 votes each — a tie. Eventually, officials hand-picked from inside a bowl a piece of paper that said “Yancey.” His triumph gave Republicans control of the House, denied Democrats complete dominance in Richmond, and prevented Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam from embarking on a Tampon Tim-style, far-left tear.
• Public Interest Legal Foundation’s photo-finish database cites 635 primary races, general elections, and referenda that resulted in ties, since 1992. PILF lists 29 in both 2023 and thus far in 2024.
• Even the liberal Center for American Progress recognizes how close elections can get. According to its Sept. 16 report titled The Power of One Vote, “in November 2021, 18 local elections in Ohio — 12 candidate races and six local measures — ended in a tie. A coin flip or similar method determined the winner of these tied candidate races.”

This parade of evidence refutes Chris Crawford’s aforementioned assertion that foreign-citizen voting is not “common enough to determine the outcome of elections.” This test is irrelevant. Foreigners have no voting rights in federal and state elections. Outrageously, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco, and several cities in Maryland and Vermont let foreigners vote in local elections. New York City passed similar legislation. It was overturned in state court and still is being litigated in federal court by PILF and four plaintiffs, including your humble polemicist. (READ MORE: Kamala Harris’ Bait and Switch on Positions and Values)

As this abundant proof makes excruciatingly clear, a handful of foreign citizens’ bogus ballots can throw an election. Just one such illegal ballot could have changed history in Minnesota, Virginia, Ohio, and beyond.

Thus, the right number of ballots cast by foreign citizens in any U.S. election is zero. The correct number of foreign citizens registered to vote in America is zero. The proper amount of tolerance for foreign-citizen voting is zero.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.

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