Former President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) are teaming up to promote a bill to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections, according to a USA Today report.
Johnson is expected to visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Friday to promote the proposal, amid tensions with his Trump-aligned right flank over bipartisan proposals in the House.
A show of mutual support between the two top Republicans on a unifying issue for the party could help heal the rift between Johnson and House conservatives, or at least stop the bleeding after an embarrassing procedural defeat at the surveillance authority on Wednesday. .
But the central proposal behind the Mar-a-Lago summit seeks to address an issue that is both rare and already illegal.
A survey at the Heritage Foundation voter fraud database for voting and registration of noncitizens and naturalization fraud produces fewer than 50 results out of 1,499 proven cases recorded by the group.
Foreign-born citizens are explicitly prohibited from voting in any federal election under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, although some jurisdictions allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, such as municipal and school board elections.
The District of Columbia this year enacted a law allowing non-citizen residents to vote in all non-federal elections. A federal judge in March dismissed a case against this law.
But since non-citizen voting in federal elections is prohibited by law, any such case would constitute electoral fraud.
According to Bipartisan Policy CenterThere is no evidence that non-citizen voting or other cases of electoral fraud had an impact on the election results.
The issue of non-citizen voting – and the associated idea that migrants come to the United States to interfere in elections – has become one of the central tenets of Trump’s immigration proposal.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign and Johnson’s office for comment.
On Wednesday, Trump published a post on Truth Social where he made a series of statements about immigration in response to reports that President Biden is considering an asylum crackdown via executive order.
Trump’s post included a false claim accusing Biden of trying to “turn” undocumented immigrants into voting citizens.
Most undocumented immigrants do not have a legal path to citizenship, and immigrants who do have documents and a path to citizenship typically take years, if not decades, to naturalize and become voters.
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