A nationwide campaign to pass legislation requiring proof of citizenship before registering to vote is starting in California on Monday before reaching Washington, DC, after Congress returns from recess in early September.
Jenny Beth Martin, founder of Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA), explained why the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act) is a necessary step to tighten election security and shared the launch of her group’s national bus tour in a recent Breitbart News Saturday interview with Matthew Boyle.
“It is a bill that, if enacted into law — which is our goal, to enact it into law — would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Right now, that doesn’t happen with the National Voter Registration Act, which we commonly know as the ‘Motor Voter Law,'” the conservative activist explained.
The Motor Voter Law allows people to register to vote when they are getting a driver’s license, but it does not require proof of citizenship, Martin explained.
“It has had a checkbox you have to check under penalty of perjury that you are a citizen, but there is no proof that you really are a citizen,” she said. “And so, we just want to kind of tighten up that loophole and close it and make sure that you actually have to prove that you are a citizen.”
A legal battle that played out in Arizona over noncitizen voter registration resulted in confusion, and initially drew Martin’s attention to the issue.
Calling out a “loophole” that allowed for “dysfunction” in the state, Martin cited a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision that challenged Arizona’s proof of citizenship voting requirements due to the Motor Voter Law.
“The Supreme Court said that Arizona had to accept the form that the federal government had. So now Arizona has two different kinds of ballots you get, the ballot that allows you to vote for United States president down to the school board or the lowest level office that they have in Arizona,” the Tea Party advocate said. “But if you have not shown proof of citizenship, you get a ballot that still allows you to vote for president, U.S. senators, and your congressmen — and that’s crazy. It doesn’t even make sense.”
While the SAVE Act has passed through the House twice — during this Congress and the last — it never garnered enough support to succeed in the Senate.
“This is crazy that it’s not already federal law,” Boyle said, before asking if the bill had bipartisan support.
A February 2024 survey fielded by TPPA found that 87 percent of U.S. voters agree that “proof of United States citizenship should be required to register to vote in American elections,” but Martin noted that only four House Democrats voted to pass the bill in April of this year.
Those Democrats were Reps. Jared Golden (ME), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA), Henry Cuellar (TX), and Ed Case (HI).
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced the SAVE Act to the House, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced its companion bill in the Senate.
“Americans agree on this, so there’s bipartisan support among the people,” Martin explained. “The problem is that I think that [Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD)] has thought he would not be able to get enough votes to pass a cloture and the filibuster rules in the Senate from the Democrats.”
She added that voters should call their representatives to get them to add the proposed act to a bigger piece of legislation to get it through both chambers of Congress.
The TPPA bus tour begins in Garden Grove, California, on Monday, with over a dozen stops in other states to finally culminate in Washington, DC, on September 10:
Readers can go to DemandOnlyCitizensVote.com to find out more.
LISTEN:
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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