Press Releases

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) delivered the following opening statement, as prepared, for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government Hearing on "“The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Noncitizen Voting”:

"Mr. Chairman, Republicans rely on the false premise that there is widespread noncitizen voting in order to advance dangerous legislation like the SAVE Act, and other burdensome, unnecessary measures requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. In fact, it is measures like the SAVE Act that represent the true threat to the right of American citizens to vote. 

As with so many of the Republican Majority’s proposals, proof of citizenship requirements for voting in federal elections is a solution in search of a problem.

American voters are already required to declare that they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote. Federal law already makes it a crime for a noncitizen to vote or to register to vote in federal elections.  And the consequences for noncitizens who vote are so dire that it strains credulity to believe that they are doing so in significant numbers, especially when the criminal act by its very nature creates the evidence of the crime.

The data that we have on this so-called problem backs this up—every credible study has concluded that noncitizen voting in federal elections is practically nil.

That has not stopped Republicans from making the wild charge that noncitizens vote in significant numbers, even though, as former Chairman of this subcommittee, and current Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said, it is not “provable.” 

So, Republicans and their extremist MAGA allies at organizations like the Heritage Foundation—the incubator of the nefarious Project 2025 blueprint for a potential new Trump Administration—have resorted to spreading deceptive videos about noncitizen voting on social media, as the New York Times recently reported.     

We’ve seen the MAGA playbook, and these extremists have run some version of this play for years now.  Indeed, without a doubt, it is the same playbook Donald Trump is again relying upon to delegitimize the 2024 presidential election so that he has a pretext for challenging the results if he loses. 

And how do we know that?  Because the very same people behind his efforts to overturn the 2020 election—based on lies and deception—are now spearheading the effort to advance the SAVE Act. One of them, Cleta Mitchell, who was on the now-infamous 2020 call during which former President Trump told the Georgia Secretary of State that he “just wanted to find 11,780 votes,” is even at the witness table today.

Ms. Mitchell now chairs the so-called Election Integrity Network, which the New York Times referred to as an effort to recruit “election conspiracists into an organized cavalry of activists monitoring elections.”  Given her history as a lieutenant in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn election results, are we, or the American public for that matter, supposed to find her testimony credible when she alleges widespread noncitizen voting?  Give me a break. 

The SAVE Act, and the false premise of widespread noncitizen voting underlying it, is based on the same tired conspiracy theories we have all become accustomed to hearing from the other side.  But it is not just some ridiculous talking point meant to question the legitimacy of the upcoming election.

These burdensome, unnecessary proof of citizenship measures are also an extension of the Republicans’ insidious, decade-long effort to suppress the voting rights of American citizens—especially those of color and those from emerging ethnic and language minority groups.  

Contrary to what the Majority might say, measures like the SAVE Act will weaken the right of every eligible American citizen to vote, all to address a nonexistent problem cooked up by MAGA extremists ahead of the next election.

Imposing onerous proof of citizenship requirements to register for a federal election will burden every eligible American voter, but especially those who do not have ready access to documents like a passport, birth certificate, or military service record. 

It will disproportionately impact voters who are poor, or elderly, or disabled as well as military servicemembers overseas, and women who have changed their names after marriage.

Based on previous state-initiated efforts to require proof of citizenship to vote and efforts to purge suspected noncitizens from state voter rolls, we know for a fact that the SAVE Act will disproportionately impact naturalized citizens and language minorities, who also tend to hail predominantly, though not exclusively, from racial and ethnic minority groups, the very groups that federal voting rights laws are also intended to protect. It will further heighten the risk that election officials charged with purging suspected noncitizens from voter rolls will target naturalized American citizens and language minority communities.

I wish I could say that these are unintended consequences, but the truth is, to the bill’s supporters, voter suppression is a feature, not a bug.

I would suggest to the Chairman that the important constitutional prerogative of protecting voting rights entrusted to Congress would be better served if this Subcommittee focused on advancing measures like the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965, rather than holding a hearing on a bill that is based on a false premise, has already passed the House, and is dead-on-arrival in the Senate. 

With that, I look forward to the witnesses’ testimony and I yield back."