Election officials rebut GOP voting claims at House hearing

At a House Administration Committee hearing Thursday, Republicans repeatedly raised hypothetical specters of coordinated voter fraud while state election officials gently reiterated, again and again, that elections and voter registration rolls are already safe, secure, and accurate. 

House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) opened the hearing by pointing to recent examples of noncitizens voting — a Mexican national who was elected mayor of a small town Kansas as a Republican, an Iowa school administrator registered to vote in Maryland, and a noncitizen charged in Minnesota for voting in 2024. 

“Only eligible voters should be casting ballots in our elections,” Steil said, arguing that is why his MEGA Act should be enacted. “One illegal vote is too many.”

Like the SAVE America Act, which the House passed in February but has since stalled in the Senate, the MEGA Act would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship at registration and a photo ID when they vote. It would also direct election officials to conduct monthly voter roll purges to remove ineligible voters utilizing the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. 

The MEGA Act would also prevent states from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day and ban universal mail voting.

Both proposals are solutions in search of a problem. Noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare, as is voting fraud in general, including ballots sent by mail.

And the proposals would place burdens on voting that would prevent eligible citizens from casting ballots. Kansas once had a law requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2018 because it had blocked 31,000 eligible voters. 

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab (R) testified that his state voluntarily used the SAVE program last year, uncovering seven potential noncitizens on the rolls, two of which were later charged with illegal voting. 

Kansas’ experience suggests that enacting the MEGA or SAVE Act would prevent thousands of eligible voters in every state from voting, all to prevent a handful of noncitizens from casting ballots. 

House Administration ranking member Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) suggested the real aim of Thursday’s hearing wasn’t to ensure well-maintained voter rolls but to undermine voter confidence. “American citizens should know — I want to speak to them first — you should know your elections are secure. Your vote will count. Your vote is your power. It is your right,” said Morelle. “Please, please, please, use it. The people lying about the security of our elections want to take your power away by discouraging you from voting at all.”

In his testimony, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D) noted the numerous checks and doublechecks his office makes on its voter registration rolls, while still making it easy to vote with options like same-day registration, leading to Minnesota consistently leading the nation in voter participation levels.  

Steil interrogated Simon, pressing him on the recent charges filed against a noncitizen for illegal voting there. “The individual was sent, according to the reports, was sent voter registration material following obtaining a driver’s license, which is required under federal law that the state of Minnesota. Is that correct?” Steil pressed.

“Actually, no, Mr. Chair,” Simon responded. 

Not only is Minnesota one of six states exempt from the National Voter Registration Act because it lets voters register on election day, but “that’s not how the system works,” Simon added. “And I would just say, as to the news report you’re flagging, this individual is reported to have said things that just aren’t true.”

Simon explained that Minnesota has an automatic voter registration system, but it’s only eligible for people who have already provided state officials documentary proof of citizenship.

Kansas also used the SAVE database to identify and remove thousands of voters who died outside the state from the rolls, Schwab said. But he then emphasized that his office has never uncovered an example of a ballot being cast in a deceased voter’s name.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) questioned Schwab if the state would catch double voting — when a voter casts ballots in two states during the same election cycle. Schwab said if Kansas were a member of Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), then “we absolutely would,” Schwab said, “But even if [not], there’s a good chance we would discover it.”

Kansas created and ran a similar system, Interstate CrossCheck, but it was shut down in 2018 after a federal audit discovered data privacy vulnerabilities led some voters to sue after their social security numbers were exposed.  

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) ended the hearing by pushing a false conspiracy theory. 

“I remind everybody that under Joe Biden, the border was open. We allowed unvetted people to come over the border — you know, people that would not be eligible to have come over —  pour over our border, up to possibly 20 million people,” she said. “Why? Why would Joe Biden, [DHS Sec. Alejandro] Mayorkas and the Democrats have allowed this? It is about votes.”

Led by President Donald Trump, Republicans have repeatedly inflated the number of illegal migrants that entered the country during Biden’s administration and the total number living here today. Estimates by the Pew Research Center and Factcheck.org suggest the real number of unauthorized immigrants is close to 14 million, of which around 5 million, at most, entered during the Biden administration.  

There is no evidence of noncitizens voting in large numbers.