House Republican demands voter roll info from states amid GOP push for suppression law

The House GOP point person on election issues demanded information from top election officials in ten states — five Democrats and five Republicans — related to voter registration systems and how they “verify eligibility, including citizenship, when registering voters.”

“When illegal aliens are found on state voter rolls, it significantly undermines Americans’ confidence in our elections,” Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), the chair of the House Administration Committee, said in a statement. “I will continue to seek answers on how frequently this happens and what states are doing to address the issue.”

Steil’s demands come amid a renewed Republican push to enact the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship when they register. 

Over the weekend, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said GOP lawmakers were working on drafting “an even stronger” version of the bill. The sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, Mike Lee (R-Utah), later confirmed to Deseret News that his office was working on an updated version of the legislation. 

As Chairman of the Administration Committee, Steil has broad oversight of federal elections. The demand letters cite concerns about noncitizen voting and likely portend another hearing on the subject — an incredibly rare, inconsequential phenomena used to justify strict voter ID policies that experts warn could disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters.

A House Administration subcommittee made similar demands of Maryland’s Board of Elections in December, after reports that one of the state’s 4.3 million registrants was a noncitizen.  

Steil’s demands echo those made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) across the nation, which has led to lawsuits against 24 states and Washington, D.C. A federal judge recently dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit against California, saying the demands weren’t driven by actual concerns over voter roll maintenance but an attempt to create a national citizenship database. 

Last year, the committee held a handful of critical hearings focused on federal voting protection laws and voter registration processes. While the SAVE Act passed the House in April, it’s been stalled in the Senate, where it would need the support of Democrats to clear a filibuster. 

On his social media feed Thursday, President Donald Trump reposted a series of debunked claims related to fraudulent votes cast during the 2020 election, including one that concluded, “[n]uke the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act!”

Since resuming the presidency, Trump has frequently demanded legislative action on photo ID voting requirements. He issued an executive order in March attempting to direct states to require DPOC, which federal courts blocked as an unlawful overstep of executive authority. 

Steil’s office sent letters to the secretary of state or chief election official in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Tennessee. The letters to Republican officials noted actions they had taken to remove suspected noncitizens from the rolls, while the letters to Democratic administrators complain of deceased voters or residents who have moved remaining on publicly-available rolls.

All states perform regular voter roll maintenance but invariably have some number of dead or otherwise ineligible voters still registered. It’s not a crime for a voter to be registered in two places, and most voters don’t take steps to actively cancel their registration in one state after moving to another. It is a crime to vote twice in a given election cycle, but such incidents are both rare and easily prosecuted.