Noem joins Arizona election deniers to rally for SAVE America Act

After meeting with a handful of far right election deniers in Arizona, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem held a short press conference Friday to rally support for a proposal the Brennan Center for Justice is calling “the most restrictive voting bill ever.”

“Your state has been an absolute disaster on elections,” Noem said, responding to a reporter asking why the press conference was being held at a secure federal facility. “Your leaders have failed you dramatically by not having systems that work, by disenfranchising Americans who wanted to vote, they had to stand in lines for hours because machines failed or software failed.”

The House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, Wednesday. If enacted, the bill stands to disenfranchise millions by imposing strict requirements for voters to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote and provide photo ID when casting ballots. The measure also directs state election officials to conduct monthly voter roll purges.

Ahead of her legislative sales pitch, Noem said she had met with Justin Heap, the recorder of Maricopa County who has repeatedly refused to say whether the 2020 elections were legitimate; election-denying state Rep. John Gillette, who has called Muslim’s “f***ing savages” and used racial slurs in messages to other lawmakers; and Jennifer Wright, a former Arizona assistant attorney general who has long worked to undermine faith in elections.

Reporters at the event questioned its purpose. While DHS does oversee the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which assists states in identifying and preventing electronic attacks on elections, Noem oversaw the agency’s decimation last year. 

The press conference came just hours after the Wall Street Journal published a damning report on Noem’s chaotic tenure at DHS that highlighted her singular focus on publicity over the objections of career staff at the agency and other White House officials. 

Noem repeated many of the falsities that Trump and other top Republicans have spread during the SAVE America Act legislative blitz. 

“There’s only one reason that anyone would oppose this bill and that’s because they would want to cheat,” she said. “They want illegal people and aliens in this country to be able to vote for them, and to rob the United States citizens of their vote.”

One reporter at the press conference asked Noem about the legislation, noting that Arizona already has voter ID laws, but also allows members of Native American tribes to vote without them. Noem cut her off to say the SAVE America Act allows voters to use tribal IDs, but the reporter noted that many Arizonian tribes don’t issue IDs. Noem responded that they would have other options under the bill. 

The measure, which the League of Women Voters called “modern-day voter suppression, plain and simple,” still needs to pass the Senate, where it currently doesn’t have enough support for a simple majority, let alone the 60 votes needed to clear a filibuster. While Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has promised a vote on the proposal, he has told reporters that other measures take priority and has dismissed arguments for ending the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act. 

At a Senate GOP retreat Wednesday, Thune reportedly laid out a legislative agenda that included housing policy, a cryptocurrency bill, Russian sanctions and other bills, but not the SAVE America Act. Afterward, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Politico there was only a short discussion of ending the filibuster, with many Republicans opposed. 

Noem also encouraged state election officials to use DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program to verify citizenship on voter rolls, even though it’s been shown to incorrectly flag dozens of citizens in states that have used it. Other states that have used that database to audit their voter rolls have demonstrated how exceedingly rare noncitizen voting is. Utah, for example, found just one noncitizen who was accidentally registered out of more than 2 million voters, while officials in Idaho identified 36 “likely” noncitizens.

The top election officials in Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont sent an open letter to Congress Friday raising a number of urgent issues with the SAVE America Act. 

Yunior Rivas contributed to this report.