Mike Lee Slams Voter Rolls After Report Finds Thousands of Noncitizens Registered

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has sharply criticized what he described as a recurring voting error that allows noncitizens to be registered to vote, following a report that found tens of thousands of noncitizens were mistakenly added to U.S. voter rolls since 2000. Lee pointed to a Reuters report detailing these registration errors as evidence of a problem that "keeps happening over and over and over again."

The Reuters report, published Wednesday, indicated that over 30,000 self-declared noncitizens were added to voter rolls across the country since the turn of the century. The outlet attributed these instances to "software glitches and clerical errors" and suggested they were largely "inadvertent bureaucratic failures, rather than organized efforts to register immigrants illegally." The report noted that it was difficult to determine how many noncitizens actually cast ballots and that the figures are not exact due to the tentative nature of state data.

Lee, who introduced the SAVE America Act, argued on the Senate floor that existing laws prohibiting noncitizen voting have become "difficult and essentially impossible to enforce." He drew a parallel between the ease of potential voter fraud and a restaurant's all-you-can-eat offer, stating that "it should not be any easier for someone to get away with voter fraud at a polling location on voting day than it is to cheat Olive Garden through its never-ending pasta pass."

The errors identified by Reuters occurred in states including California, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. This follows a similar disclosure by New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who reported that 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote in her state, with fewer than 400 casting ballots.

Lee's SAVE America Act aims to address these issues by requiring registrants to verify citizenship and eligibility at the time of registration and mandating voter ID and photo identification at polling places. The bill has passed the House of Representatives and has the support of President Donald Trump but has stalled in the Senate.

Don Palmer, senior legal fellow for election integrity at the Heritage Foundation, suggested to Fox News Digital that improving the verification of citizenship by driver's license agencies could be a viable solution. He proposed that enhancing these agencies' verification processes and improving REAL ID standards could help, noting that such measures might garner bipartisan support.