Committee on House Administration Ranking Member Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) today offered the Motion to Recommit to amend H.R. 5314 to ensure non-citizens are removed from states' voter rolls.

CLICK HERE or image above to play video

Text of Davis' remarks:

Our most basic duty of the federal government should be protecting the right for our citizens to vote, but we're not doing everything we can to protect that.

A disturbing trend across the country is that more and more states and localities are allowing non-citizens to vote. Furthermore, many states are conducting elections that rely on wildly outdated voter lists, many of which include non-citizens. In some states, such as California, the voter rolls are so outdated that they have more registered voters than people in the state. This creates the potential for our citizens' votes to be diluted.

LA County had over 1.5 million ineligible people on their voter rolls. A suit filed by a non-partisan watchdog alleged LA County had 112 percent of its adult citizens registered to vote. Under pressure, California and LA County finally agreed to clean up their voter rolls in 2019. Unfortunately, when then-California Secretary of State Alex Padilla appeared before my committee in 2020, he could not confirm that many of those ineligible people had actually been removed from California's unmaintained voter rolls. Not a lot of faith that California is doing everything it can to protect the integrity of our elections.

And, then there's New York City, which just decided to allow nearly a million non-citizens to vote in city elections. New York can make its own bad decisions, but it's our job to ensure that we protect federal elections. Common sense will tell you that combining non-citizens and eligible American voters on the same voter rolls is ripe for abuse.

I'll also use a final example from my home state of Illinois...in Illinois, non-citizens cannot vote and if they do, they face major legal consequences and could be deported. But, in 2016, Illinois' Automatic Voter Registration program mistakenly registered to vote more than 500 non-citizens who had done the right thing by checking the box stating they are not citizens on their driver's license application. However, several of these non-citizens voted in the 2018 and 2019 elections. This does nothing to bolster voter confidence in our elections; in fact, it does the opposite.

Not only does this undermine the integrity of our elections, the mistake by Illinois could have had dire consequences for these individuals, and it all could be prevented if states were being forced to maintain accurate voter rolls.

Whether intentional or not, we know this is happening, it's undermining the integrity of our elections. This amendment would simply ensure those who are non-citizens, who do not have the right to vote in federal elections, are removed from states' voter rolls.

As someone who has attended many citizenship ceremonies as a member of Congress, it's unthinkable that we have States undermining what it means to be a citizen of this country. My office has helped many immigrants go through the legal process to become citizens, and there's nothing better than seeing them raise their right hand and swear to support and defend the Constitution, to swear to bear arms in defense of this nation, to swear allegiance to this country. There is nothing better. And to think that their vote – something they worked hard to get the right to do – is being undermined. That's unthinkable.

Let's pass this amendment to ensure only citizens are voting in our elections and prevent states from putting non-citizens at risk of intentionally or unintentionally breaking the law and illegally voting in our elections.

We will offer this solution as a motion to recommit.

If we adopt the Motion to Recommit, we will instruct the Committee on Oversight and Reform to consider an amendment to ensure States remove non-citizens from their voter rolls as part of a regular and comprehensive list maintenance program.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the Motion to Recommit.

I yield back.

###