Trump, Johnson to tout bill to prevent noncitizen voting: Report

Former President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) are teaming up to promote a bill to keep noncitizens from voting in federal elections, according to a report by USA Today.

Johnson is set to visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence Friday to drum up the proposal, amid tensions with his Trump-aligned right flank over bipartisan proposals in the House.

A show of mutual support between the two top Republicans on a unifying issue for the party could help to heal the rift between Johnson and House conservatives, or at least stop the bleeding in the wake of an embarrassing procedural defeat on surveillance authority on Wednesday.

But the core proposal behind the Mar-a-Lago summit seeks to address an issue that is both rare and already illegal.

A search of the Heritage Foundation’s database of voter fraud for noncitizen voting and registration and naturalization fraud yields fewer than 50 results out of 1,499 proven instances recorded by the group.

Foreign nationals are explicitly banned from voting in any federal election under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, though a few jurisdictions allow noncitizens to vote in local elections such as municipal and school board elections.

The District of Columbia this year enacted a law allowing noncitizen residents to vote in all nonfederal elections. A federal judge in March dismissed a lawsuit against that law.

But because noncitizen voting in federal elections is barred by law, any such instance would constitute voter fraud.

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, there is no evidence that noncitizen voting or other instances of voter fraud have had an impact on election outcomes.

The issue of noncitizen voting — and the associated idea that migrants come to the United States to interfere in elections — has become one of the central tenets of Trump’s immigration pitch.

The Hill has reached out to Trump’s campaign and Johnson’s office for comment.

On Wednesday, Trump published a Truth Social post where he made a series of statements about immigration in response to reports that President Biden is considering an asylum crackdown via executive order.

Trump’s post included a false claim accusing Biden of seeking to “turn” undocumented immigrants into voting citizens.

Most undocumented immigrants don’t have a legal path to citizenship, and immigrants who do have papers and a path to citizenship typically take years, if not decades, to naturalize and become voters.