Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Lindsey Graham are pushing a bill that would incentivize states to cross-check voter rolls quarterly against a Department of Homeland Security non-citizen database, citing election fraud concerns and President Trump’s election-integrity agenda.
Homeland Security maintains a database known as the SAVE registry that tracks individuals in the U.S. who are not citizens, including those with work permits, visas and permanent residency.
Ms. Blackburn of Tennessee, appearing Sunday on Fox News, talked about the Election Security Partnership Act, which aims to incentivize all states to check their voter rolls against the SAVE registry once per quarter.
According to Ms. Blackburn, the legislation would allow Congress to enact top priorities from the currently stalled SAVE America act piece by piece.
“We’ve had difficulty getting the Save America act passed, and so we’re going to break it apart and do things one at a time,” she said. “This would incentivize states to use this registry and to check their voter rolls once a quarter against this registry so that we know people that are registered to vote are indeed citizens of our country.”
“This is a way to help root out that election fraud and restore election integrity, which is one of President Trump’s top priorities,” Ms. Blackburn said.
The Election Security Partnership Act would increase grant funding to states that submit their voter registration lists to the DHS to identify ineligible voter registrations and non-citizens.
This legislation would also improve election administration, election technology and election security.
Presently, 26 states have, or are in the process of establishing, a memorandum of agreement for voter verification with SAVE.
