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Firebrand conservative Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, slammed both Democrats and Republicans who have resisted passage of the SAVE America Act after a report found that 30,000 noncitizens were “mistakenly” registered to vote in states across the country since 2000.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens were added to U.S. voter rolls since 2000. The outlet attributed the erroneous registrations to “software glitches and clerical errors” and said that its review suggested “inadvertent bureaucratic failures, rather than organized efforts to register immigrants illegally.” The outlet said that this raised “questions about whether legislative efforts to require proof of citizenship for voter registration would eliminate the issue.”
However, while speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Lee, who introduced the SAVE America Act earlier this year, said that “even though we have laws that prohibit things like noncitizen voting, those laws have been rendered difficult and essentially impossible to enforce.”
“That thing that they claim never happens, voter fraud or noncitizen voting, just keeps happening over and over and over again,” he railed.
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Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is calling out resistance to the SAVE America Act after Reuters reported that more than 30,000 noncitizens were discovered on U.S. voter rolls. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/POOL)
Reuters reported that the errors occurred in California, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia. The outlet said it was unable to determine how many noncitizens actually cast ballots and further noted that the numbers are not precise because ” state data is often tentative and subject to revision.”
This follows New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure that 6,600 self-identified noncitizens were registered to vote and fewer than 400 of those individuals cast ballots.
Lee attributed problems with ineligible voter registration and voting to reliance on the “honor system” for self-attestation of voter eligibility.
MORE THAN A QUARTER-MILLION NONCITIZENS MAY BE REGISTERED TO VOTE IN 4 KEY STATES, DHS ALLEGES
Rye Barcott and Gov. Mikie Sherrill attend a conversation about Barcott’s new book “Courage Will Save Us” with Gov. Wes Moore and Mark Drilling at 92NY on June 9, 2026, in New York City. (Dominik Bindl/Getty Images)
Referencing an all-you-can-eat deal at a popular chain restaurant that requires customers to show I.D., Lee said 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.”
“And yet, that’s exactly where we are today,” he said.
Lee presented his SAVE America Act as a solution. President Donald Trump supports the bill, which passed the House but has stalled in the Senate.
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An election official checks a voter’s photo identification at an early voting polling site in Austin, Texas. ((AP Photo/Eric Gay, File))
Lee argued that the bill would address both ineligible voter registration and fraudulent voting by requiring registrants to verify citizenship and eligibility at the time of registration and requiring voter I.D. and photo identification at the polls.
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In an interview with Fox News Digital, Don Palmer, senior legal fellow for election integrity at the Heritage Foundation, said that “this story really provides proof that one way forward is to simply upgrade and sort of help the driver’s license agencies across the country improve their verification of citizenship while they’re providing those services to voters.”
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“All joking aside with the Olive Garden scenario, I love their food and I’m more than happy to show the I.D., I think the issue is I wish that the driver’s license agencies and state agencies would take voter registration as serious as Italian food,” he quipped.
“I think that that would be a bipartisan way of improving that verification of citizenship with databases, and I think there’s some bipartisan support for that. And so that might be a way forward, not necessarily, showing documentation of citizenship, but let’s improve the driver’s license agencies to verify citizenship, and let’s improved real ID,” he said.