Who Is Gary Palmer?

            My VIP for this week is Representative Gary Palmer (R-Alabama). I chose him because he saw the importance of passing a law to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections in the United States. He recently introduced HR 8223 to make it a federal law. In a sane world, such a federal law would not be necessary.

            Hans von Spakovsky, legal scholar at The Heritage Foundation, discussed a lawsuit filed by the Biden Justice Department against the State of Arizona over the state’s attempt to have only Americans citizens register for voting. 

Mark Brnovich, the attorney general of Arizona, calls it the “height of absurdity” that the Justice Department is trying to stop his state from requiring individuals who want to vote in a presidential election from providing proof that they are U.S. citizens, given that the Biden administration “has incentivized and decriminalized people coming into this country illegally.”

In a rational world, you wouldn’t think such legislation would be necessary. After all, it’s a crime under federal law for an alien to register and vote in federal elections.

Because every state requires an individual to be a citizen to register and vote in state and federal elections, it’s a felony for an alien to falsely claim to be a citizen in order to register to vote or to actually vote (52 U.S.C. § 20511(2); 18 U.S.C. § 1015(f)). It’s also a felony for an alien to falsely assert that he or she is a citizen (18 U.S.C. § 911).

It's also a federal misdemeanor violation for an alien to vote, regardless of whether he or she falsely claimed to be a citizen (18 U.S.C. § 611).

The problem is that in almost all states, election officials are simply relying on individuals who are registering to vote telling the truth when they assert they are U.S. citizens.

There’s plenty of evidence that this isn’t working and that aliens are getting registered and voting, often without detection by election officials.

The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database contains many cases of aliens convicted for illegally registering and voting. Several years ago, the secretary of state of Pennsylvania was forced to resign after the state had to admit it had been registering aliens for years through its DM driver’s licensing system, and the Public Interest Legal Foundation has issued many reports on the thousands of aliens found registered in numerous states, such as Virginia, Michigan, and New Jersey.

            There is evidence to show that non-Americans are voting in American elections, but the Biden administration does not care. Democrats hope that their party will benefit from the three million migrants who have entered the United States illegally since January 2021. This is the reason Palmer introduced his bill.

Spakovsky described the bill as “a very simple, two-page bill” titled the Citizen Ballot Protection Act. The purpose of the bill is to amend “Section 6(a) of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to make it clear that states can ‘require that an applicant [to register to vote] provide proof that the applicant is a citizen of the United States.”

The law should not be necessary according to Spakovsky. However, it is necessary because some people interpret the National Voter Registration Act “to say that states cannot require proof of citizenship.”

Under the U.S. Constitution, states are given the sole authority to determine the qualifications and eligibility of individuals to vote in federal elections. It seems obvious that since citizenship is a requirement, states should be able to establish procedures for making that determination, as long as they do it in a racially neutral manner that does not violate the Voting Rights Act.

Requiring proof of citizenship of everyone registering to vote is not discriminatory and would seem to be fully within the authority of states, but the Biden administration wants to prevent states from doing that.

            The plan of the Biden administration is obvious. It has opened the borders to more than three million migrants flooding into the United States illegally. Now, it wants to stop Arizona from requiring proof of citizenship in order to vote in federal elections. The only conclusion possible is that Democrats want non-citizens voting in our elections. They must believe that this is the only way that they can remain in power, and they are willing to sell out America by devaluing American citizenship.