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Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is warning that "thousands" of people residing in the U.S. illegally could shift the tides in the upcoming U.S. elections.
Speaking to reporters at his weekly press conference on Wednesday, Johnson pointed out that several members of the House GOP won their elections by just a few hundred votes – or less, as in the case of Rep. Marianette Miller Meeks, R-Iowa, who won her first election by just six votes.
"If you have a small percentage of the millions and billions of illegals who came over the border in the last four years under border czar Kamala Harris' policies, they can throw an election, they can throw the majority of the House," Johnson said.
"It could affect a presidential race. It's very, very serious stuff."
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It comes hours before the House is set to vote on a measure extending the current fiscal year’s federal funding for another six months to avert a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1, coupled with a bill to mandate proof of citizenship in the voter registration process.
That bill, the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, was deemed a nonstarter by the Democrat-controlled Senate and White House, and President Biden has threatened to veto Johnson’s government funding plan.
But nevertheless, Johnson insisted the House would "do the right thing" in pressing ahead with the vote, despite a significant number of Republicans being already opposed to the federal funding aspect of the legislation.
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"We’re going to responsibly fund the government, and we're going to stop the noncitizens voting in elections," Johnson said.
Opponents of the SAVE Act have argued it’s grounded in xenophobia and is needlessly duplicative, given it’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.
But Johnson and other Republicans have countered that years of progressive policies have made it easier for illegal immigrants to gain access to voter registration forms, and they have positioned the SAVE Act as an enhanced security measure to prevent illegal voting.
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"It is against federal law for non-U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections. But we have no mechanism right now to ensure that in the states, because they're not allowed to ask for proof of verification of citizenship when someone registers to vote," Johnson said.
"We've had a number of states already do audits. They found thousands of illegals already on the rolls. This is a serious problem because some of our elections are decided by razor-thin margins, as everyone in this room and the whole press corps knows."
Currently, 14 states plus Washington, D.C. do not require any documentation to vote at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
