by Marsha Blackburn
For our republic, nothing is more fundamental than the principle of one person, one vote. During his Thursday night address, President Trump revealed deeply troubling information showing that this bedrock of our election system is under attack.
Citing recently declassified documents, President Trump disclosed that Communist China in 2020 stole 220 million U.S. voter files, including data containing names, addresses, and party affiliations. Yet when Deep State actors discovered the breach, they concealed it from President Trump during the closing months of his first term. Rogue bureaucrats even buried intelligence that China attempted to manufacture fraudulent ballots supporting then-candidate Joe Biden.
President Trump also declassified documents showing that U.S. election infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber attacks and manipulation from the New Axis of Evil of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And he revealed that during the 2020 election, Michigan State Police investigated a Democrat-aligned voter group for forging registration forms and distributing gift cards to canvassers based on the number of applications they produced. But once it reached the Biden Justice Department, the investigation was shuttered.
Most troubling of all, President Trump announced that a Department of Homeland Security review of state voter rolls revealed that there are approximately 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections—larger than the population of Knoxville. The President noted that this figure is likely an undercount because Democrat states refuse to share their voter files with the Trump administration.
These disturbing revelations should be a wake-up call. Our representative form of government can only survive with fair, transparent, and secure elections—which is why President Trump has vowed to stamp out foreign interference and safeguard our voting system. In Congress, we have legislation that can provide him all the tools he needs to get the job done: the SAVE AMERICA Act. This common-sense legislation would require individuals to present an ID to cast a ballot and proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. It would also require states to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
These measures have overwhelming bipartisan support among the American people. Eighty-three percent of Americans—including 71 percent of Democrat voters—support mandatory voter ID. Yet Washington Democrats have vowed to block the SAVE AMERICA Act. Just last week, Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that the legislation “is dead on arrival here in the Senate.”
The reason is clear: Democrats are doing everything possible to invite fraud in our elections. While Tennessee leads the nation in election integrity measures, fourteen states, including California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, do not require any ID to vote. At the same time, two dozen states—overwhelmingly blue—refuse to work with DHS to compare their voter rolls with the federal SAVE database, which verifies the immigration status of registered voters.
While claiming to defend democracy, Democrats are undermining trust in election outcomes while obstructing the will of the American people. Americans believe it should be easier to vote and harder to cheat. And they don’t want their cherished ballots cancelled out by noncitizens or fraudsters voting in our elections.
If we need to break apart the SAVE AMERICA Act piece by piece to get these provisions across the finish line, that’s exactly what Republicans will do. My Election Security Partnership Act, which I led alongside Senator Graham, would incentivize states to submit their voter registration lists to DHS to identify ineligible voters, including noncitizens. My colleague Senator Husted (R-Ohio) has introduced legislation to codify the legislation’s voter ID requirement. Republicans have introduced many more provisions from the bill as standalone items.
One way or the other, it’s time for Democrats to put the American people first and join Republicans in sending the SAVE AMERICA Act to President Trump’s desk.
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Republican Marsha Blackburn represents Tennessee in the United States Senate. After serving eight terms in the US House of Representatives, she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2018. Blackburn is currently running for governor of Tennessee.
Photo “People Voting” by Whitney. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
