The top election officials from six states testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill about efforts torun a clean and fair election, as some of the first ballots for the 2024 presidential election are being mailed out.
The six officials – three Republicans and three Democrats – stressed that the election season is already in full swing, with tens of millions of voters expected to cast early ballots before Election Day in November.
But sharp partisan divides were also on full display. Some Republicans raised fears about widespread voting by non-citizens, even though that doesn’t happen in US elections. And Democrats blamed former President Donald Trump for threatening the safety of election workers by peddling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, acknowledged that it’s “rare” for non-citizens to cast ballots — a break from Trump and other right-wing influencers like Elon Musk, who claim this phenomenon is swamping the country, and have used this lie to question the legitimacy of the 2024 results before any ballots have even been cast.
LaRose said his office caught about 600 instances last year of non-citizens registering to vote, in a state where nearly 6 million people voted in the 2020 presidential race.
Prodded by GOP lawmakers, the Democratic election officials agreed that non-citizens and undocumented immigrants shouldn’t vote in federal elections. They pointed out that this is already illegal, it happens rarely, and it is easily caught because of the extensive paper trail in voter registration.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, accused Republicans of spreading “paranoia around a fake problem.” He said that in his time as an election official, he has seen how these attempts to stop non-citizens from voting actually end up disenfranchising thousands of eligible voters.
“I take no pride in the idea that we have denied eligible citizens the right to vote, in far greater numbers than we would have prevented the vanishingly rare non-citizen voting is alleged to be happening across the United States of America,” Fontes said. From CNN’s Marshall Cohen
The top election officials from six states testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill about efforts torun a clean and fair election, as some of the first ballots for the 2024 presidential election are being mailed out.
The six officials – three Republicans and three Democrats – stressed that the election season is already in full swing, with tens of millions of voters expected to cast early ballots before Election Day in November.
But sharp partisan divides were also on full display. Some Republicans raised fears about widespread voting by non-citizens, even though that doesn’t happen in US elections. And Democrats blamed former President Donald Trump for threatening the safety of election workers by peddling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, acknowledged that it’s “rare” for non-citizens to cast ballots — a break from Trump and other right-wing influencers like Elon Musk, who claim this phenomenon is swamping the country, and have used this lie to question the legitimacy of the 2024 results before any ballots have even been cast.
LaRose said his office caught about 600 instances last year of non-citizens registering to vote, in a state where nearly 6 million people voted in the 2020 presidential race.
Prodded by GOP lawmakers, the Democratic election officials agreed that non-citizens and undocumented immigrants shouldn’t vote in federal elections. They pointed out that this is already illegal, it happens rarely, and it is easily caught because of the extensive paper trail in voter registration.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, accused Republicans of spreading “paranoia around a fake problem.” He said that in his time as an election official, he has seen how these attempts to stop non-citizens from voting actually end up disenfranchising thousands of eligible voters.
“I take no pride in the idea that we have denied eligible citizens the right to vote, in far greater numbers than we would have prevented the vanishingly rare non-citizen voting is alleged to be happening across the United States of America,” Fontes said.
CNN
