Brianna Lyman of the Federalist cites a high-profile North Carolina election contest while pushing for congressional action on election integrity.
The North Carolina Republican primary for state Senate District 26 is currently separated by two votes.
Yes, two votes.
Phil Berger is currently trailing Sam Page, with the former having 13,075 votes and the latter having 13,077.
When elections are decided on razor thin margins like this, every single vote matters, which is why it’s important that the only votes cast and counted are votes that are legitimate and legal. It’s precisely why legislation like the SAVE America Act is so important.
Noncitizen voting is already illegal, but the current law is largely toothless. Prospective voters simply check a small box on the federal registration form attesting under penalty of perjury that they are a United States citizen. In other words, it’s the honor system.
Now it’s not to say that any noncitizens illegally cast a ballot in this race, to be clear. But it is to say that when the margin is two votes, simply trusting voters were truthful on their registration form is not a sufficient safeguard.
The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to require documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote as well as voter ID to cast a vote. The legislation has already passed the House and is now stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate despite a majority of Americans supporting such commonsense measures.
The legislation would ensure that only American citizens are casting votes and that American elections are decided by Americans.
Opponents of the legislation have argued, however, that the legislation is unnecessary because noncitizen voting is “rare.” …
… The reasoning is that it’s rare, so it doesn’t matter. But “rare” doesn’t mean nonexistent. Just recently, Melanie Pickett, a Bahamian native, admitted that despite not being a U.S. citizen she has voted multiple times in American elections. If an election is separated by two votes — or even one vote — then illegal votes are not insignificant — in fact, they could be decisive.
