Jeffrey Shapiro writes for the Federalist about evidence supporting the push for federal election integrity measures.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, election officials quietly remove noncitizens from the voter rolls almost every month. In the past four years alone, the county has canceled 1,912 voter registrations belonging to individuals who identified themselves as noncitizens. None were discovered through a verification system; they surfaced only when the registrants voluntarily disclosed their status. This vulnerability exists by design, not by accident.
American election law does not permit verification of citizenship at the time of voter registration. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, states must accept and use the federal mail-in voter registration form created by the Election Assistance Commission. That form includes a checkbox for affirming citizenship and requires a signature under penalty of perjury, but it does not allow states to request documentation verifying citizenship. Virginia, like every other state, must operate within this framework.
The system therefore relies on enforcement after the fact rather than verification before registration occurs. Prosecutions for voter registration fraud are virtually nonexistent because such cases are resource-intensive and difficult to pursue. In September 2024, the Fairfax Office of Elections adopted a policy of referring canceled noncitizen registrants to the Virginia attorney general and Fairfax commonwealth’s attorney for investigation. The policy was recently rescinded on the grounds that it imposed a significant administrative burden, yet no prosecutions have occurred. Without a credible threat of prosecution, there is no deterrence.
In any system where accuracy matters, such as in banking or aviation, eligibility is verified at the front end. Prosecution after the fact is no substitute. It may deter some violations, but it cannot undo them or catch more than a fraction. Yet America’s voter registration system relies almost entirely on this backward approach, leaving it poorly equipped to ensure that only citizens register.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE Act, would close this gap by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. It would add the front-end safeguard that the current system lacks.
