The Allegheny County Council will soon consider a bill that would take additional steps to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote.
The proposed Regulation directs county election officials to forward voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security prior to the November election so the department can verify the citizenship of local voters. Going forward, the Elections Division would be required to confirm the citizenship status of each newly registered voter with the Department of Homeland Security.
“County election officials are simply verifying identity,” said Sam DeMarco, a Republican council member who introduced the measure on Tuesday. “They are not verifying citizenship.”
In an email, David Voye, director of the county’s election department, said that when voters fill out the registration form, they “must sign and declare under oath that they are citizens and at least 18 years of age, otherwise they will not commit this offense.”
“If a voter applies (online) and answers ‘NO’ to any of the questions, his application will not be processed. Failure to sign the online or paper declaration will also result in disqualification of the application,” he added.
The county itself does not confirm this information, but the Pennsylvania Department of State also verifies portions of Social Security numbers, and first-time voters must show identification at their polling place. under other protective measures.
Penalties for making false statements on the application form can include imprisonment and fines and jeopardize the person’s continued stay in the United States or their prospects for future citizenship.
DeMarco acknowledged that cases of non-citizens voting are extremely rare, and said the purpose of the bill is to prevent cases in which non-citizens “may accidentally commit a crime because a third-party voter registration group pressured them to do so and told them it was OK.”
Philip Hensley-Robin, director of the watchdog group Common Cause of Pennsylvania, said DeMarco’s proposal risks removing legal citizens from the voter rolls.
“It’s a solution looking for a problem,” Hensley-Robin said.
He said the electoral department constantly maintains the voter listsAnd he said that DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database does not contain records of U.S. citizens and may not include recent naturalizations, so it should not be used to determine voter eligibility.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Voting by non-citizens has become a Center of the Republican messages in recent years. DeMarco’s proposal is in line with other legislative efforts around the issue, but he presented it as a way to prevent possible conspiracy theories and false allegations of fraud.
“This is not a claim that non-citizens will suddenly register or vote in our elections in droves,” DeMarco said. “I just wanted to take this extra step to assure the voters of Allegheny County that everything is above board.”
Nevertheless, Hensley-Robin fears that the proposal will “fuel scaremongering and conspiracy theories about the vanishingly small voting rate of non-citizens.”
The bill was referred to the Council’s Committee on Government Reform.
