On the Senate floor last week, U.S. Sen. Mike Lee argued against a bill that would allow United States Citizenship and Immigration Services offices to register new U.S. citizens to vote.
“No one disputes the fact — at least no one disputes the fact now — that there are in fact noncitizens voting in federal elections,” Lee claimed. “We often do a poor job of making sure that noncitizens don’t vote.”
But these claims of widespread voting by noncitizens are, based on data reviewed by The Salt Lake Tribune, untrue. In fact, three separate studies done between 2016 and 2022 estimated that, among millions of votes cast, only something like .00085% — the highest estimate of the three studies — were likely cast by noncitizens.
Lee’s claims also follow President Donald Trump’s ongoing lies about the results of the 2020 election, which have continued to spread fear about the nation’s election systems.
During the same floor speech last week, Lee went on to argue that, instead of focusing on registering new citizens to vote, the body needs to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill he first introduced last year that would require voters to produce documentary evidence of their citizenship in the form of a birth certificate or passport in order to register to vote or update their voter registration.
Lee’s office did not respond to a request for an interview or comment for this story.
A House version of the SAVE Act passed earlier this year, but despite the GOP majority in the Senate, it’s unlikely the legislation will get through the chamber, as it would require seven Democrats to defect and join Republicans to overcome the Senate filibuster.
‘It’s all part of the attack’
Still, elections and voting experts say that, in some ways, the SAVE Act is already working the way its proponents hope it will by inspiring unfounded fear in the security of the U.S. election system.
“I think it’s really important to see all of this as part of the larger messaging,” Voting Rights Lab senior policy advisor Liz Avore said in an interview.
The SAVE Act, she said, fits with Trump’s wider attacks on and conspiracies about the U.S. election system. “In a lot of ways, I think from his perspective, whether or not these policies become the law is kind of irrelevant,” she said. “It’s all part of the attack.”
Lee has framed the SAVE Act as a simple check on noncitizen voting in the United States and has made it a priority issue. Running a prolific personal account on X, Lee is approaching 300 posts on that page calling on his colleagues to pass the legislation, and has often spread misinformation in the process.
The first mention of the SAVE ACT by @basedmikelee came just over a year ago in the middle of Trump’s second reelection bid. “Only citizens should vote in federal elections. Congress must pass the SAVE Act to protect your vote. Please like and share if you agree,” Lee wrote.
More recently, in February, the senator shared unfounded claims that four federal employees fired by the Trump administration for disbursing government funds to house migrants in New York City hotels had “imported voters to stack the election.” Lee added, “This is why Congress needs to pass the SAVE Act, and should have done so last year!”
Noncitizens are already barred from voting under federal law. Some states, Arizona, have already tried state-level versions of the SAVE Act, but the Supreme Court blocked the implementation of the Arizona law for federal elections, resulting in a two-tiered system in the state where voters are required to show proof of citizenship to vote in state elections, but not federal ones.
A few cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., have laws on the books allowing for permanent residents — also known as green card holders — to vote in municipal elections.
But according to voting rights organization The Brennan Center for Justice, cases of noncitizens voting illegally are extremely rare.
A 2016 assessment of 42 areas in the U.S. with high immigrant populations found just 30 cases of suspected noncitizens voting, or just 0.0001% of votes cast, while a 2016 election audit in North Carolina found just 41 instances of green card holders voting out of nearly 4.8 million voters in the state, or about 0.00085% of ballots cast. Many of those who voted improperly, the report said, were misinformed — not orchestrating a widespread conspiracy. Meanwhile, a 2022 assessment in Georgia found that between 1997 and 2022, 1,634 noncitizens attempted to register to vote in the state, but none of the noncitizens were allowed to do so.
“I don’t know that this effort is necessarily targeting a specific class of voters as much as it is attached to these rhetorical attacks on our election administrators and election systems themselves,” Avore said. The goal, she added, is “setting the stage to attack the results of an election in the future.”
Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights organization, agreed.
“It’s absolutely conspiracy-driven,” she said. “We’ve had secure elections that have been safe to participate in, and the people putting forward the SAVE Act are absolutely undermining that based on a conspiracy-driven theory about our elections. It just doesn’t hold up, and it’s very cynical, I think, to approach elections in the way the sponsors of the SAVE Act are doing so.”
‘Oddly punitive for conservative women’
Although it’s unlikely Lee will get the SAVE Act through the Senate this year, the push on the federal level appears to have emboldened state lawmakers to push for similar standards: According to Voting Rights Lab, lawmakers in 23 states around the country — including Utah — have introduced legislation this year to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote, up from just 14 last year.
A measure wrapped into a bill that would have ended Utah’s membership in the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center — more commonly known as ERIC and widely recognized as the only tool that reliably helps states clear the names of the deceased and nonresidents from voter rolls — also would have required Utahns to show proof of citizenship. Residents who couldn’t would have been given a ballot that only included federal elections.
That bill, sponsored by Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, was voted down in a Senate committee. But senators added an alternative proposal to address claims that noncitizens are voting to a larger election reform bill — Amendments to Election Law, or HB300.
Now, after that legislation passed and was signed by the governor, Utah must register with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ free Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, also referred to as “SAVE,” before June 2026. Election officials can input voters’ Social Security numbers to certify their eligibility to cast a ballot.
If the SAVE Act or state-level versions of the bill do become law, however, experts say the laws would pose a major challenge for many American citizens who may not have access to the necessary documents they need in order to prove their citizenship.
“For people who do not have a passport, that’s where you run into the issue of the [birth] certificate not matching their current legal name,” Cohen said. “Anyone who’s legally changed their name… would have to be able to either get a passport or other citizenship document that showed their current name, and then show that document in person to an election official, and that is a huge impact.”
And obtaining a passport, Cohen noted, can be time-consuming and costly, and could present an issue for people who have changed their names for any reason, including transgender people and married women whose last names do not match the name on their birth certificate.
This has raised particular concern in Utah, where more than half of people over the age of 15 are married, a higher percentage than any other state in the country, according to a 2025 report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Center.
“I’m a member of the LDS church, and I love my church membership,” Layton-based attorney Nancy Sylvester said during a recent interview. “I feel strongly about the reasons for being married and for taking on my husband’s last name.”
It was important to her, she said, that her kids share her last name, and it’s a decision she’s glad she made. But she’s been worried about the implications of the SAVE Act.
“This feels oddly punitive of conservative women,” Sylvester said, noting that many members of Lee’s voter base are Republican LDS women who have married and changed their names.
Rep. Celeste Maloy, who represents Utah’s 2nd Congressional District, voted in favor of the SAVE Act when it passed the House earlier this year, and released a video in April pushing back on these concerns.
“I’ve also heard several people say this bill [would] somehow disenfranchise married women, especially those who changed their names, and that’s just not the case,” Maloy said in the video. “It’s all the same proof women have to provide anytime they’ve changed their name and need an ID. If your name has changed, a marriage certificate can easily be used alongside your other documents. That’s the standard legal process, one that millions of women have navigated for years.”
But Sylvester also raised particular concern about victims of domestic violence, and said that, as part of her work, she has seen time and again that when women leave abusive relationships, they often leave behind important documents, like birth and marriage certificates. She also noted that in the wake of those relationships, some people change their names for added protection against former abusers, which would require further documentary proof of a name change in order to vote.
Additionally, the requirement to present documents could place a particular burden on rural voters, Avore said, as they are less likely to have passports.
During the recent legislative session, Utah lawmakers moved to phase out universal mail-in voting, which also would reportedly disproportionately affect rural voters.
“They are the voters who make up President Trump’s base,” Avore said, “and they’re the least likely to have access to these sorts of documents.”
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