Embattled Speaker Mike Johnson Touts ‘Election Integrity’ Bill as Trump Looms over His Shoulder

Johnson: “And everywhere we go, one of the first questions that people ask about is this issue of election integrity. The border is the number one issue in America. There’s never been a political issue that scored so high in the polls as a matter of concern. And it doesn’t matter where anyone lives, because as we say now, every state is a border state. They’re deeply concerned about that. And election integrity is tied to border, the lack of border security. President Biden has created a catastrophe, and he did it by design. We documented 64 specific executive actions that he took from the day he walked into the Oval Office and that his agencies took under Secretary Mayorkas to open the border wide, to invite everybody from around the world to come here, including hardened criminals and dangerous persons. And the result we all know. The official number is 9 million encounters at the southern border alone just since Joe Biden took office. But the actual number is probably close to 16 million illegals who have come into the country because they desired it. They designed it. They engineered it to be that way. His actions did that. He ended the Remain in Mexico policy under President Trump’s administration. They reinstated Catch and Release that had that been practiced under the Obama Administration. They stopped building the wall. They did everything exactly the opposite of what this president had achieved, and that’s why we have this catastrophe. It has all sorts of terrible effects on the American people. We know that fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 49.

We know that violent crimes are being committed on innocent Americans now. Laken Riley and many others who are now losing their lives because these dangerous people are in our country. And it must stop. And the American people are demanding that it does. And it doesn’t matter which political party that any American is in. They have the same desire. They want safety and security, and we can supply that. But among the problems that flows from this open border catastrophe is directly related to this threat to our election integrity. Why is that? You need to understand something really important about federal law. Since 1993, the National Voter Registration Act, we call it the the Motor Voter Law, allows people to sign up to vote when they get a driver’s license. If an individual only asserts or simply states that they are a citizen, they don’t have to prove it. They can register that person to vote in a federal election. And you see, states are currently prohibited, believe it or not, the states are prohibited from asking someone to prove that they’re a citizen. The federal voter registration form just has a check up box, and if you do that, you’re good. The states can’t allow it. We think that’s a serious problem.

And so, what we’re going to do is the House Republicans are introducing a bill that will require proof of citizenship to vote. It seems like common sense. I’m sure all of us would agree. We only want U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections, but there are some Democrats who don’t want to do that. We believe that one of their designs, one of the reasons for this open border, which everybody asks all around the country, why would they do this? Why would they allow all this chaos? Why the violence? Because they want to turn these people into voters. Right now, the administration is encouraging illegals to go to their local welfare office to sign up for benefits. Well, guess what? When you go to a welfare office, they also ask you if you would like to register to vote. And so, many people, we think, are going to do that. And you know what? If the numbers are so high, there’s so many millions of illegals in the country, that if only one out of 100 voted, they would cast potentially hundreds of thousands of votes in the election. That could turn an election. This could be a tight election in our congressional races around the country. It could, if there are enough votes, affect the presidential election. And so that’s why House Republicans are going to act.

I’m going to announce to you today here, standing alongside President Trump, that we will do everything within our power to ensure that we do have free and fair elections in this country. If we don’t have that in a constitutional republic, we have nothing. It’s the basis of who we are as a nation, and we owe that to the American people. And so what we’re going to do is introduce legislation to require that every single person who registers to vote in a federal election must prove that they’re an American citizen first. They have to prove it. That will be a new part of the federal law, and a very important one. Our bill will establish new safeguards that will put us on par, by the way, with virtually every other democracy around the world that also prohibits non-citizen voting. And this is a critical thing for us to do at a very critical time. Our bill also will require states to remove non-citizens from their existing voter rolls. That’s a big problem, too. And it will provide access to databases from the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to help the states administer this. As the entity that is responsible for regulating federal elections, Congress has this responsibility. We cannot wait for widespread fraud to occur, especially when the threat of fraud is growing with every single Illegal immigrant that crosses that border.

This is something most Americans are deeply concerned about. The latest poll says 78 percent of the Americans who were polled say that preventing illegal immigrants from voting in our elections is a top priority. In every place I’ve gone around the country, whether it’s out west, Midwest, Long Island, Deep South, it doesn’t matter. Everybody is concerned about this. We have a job to do. Here’s what you need to look for, and I’ll turn it back to the president. When we put this bill on the floor, you’re going to see a record vote by Republicans and Democrats. You’ll see that the Republicans stand for election integrity and then we’ll be able to ask this very important question. The Democrats, they’re going to have to go on record. Do you believe that Americans and Americans alone should be the ones who vote in American elections? We’re about to find out their answer, and I think that will be a very interesting one for everybody to see. Mr. President, thank you again for hosting us.”