By David Morgan and Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a bill to ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections, which is already illegal and rarely occurs, an effort meant to draw more attention to Donald Trump's false claims that U.S. elections are marred by widespread fraud.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has relied on the former president's support to hold off a bid to oust him from leadership by Republican hardliner Marjorie Taylor Greene, said the measure was aimed at preventing noncitizens from voting in November.
"We all know - intuitively - that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it's not been something that is easily provable," Johnson told reporters without offering evidence to support the claim.
Republicans say the legislation would provide a needed mechanism to safeguard voting by requiring states to collect proof of U.S. citizenship before registering voters and to purge their voter rolls of noncitizens.
But independent studies show noncitizen voting to be a rarity.
A study by Brennan Center for Justice at New York University looked at 42 jurisdictions, accounting for 23.5 million votes in the 2016 presidential election, and found only 30 incidents of possible noncitizen voting, or 0.0001% of votes cast.
The legislation is likely to be dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate.
Democrats have already called the bill "redundant" and a "stunt" aimed at sowing "confusion and distrust" ahead of the Nov. 5 election rematch between Republican Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden.
With control of the White House, Senate and House up for grabs and Trump making illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border a centerpiece of his campaign, Republicans hope to use the legislation to tie illegal immigration to the issue of election integrity.
"This, like many other agitations about election security and integrity, proceeds from Trump's need to keep up the illusion that he somehow won, and was wrongfully deprived of, the election four years ago," said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Johnson first announced his plans for such a bill last month at a joint press conference with Trump.
'WATCH LIKE HAWKS'
Trump, whose false claims of massive voter fraud in 2020 led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, raised the specter of immigrant-related voting fraud earlier this year. He also said he may not accept November election results in an interview published last week.
"We're going to protect the vote," Trump said at a recent rally in Freeland, Michigan. "All these Democrats we're gonna watch like hawks... They cheat like hell. They cheat like hell."
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the former Republican president "100% supports taking legislative action to stop noncitizens from voting in our elections."
Much of the Republican rhetoric about noncitizen voting has focused on efforts by municipalities including New York City, Washington, D.C., and Montpellier, Vermont, to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, claiming that Democrats are increasingly pushing for noncitizen voting.
The Republican National Committee, co-chaired by Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump, has engaged in 84 election-related lawsuits in 25 states. About a dozen involve efforts by local municipalities to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
The bill would also empower citizens to bring civil suits against election officials that fail to uphold proof of citizenship requirements and add penalties for election officials that register noncitizens to vote in federal elections.