Under pressure from President Donald Trump and far-right House Republicans, the GOP-controlled U.S. House in July voted five times in favor of new voting restrictions that could prevent millions of U.S. citizens from casting ballots.
Requirements that Americans show specific kinds of voter identification at the polls and provide specific proof of citizenship when they register threaten to disenfranchise more than 21 million legal voters, who the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school estimated could not quickly get their hands on the needed documents.
A separate Brennan Center study found that of 23.5 million votes overseen by election officials in the 2016 elections, just 30 votes might have been cast by noncitizens. That comes out to 0.0001% of the votes cast.
And the estimated 400 ballots cast by noncitizens in New Jersey in 2024 accounted for .009% of the total votes, according to David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights lawyer who now heads the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
The conservative wing of the House Republican Conference blocked action on several bills until Speaker Mike Johnson (R*La.), who led an effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 presidential election, agreed to add provisions of the SAVE America Act to several unrelated bills.
All three New Jersey Republicans voted yes on the measures, which passed narrowly on mostly party*line votes. They included Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R*Westfield, who returned to the House at the end of June after being hospitalized for depression. Kean is seeking re*election in one of the nation’s most competitive House races this fall.
All nine House Democrats in the state voted against almost every measure.
The bills carrying provisions of the SAVE America Act were:
* The National Defense Authorization Act, which sets defense policy, and to which the GOP automatically added the voting provisions without a separate vote.
* The rule bringing the NDAA to the House floor, which included a provision automatically adding those voting provisions.
* A budget resolution, the first step toward bypassing a Senate filibuster and passing a reconciliation bill along party lines to increase defense spending.
* Restricting stock trades by lawmakers, an issue that helped Kean win the 7th District seat following revelations that his predecessor, Democrat Tom Malinowski. In this case, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D*Tenafly) voted yes.
* Temporarily continuing federal funding until Dec. 4, thus averting a shutdown if Congress cannot pass a spending bill by Oct. 1.
In addition, the three Republicans * Kean, Jeff Van Drew of Dennis, and Chris Smith of Manchester * also voted July 23 against a resolution requiring Trump to receive congressional approval before continuing the Iran War.
The House passed the measure, but a similar resolution failed in the Senate. Both U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim voted yes.