‘That’s Voter Fraud, My Friends’: McGovern Throws Trump’s Fake Electors Scheme in GOP’s Face During Debate on Republican Election Bill

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-VA), the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, took to the floor on Tuesday during the debate over the GOP’s SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act and accused his Republican colleagues of hypocrisy.

“And if you want to talk about protecting elections, maybe my Republican friends ought to start telling the truth about the last election. And let me remind them, that, the leader of their party tried to submit fraudulent slates of electors to steal the last election. That’s voter fraud, my friends,” jabbed McGovern referring to Donald Trump’s efforts to retain power in 2020, adding:

That’s what voter fraud looks like. And my friends on the other side of the aisle said not a thing. Not a thing. After court, after court after court upheld the fact that we had a free and fair election, but the former president actually submitted fraudulent slates of electors to try to change the result of the of the last election.

The SAVE Act would require those registering to vote to show proof of citizenship, despite non-citizens already being banned from voting in federal elections.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) defended the bill saying that Democrats “want to turn illegal aliens into voters. We must pass the SAVE Act to prevent this.” Democrats had slammed the bill in the past as addressing a “nonissue” and a ploy for Trump and his allies to begin to call into question the result of the 2024 presidential election. Trump had long claimed voter fraud in past elections, which has been roundly debunked.

The Associated Press reported in May about the prevalence of illegal migrants on voting rolls, writing, “To be clear, there have been cases over the years of noncitizens illegally registering and even casting ballots. But states have mechanisms to catch that. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently found 137 suspected noncitizens on the state’s rolls — out of roughly 8 million voters — and is taking action to confirm and remove them, he announced this past week.” The AP added :

In 2022, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger , conducted an audit of his state’s voter rolls specifically looking for noncitizens. His office found that 1,634 had attempted to register to vote over a period of 25 years, but election officials had caught all the applications and none had been able to register.

In North Carolina in 2016, an audit of elections found that 41 legal immigrants who had not yet become citizens cast ballots, out of 4.8 million total ballots cast. The votes didn’t make a difference in any of the state’s elections.

Watch the clip above.