Dakota Beacon

Let’s talk about voter fraud. A bill titled The SAVE America Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) is a U.S. federal elections bill introduced into the 119th Congress in January 2026. It changes how people register and vote in federal elections by amending the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives after delays and grousing by Democrats. Senate consideration comes next. Most, if not all, Senate Democrats oppose it and the bill may well go down to defeat.

The reticence and foot-dragging by Democrats opposing the bill comes as no surprise. Let’s review the bidding.

No definition of “citizen” exists in the US Constitution. Furthermore, no stipulation occurs that only US citizens can vote. In view of the millions of foreigners who entered the US illegally during the Biden administration, the time has come to decide on parameters for citizenship and voter eligibility.

In a country of 340 million people dispersed in over 50 states there are a lot of different ways to vote. Access to power comes by way of the ballot box. Politics is a power game and since power is allotted via the ballot box, there are bound to be different ways to gain power through voter fraud.

A good statistical probability of vote fraud exists in America. According to federal statistics, there are at least 11 million crimes reported every year. This includes homicides, robberies, auto theft, muggings, kidnappings, forgeries, embezzlements, arsons, rapes, assaults, and more. These are just reported crimes.

Every activity in America, commercial and non-commercial, is plagued with crime. Businesses have departments in their organizations devoted to combatting crime. Warehouses have security cameras. Stores add anti-theft devices to merchandise. Banks lock up currency in safes. Shoplifters steal products from grocery stores and tools from hardware stores.

Federal, state, and local governments keep policemen and sheriffs; prosecutors and judges; and courtrooms and prisons to process the multitude of criminals committing crimes.

So, what are people really saying, when they claim that there is no voter fraud? Again, eleven million crimes are reported each year committed by people risking prison time for offenses ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. How could anyone assert that voter fraud would be exempted from criminal activity? Read on.

If we were a society in which there was no shoplifting or burglaries or other types of crime, then we might have reason to believe that voter fraud was not a problem. However, if people are willing to steal cars, loot stores, or rob banks then they would be willing to forge ballots, vote more than once, or stuff a ballot box to gain access to more government cash than any store or bank ever had.

The ways to steal votes are as varied as there are states and cities. Here are a few ways. City poll workers load voting machines before the polls open. Busloads of patronage workers drive around the city casting ballots under assumed names. Poll workers bribe voters to fill out their ballots with the precinct captain’s tacit approval. Green-card holders or illegals are brought to the polls to vote having been automatically registered by the motor-voter program. There are nursing homes with senile, comatose, or heavily medicated patients who could never cast a ballot. Their nurses or nursing home managers do it for them.

Governments across the US have budgets with tens of trillions of dollars to spend. There are people willing to cheat to get their hands on some of those dollars. Then consider this. Between September 2023 and September 2024, at least 66 elections in the U.S. were decided by fewer than ten votes. A percent here, a percent there – it doesn’t take a lot of voter fraud to have an influence.

Cut across all demographic groups -- conservatives, independents, liberals – and according to recent polling, support for the SAVE America Act was reported at 80%. If adopted, this law would require proof of citizenship to register, proper identification to vote, and a valid address to exercise the privilege. This requirement would not stop voter fraud, but it would go a long way to curtailing it. It may not guarantee perfectly clean elections, but it would make them cleaner than they are now.

In the end, the goal is to preserve our republic and to ensure that the people in charge are truly the people the public want to be in charge. That should not be difficult to understand.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).