by Dave Williams | Jan 11, 2022 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called on Congress Tuesday to pass a constitutional amendment banning non-U.S. citizens from voting.
“American leaders should be elected by American citizens,” Raffensperger said during a news conference at the Georgia Capitol. “It’s as simple as that.”
Raffensperger spoke out Tuesday hours before President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were due in Atlanta to drum up public support for Democrat-backed voting rights legislation stalled in the U.S. Senate.
The Republican secretary of state’s remarks also came a day after state Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, introduced a state-level constitutional amendment to prohibit non-citizen voting. Miller is seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.
Non-U.S. citizens already are banned from voting in Georgia under state law. While no states allow non-citizens to vote, New York City recently enacted an ordinance permitting non-citizens to vote there.
Raffensperger criticized Biden and congressional Democrats for pushing legislation he said would amount to a federal takeover of state and local elections.
He said the two bills being pushed by Democrats would virtually eliminate voter ID requirements, allow third parties not affiliated with election officials to distribute and collect absentee ballots and prohibit election agencies from purging voter rolls within six months of a federal election.
“Make no mistake: This is an attempt to weaken election integrity in the guise of voting rights,” he said.
Besides the constitutional change to prohibit non-citizens from voting, Raffensperger also proposed establishing voter ID requirements nationwide, banning third-party “ballot harvesting” and shortening the blackout period for maintaining voter rolls.
Democrats have criticized election overhaul laws passed in Georgia and other states since the 2020 elections as an effort by Republicans to use voter suppression to reverse their electoral losses.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Where was he 2 years ago?
It’s amazing that the authorities are so screwed up that they would even consider allowing illegal aliens the right to vote in our elections! I have a better idea: let the WHOLE WORLD vote in our elections. They have to suffer the consequences of the result so they should have an equal say in it, right?! It’s the right thing to do.
Even though illegals have voted in the past isn’t that illegal? Raffensperger is a joke.
This the same man who has sworn that the millions of illegals that live in Georgia demonstrated a comprehensively supreme wholesomeness, honesty & deep abiding respect for our state’s current voting laws in the last mail in presidential election process of 2020 by allowing it to go forward with no significant cheating or fraud on their part of any kind .
Evidenced In the full fairness and accuracy he has attested to repeatedly.
Such a noble people of such splendid honest character who showed great restraint with respect to a mail in voting process more inherently fraught with the potential for fraud than any other in our lifetime, Mr. Raffensperger assured everybody,
Verified personally by himself.
” No significant Fraud ” (Raffensperger).
So what has caused Mr. Raffensperger , in less than one year mind you, to so dramatically turnabout his view of this people, who he verified to be completely honest and noble with regard our voting laws, as now being a sinister threat, of suspect moral quality to the very stability of our voting process and our republic, requiring immediate “ban” be put into place on this people in the 11th hour.
What prompted Mr. Raffensperger to so suddenly now forfeit every confidence he repeatedly assured us of over the past year was fully demonstrated in the ability of these millions of non-citizens to resist temptation on a massive scale, proven by no significant fraud at all being evidenced?
Yes, too little; too late. Vote him out.
Except for Federal elections, doesn’t the Constitution grant the power to conduct elections to the States? Is he asking the Congress to interfere in Georgia’s election process?