By Congressman Nick LaLota
For years, Democrats have insisted that concerns about illegal immigration and election integrity are exaggerated. We have been told our immigration system does not need stronger enforcement, that voter ID is unnecessary, and that requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote would place an unreasonable burden on Americans.
Recent events should cause even the most partisan observer to reconsider those arguments.
In Democrat-controlled New Jersey, the state recently acknowledged that roughly 6,600 noncitizens were improperly registered to vote, with approximately 400 of them actually casting ballots.
That matters.
As a former Suffolk County Elections Commissioner, I know elections are administered by human beings operating government systems, and neither is infallible. Laws prohibiting noncitizens from voting are important, but a prohibition is only as effective as the safeguards used to enforce it. That lesson should be particularly important here in New York.
New York allows noncitizens, including those here illegally, to obtain standard driver’s licenses. At the same time, New York has integrated its DMV transactions with automatic voter registration. Noncitizens are not legally eligible to register, and safeguards are supposed to prevent them from doing so. But New Jersey just provided thousands of reasons why “the system is supposed to prevent it” is not a sufficient answer.
This does not exist in a vacuum. The Biden Administration allowed more than 10 million unvetted noncitizens to enter the country. Now, Democratic officials continue to weaken immigration enforcement, embrace sanctuary policies, spend billions of taxpayer dollars providing migrants with hotels and health care, and issue driver’s licenses without regard to immigration status.
Closer to home, East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village have adopted the first sanctuary policies on Long Island, restricting cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities. Many of the same politicians who support those policies oppose voter ID and stronger proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration.
Consider the progression: Allow millions of noncitizens into the country. Weaken enforcement of immigration laws. Create sanctuary jurisdictions that restrict cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Issue driver’s licenses to people regardless of immigration status. Connect DMV transactions to automatic voter registration. Then resist additional safeguard designed to ensure that only American citizens register and vote.
At some point, it stops looking like a collection of unrelated policy mistakes and starts looking like chaos by design.
To be clear, possessing a New York driver’s license does not make a noncitizen eligible to vote, nor does it mean every noncitizen with a license is being registered. The issue is whether government should rely entirely on bureaucratic safeguards when we have evidence from a neighboring state that those safeguards can fail.
Election integrity should not depend on hoping every database, form, applicant and government employee gets everything right every time.
There is a straightforward alternative: Enforce our immigration laws. Secure the border. Encourage cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement. Require identification to vote. And require documentary proof of American citizenship when someone registers to vote in federal elections.
I support those policies, including legislation in Congress to strengthen citizenship verification for voter registration. None of this should be partisan. Every eligible American should be able to cast a ballot, and every eligible American should have confidence that his or her vote will not be diluted by a ballot cast by someone who is ineligible.
Secure borders and secure elections are not radical ideas; they are basic responsibilities of government.
Americans have every right to ask why politicians who spent years dismantling safeguards at the border are so resistant to adding safeguards at the ballot box.
After what happened in New Jersey, “trust the system” isn’t good enough.
We should fix the system.
Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) has represented NY-01 since 2023. NY-01 contains the entire towns of East Hampton, Riverhead, Shelter Island, Smithtown, Southampton, Southold, most of the Town of Huntington, and the northern half of the Town of Brookhaven.
LaLota is a Navy Veteran and former Suffolk County Elections Commissioner.
The First District office is located at 515 Hauppauge Road, Suite 3B, in Hauppauge, and can be reached at 631-289-1097. Mobile office hours are held on Thursdays from 1:00p.m. to 5:00p.m. at 109 King Road in Rocky Point.
