RNC and WisGOP hosted ‘Protect the Vote’ rally in Waukesha

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The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Wisconsin hosted a ‘Protect the Vote’ rally in Waukesha Monday, with a packed room of more than 100 people.

Prominent members of the Republican party from Washington D.C. to Wisconsin were in attendance.

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley and RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump were in attendance, along with WisGOP Chairman Brian Schimming and Fond Du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney.

Also in attendance, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Washington County Executive and former Chairman of WisGOP Paul Farrow, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.

GOP officials called for increased election observers and poll monitors.

GOP State Director Leslie Hubert said, “Wisconsinites are fired up to ensure secure, transparent and fair elections,” in a social media post Monday.

GOP Regional Field Director Jasper Login said, “Huge crowd for our protect the vote rally. Let’s make this election too big to rig,” in a social media post Monday.

The Wisconsin Young Republicans tweeted, “Absolutely incredible turnout for our Election Integrity Rally …”

Ashley Reichert, Washington County Clerk Tweeted, “Providing safe, secure and accurate elections are truly the most important piece of our democracy.”

The news media was allowed to the keynote remarks followed by a press time with the invited speakers.

Also on Monday, Republicans expressed outrage about the Biden Administration’s recent statement on protecting election integrity.

“It should alarm every American citizen that the sitting President of the United States, who has opened our border to over 9 million illegals, just announced that he would veto our bill to prevent noncitizens from voting,” Speaker Mike Johnson posted to X, formerly known as Twitter on Monday.

Johnson’s comments are in response to President Joe Biden’s statement opposing legislation that would make it illegal for non U.S. Citizens to vote. In Biden’s statement he claimed that it’s already illegal for non U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections.

Pursuant to a 1996 law, noncitizens who vote illegally will face a fine and or imprisonment. When registering to vote, individuals must confirm under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens. Additionally, that registration is verified against federal and state databases in some states. However, many politicians say noncitizens could be voting illegally in high numbers.

According to the Pew Research Center, there more than 25 million people living in the U.S. in 2020 who were not U.S. citizens.

According to BallotPedia, as of June 2024, the District of Columbia and municipalities in California, Maryland, and Vermont allowed noncitizens to vote in some or all local elections.

In 2024, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which “seeks to ensure that only U.S. citizens participate in federal elections by requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.”

“Illegal immigrants and non-citizens across the nation are being improperly registered to vote, allowing them to cast illegitimate ballots in federal elections … At a time when trust in voting is more important than ever, we must stop foreign election interference and pass the SAVE Act. Voting is both a sacred right and responsibility of American citizenship, and allowing the people of other nations access to our elections is a grave blow to our security and self-governance. I’m proud to stand with Chip Roy to save our democratic process and representative government,” Lee said when introducing the legislation.

Roy agreed.

“Secure elections are a key cornerstone for any representative government; without them, we won’t have a country … Radical progressive Democrats know this and are using open border policies while also attacking election integrity laws to fundamentally remake America. That’s why I am proud to introduce the SAVE Act with Speaker Johnson and my Republican colleagues, along with the invaluable support of citizens and organizations that recognize we must end the practice of non-citizens voting in our elections,” Roy said.

Virginia election officials quietly removed 5,556 voters for non-citizenship between 2011 and May 2017, according to a 2017 report from The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF).

1,852 of those removed as noncitizens cast ballots, and a total of 7,474 illegal ballots were cast from the pool of removed noncitizens, according to PILF.

Some records of illegal voting date back to the 1980s before their respective removals and Virginia election officials routinely failed to alert law enforcement about these illegal votes or registrations, the report noted.

PILF’s mission is to “assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections.”

According The Cato Institute, in 2024, “The 22nd California congressional district, for example, represented by Republican David Valadao, consists in substantial part of agricultural areas in the Central Valley with a very high share of noncitizens. It cast only about 100,000 votes in the closely contested 2022 midterms, an election in which many other districts around the state recorded 200,000 or even 300,000 votes. The same pattern, Quinn says, in which participation rates fail to come in suspiciously high when compared with the pool of lawful voters, “is consistent in every state. You can see it in Texas, Arizona, Florida, New York, and so forth.”

In response to non U.S. Citizens voting in U.S. Elections, President Donald Trump said, “They [the Biden administration] don’t have a clue. I think they are looking for votes.” Trump made the remarks during a February speech in Texas.

“That’s why they are allowing these people to come in — people that don’t speak our language — they are signing them up to vote,” Trump said during a January speech in Iowa.

The mainstream media, including the Washington Post has largely downplayed the volume of illegal votes.