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Mike Lee: “States can't ask for proof of citizenship for anyone who…”

Featuring: Mike Lee, Republican | U.S. Senate from Utah

Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st

Published March 21, 2026 | Video Starts at 03:43

Because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Arizona versus Intertribal Council of Arizona in 2013, the States can't ask for proof of citizenship for anyone who registers to vote at a DMV through an NVRA form. at a DMV while applying for a driver's license and simultaneously going through the process, registering to vote. (03:43–03:54)

CLAIM

Asserts the restriction on states regarding proof of citizenship for voter registration at DMVs.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Mike Lee

“The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in Arizona vs Intertribal Council of Arizona as…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 02:43-03:02
“We've now got 30 million plus noncitizens in this country.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 04:39-04:43
“Those that have done this have found many thousands of non-citizens in their voter files.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 21:59-22:07
“There are four or five states and the District of Columbia in which they openly admit that they register non-citizens to vote.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 25:44-26:03
“In the last Congress, when President Biden was still in office and when the Democrats had the majority in this chamber, we're talking just…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 33:33-33:58
“Roughly half of the states, blue states in particular, are refusing to share their voter registration file data with DHS.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 53:43-54:06
“We've had 30 million people living in this country who are not citizens, about 15 million of whom entered the country unlawfully just in…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:25:29-1:25:44
“States...have access to all kinds of information, birth certificates issued in that state.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 00:12-44:07
“The purpose of the Save America Act is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 01:35-01:49
“The Save America Act requires proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration and photo ID at the time and place of voting.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 01:48-02:08
“Federal law requires that you be a US Citizen to vote in a federal election.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 03:02-03:37
“Existing law, including but not limited to laws codified at 18 USC 1015, prohibit noncitizens from voting in US elections.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 03:02-03:37
“We've got 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants in this country.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 04:42-04:48
“Illegal immigrants who have arrived between January 20th of 2021 and January 20th, 2025.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 04:42-05:08
“The Biden administration invited a mass scale border invasion contrary to our laws.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 05:08-05:22
“You cannot get into and participate in the Democratic National Convention unless you show up with voter ID and credentials.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 07:13-07:22
“You can't come to the United States Senate. You can't cast a vote in the United States Senate. You certainly can't make it into this chamber…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 07:26-07:41
“Every American citizen who has any job as an employee in the United States of America has to establish their citizenship.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 08:33-08:42
“You can show up without a single document in hand [and fill out an affidavit to prove citizenship].”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 08:41-08:50
“We also have to show up and have the benefit of an election certificate by our Chief Elections Officer, Secretary of State, or Lieutenant…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 09:13-09:30
“There is not a scintilla of truth to [the argument that voter ID laws disenfranchise voters].”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 10:22-10:25
“What this would do is this would prevent the disenfranchisement of actual US Citizens by those who are not citizens of our country.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 10:41-10:53
“Noncitizen voting is nearly impossible to detect under the status quo.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 11:18-11:30
“Their vote can be canceled out entirely by one or more or 1,000 or more or 10,000 or more people who vote in the same jurisdiction who, who…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 12:11-12:23
“It requires a passport to vote under the Save America Act.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 13:57-14:04
“There are a zillion ways that you can prove your citizenship [under the bill].”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 14:06-14:17
“It's not true to say that you've got to have a passport to vote [under the Save America act].”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 17:41-17:45
“We outlawed poll taxes more than 60 years ago by constitutional amendment.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 19:11-19:17
“It is an absolute certainty that you're going to have a number of people who are not citizens who will register to vote.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 20:54-21:02
“It is a known fact that we have a lot of registered voters in this country who are non-citizens.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 21:25-21:34
“States would need to coordinate with and share voter registration data with the relevant federal agencies.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 21:35-21:57
“A small handful of states, but a growing number of states, have begun a systematic review of their own voter registration files.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 21:35-21:57
“Most so-called blue states, states with Democrat legislatures and, and or Democrat governors have been refusing to do that [share voter…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 21:35-21:57
“In Oklahoma, they have a law designed specifically for the situation [of non-citizens being summoned for jury duty].”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 24:32-24:50
“We've got a law that allows anyone, even a non-citizen, to apply in most states, the overwhelming majority of states, just by going into a…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 25:44-26:03
“Our existing laws, as interpreted and as implemented, make it impossible to find out where this [noncitizen voting] is happening.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 26:40-26:50
“The states can't even trust the Department of Homeland Security or anyone in the Trump administration with that data that under the Save…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 28:29-28:44
“The U.S. government under this regime wouldn't have the authority to just go in and say, he's gone, she's gone.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 29:10-49:36
“The ease and simplicity of protecting the privacy and the personal information of individual US Citizens is far easier than it is in the…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 30:13-30:34
“Anyone whose name would likely trigger alarm bells through the processes established by the Save America act warranting their removal based…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 31:46-32:12
“The only reason you'd be removed through this framework is if they're noncitizens.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 32:21-32:27
“The junior senator from Rhode island who, if I get this right, falsely claimed that the Supreme Court of the United States has said that…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 34:55-35:12
“The Supreme Court ruling to which he's referring is this case called Arizona v. Intertribal Council of Arizona.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 35:34-35:34
“It did not say it's unconstitutional to ask a registering voter for proof of citizenship.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 35:50-35:59
“Based on the text of the 1993 NVRA as passed by Congress, that the text, as a matter of statutory interpretation, preempts, prohibits any…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 36:00-36:30
“It is not a constitutional mandate. It is far from a constitutional mandate.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 36:35-36:41
“You have to do that in the i9 every time you start a new job.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 37:23-37:27
“You also have to do it when you apply for a passport.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 37:30-37:37
“If you want to buy a firearm, you go into a federally licensed firearms dealer, you have to provide a photo id.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 37:45-37:54
“The right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, as is the right to vote.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 38:56-39:01
“Every damn one of them knows how to establish who they are and that they are entitled to vote.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 40:57-41:04
“If you're missing any of that documentation...you swear out a brief affidavit...the burden is shifted to the state authorities.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 43:00-43:54
“Many, if not most, if not all, states have reciprocal arrangements with other states...about birth, death records.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 44:07-44:20
“Every Democrat in here, in the last Congress was, I believe, a co-sponsor of legislation that contained an ID requirement.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 46:12-46:26
“Nothing in the legislation would allow [the Trump administration] to...cancel all the voter registration files in an entire state.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 48:49-48:49
“It is absurd to argue, because it is utterly false that this bill, if it were signed into law, would have that effect.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 49:56-50:07
“A small handful of states openly, brazenly admit that they allow noncitizens to register to vote to participate in certain local elections.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 54:07-54:20
“Rhode Island is one of those states that defiantly refuses to share their voter registration data.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 54:48-54:54
“If we do not pass the Save America act, we could have thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of non-citizens…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 56:19-56:37
“Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution gives us the authority to establish rules and regulations specific to the election of…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:00:35-1:00:35
“There is not a single credible argument that the Save America act falls outside that authority [Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1].”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:01:46-1:01:54
“Franklin D. Roosevelt had Democratic super majorities in both the House and the Senate.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:02:32-1:03:16
“Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pass legislation entitling himself to pack the Supreme Court to increase it up to the tribunal as big as…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:05:09-1:05:20
“On April 12, 1937, the Supreme Court of the United States rewrote the Commerce clause, giving Congress newfound power over basically…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:06:01-1:06:21
“Federal Democrats have championed [the expanded federal power] the whole time.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:07:06-1:07:10
“As soon as we gave Congress the power to regulate anything and everything that messed up the vertical protection of federalism, we started…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:07:32-1:07:43
“They stopped making real laws and they started passing platitudes.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:07:59-1:08:04
“This is not a federalism problem, Madam President, not by a mile.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:08:49-1:08:54
“The senior senator from Rhode Island failed to make even a single correct point without the use of abusing the English language, the law…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:09:01-1:09:13
“We need to pass the REINS act after we're done passing the Save America act.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:10:34-1:10:39
“You cannot make a federal law... unless you have satisfied this two part gauntlet.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:10:53-1:11:05
“It would be unconstitutional for us to make a law and then also put ourselves in charge of executing that same law.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:12:27-1:12:35
“There's nothing in the bill that would allow a mass purge of US Citizen lawful voters.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:14:10-1:14:17
“There are zero dollars appropriated for them under this legislation.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:14:33-1:14:39
“We already have several legal regimes... through which there are federal dollars already allocated to the states.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:14:52-1:15:01
“Every single Senate Democrat here at the time was fully supportive of the Save America Act.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:16:44-1:16:52
“They trampled on all sorts of state sovereign authority matters that went far beyond the realm of just federal elections.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:17:15-1:17:23
“It would have rendered every voting jurisdiction of the United States a preclearance jurisdiction, whether you had ever had a history of…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:17:27-1:17:38
“It actually stripped the state legislatures of their constitutionally derived power to draw congressional District boundaries.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:17:59-1:18:09
“It's already illegal for a non-citizen to vote.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:20:03-1:20:07
“Whenever you have a system of laws in place that are being broken, there is a grave risk that by not enforcing those laws, you will cheapen…”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:23:18-1:23:35
“This one determines the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of our government.”
Sen. Lee Stands for SAVE America Act: March 21st | Uploaded March 21, 2026 | 1:27:03-1:27:07