WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican, Louisana) said Tuesday that the widespread voter fraud he’d warned about all year turned out not to be a problem in last week’s elections that Republicans happened to win.
“I’m happy to report to you that because of all the emphasis we placed on that, and because of all the attention the American people put on it, that I think we were able to limit, to a high degree, the amount of fraud and irregularity and many of the things that concerned all Americans after 2020,” Johnson said in response to a question from HuffPost.
Johnson spoke in front of the House steps, at a lectern adorned with a “New Day in America” sign, as Republicans are on the verge of controlling both Congress and the White House following last week’s decisive victory by former president Donald Trump and Republicans in Senate and House races.
In May, speaking at the same location, Johnson had warned that voting by undocumented immigrants presented an “unprecedented and a clear and present danger to the integrity of our election system.” On Tuesday, he said noncitizens may have voted “in some places around the country,” but that it wasn’t a problem for the election results thanks to efforts by state lawmakers and Republican poll watchers.
“So that’s a good sign. It’s another hopeful reason, another thing to celebrate about our new day in America,” Johnson said.
Not all House races have been called, but Republicans are leading in most of the remaining contests and will likely retain control of the House with a slim majority with Johnson as speaker. The Louisiana Republican said Republicans would hit the ground running next year with tax cuts and deregulation.
It’s not clear if Republicans’ “America First” agenda will also include the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, the bill Johnson and Trump said before the election was necessary to prevent Democrats from committing massive voter fraud. Among other things, the proposal would require voters to prove their citizenship in order to register, rather than simply asking them to attest to it under penalty of perjury.
There have been isolated instances of noncitizens voting in federal elections, but it’s a relatively rare phenomenon and not something that’s tipped an election before. Johnson admitted in May that while he knew “intuitively” that noncitizens vote in large numbers, there’s no proof.
Still, Johnson attached the SAVE Act to a must-pass government funding bill this fall, and Trump even encouraged Republicans to shut down the government if Democrats wouldn’t agree to the reforms. (Johnson ultimately relented and Congress passed a clean government funding bill.)
Trump, for his part, complained Democrats were “CHEATING” at the ballot on the afternoon of Election Day, but didn’t revisit his claims that evening as favourable returns came in.
Johnson suggested on Tuesday that Trump’s margin of victory was wide enough that even if noncitizens voted for Democrats in significant numbers, it didn’t affect the outcome.
“The mantra and what we said at the rallies, and what President Trump was apt to say all the time, is we had to make it too big to rig — and we did,” Johnson said.