The Daily Signal - Will Congress Ensure Only Citizens Vote? | Ken Cuccinelli

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

By May 7, all U.S. citizens are supposed to have their federally required “Real ID” so that they can travel by air or enter a federal building. But what about using them to register to vote to ensure they are legally present in the country and eligible to vote in our elections? The SAVE Act, introduced by Republican Texas Rep. (and University of Virginia alumnus) Chip Roy, recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives and now is awaiting action in the Senate. The SAVE Act, among other things, would require proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections and strengthen verification processes to ensure voter rolls only contained eligible citizen voters. The Daily Signal sat down with former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, former Virginia Attorney General, and current National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative Ken Cuccinelli to talk about the bill’s likelihood of making it to President Donald Trump’s desk. Keep Up With The Daily Signal Sign up for our email newsletters: https://www.dailysignal.com/email     Subscribe to our other shows:  Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women  The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown    Follow The Daily Signal:  X: https://x.com/DailySignal  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/  Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DailySignal  Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TheDailySignal    Thanks for making The Daily Signal Podcast your trusted source for the day’s top news. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. I'm your host, Joe Thomas, Virginia correspondent for The Daily Signal. Before we dive into today's interview, I want to thank you for tuning in today. If you're a first-time listener, The Daily Signal, brings you fact-based reporting and conservative commentary on politics, policy, and culture. And I hope you join our band of regular listeners to our podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and also take it. a moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcast.

You can find additional content at daily signal.com. Now, let's get started with today's conversation right after this. First thing today, Talk Media Network. Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you. And joining us is one of my favorite people, not just because he was former DHS secretary, not just because he was former Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia, not just because he really should have beaten Terry McColliffe in 2013,

but he's just fun to talk to. He is, you would probably be one of my favorite callers if you hadn't done all those things. Ken Cuccinelli is on the last. You know, former engineering student who decided being an engineer wasn't weird enough, so he became a lawyer and then a senator as well. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing just fine, Joe. I hope you are. I'm in perhaps the neatest building I've ever broadcasted from, and I've broadcasted from the Virginia Capitol building.

This is the Wright Tavern. It is still the original building where the what they call it the Provincial. Well, the provincial government met and hashed out how they were going to. to work this not paying Britain's taxes and Paul Revere and all the folks who really made this decision and set up for the first time a government that wasn't mandated by the king that was mandated by the citizens in there and it's just it's neat you walk through these rooms and you realize I'm standing where Samuel Adams not not where somebody drank a Samuel Adams but but where Sam Adams actually was.

Both of them sound pretty good. One is cooler than the other. Well, I noticed the pictures of the actual Samuel Adams don't look anything like the beer label. Just a quick point of order. That's funny. That's funny. You know, what is you, considering, and it's weird, I even ask the guys, because I'm the kind of guy who asks this stuff. I'm like, it's a little weird here in Massachusetts to be celebrating, you know, the ultimate civilian ownership of guns.

And they're like, yeah, you know, but it really is what makes us. And you almost see this little glint of, yeah, we kind of agree with you, but, you know, we've been dominated by Harvard here for a long time. Yeah, yeah, sadly. And boy, have they. I will say that perhaps the most shocking thing of the recent Harvard news is that there was $9 billion of federal money flowing into Harvard. Like, seriously? Like they needed it. Yeah, use the endowment.

Do something with it. Well, they don't want to do it. It's like Gollum in the cave underneath, you know, Middle Earth. My precious. Yeah, exactly. You know, we can't let this go. We can't give scholarships out to this. that's what the taxpayers are for and or, you know, building a library in somebody's name.

So let's get into the SAVE Act. And still, why is this, you know, I was just talking yesterday with our friend Kerry Talasco. And she said there's polling now in the field that says 80 plus percent of Americans have no problem with requiring citizenship and proof thereof to get on the voter rolls. It's worse than that, Joe. If you ask the average person, if you went anywhere in America and just asked, most people would say whether this is already required, most people would say, well, yeah, obviously. And we'll be surprised to learn that it's not. It's, then why is it that the elected officials? You've hung around with probably more than your fair share of them.

What is it about them that just makes this hard for them to just, Do, are they paid for by something else? This isn't paid for. This is the elected Democrats, and we see this in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we see it in the Congress. They listen to and do the bidding of their radical left base, even after the last election, more so than anything else. they know that the Save Act and protecting the vote for citizens makes perfectly good sense. I mean, the Democrat Jared Golden, that was his excellent. Look, folks, forget all this stuff.

This is just common sense was basically what he said. That's a Democrat, folks, saying that. But the other ones make up these arguments. Everything, of course, is racist. Anything they disagree with is racist, et cetera. and excuses like married women won't be able to vote. Oh, come on. Because they'll have a hard time getting, you know, my wife changed her name to my name.

Most married women do that. Sure. And they change their documents. And, you know, they're all smart enough to do it. And they all have what they need to do it. If that, and I pick that one because it's the number one argument they're making substantively. Now, they rarely get to substance. It's usually you're a racist.

You're doing voter suppression. There's no need for this. Prove that we need it without having any ability to check. Yes, that's right. Well, prove a negative. You're the engineer. You ought to know that you can't prove a negative. prove that something didn't happen.

It's a theoretical impossibility. I will say that we can prove positives like people did vote who shouldn't have. You look at the Doge uncovering of so many social security numbers used by illegal aliens in, for example, the Medicaid program. And they took the trouble to check some of those against the voter rolls of just a few states. and found thousands of people registered to vote and voting. So you can't say it isn't happening. Right. It is happening.

And the Democrats who tried to push HR1 for folks who don't remember old HR1, in 2021, this was their Washington takeover of elections. And it had three features that are particularly relevant here. One, they ordered, mandated all states to dump all adults, not citizens, adults that the states come into contact with onto the voter rolls, whether that's through health care, adult education, driver's licenses, whatever it is. Dump them on the voter rolls. Two, number two, because they wanted to say they were not making it legal for non-citizens to vote, no. But number two was section 10, 15 of the bill said that if you were one of these people dumped onto the voter rolls and you voted, you couldn't be penalized for it. So they essentially legalized non-citizen voting, both legal and illegal aliens.

And then the third feature of that bill was they created a new vaguely worded crime about state and local officials interfering with people getting automatically registered to vote along these lines. For example, if you worked at the DMV and somebody showed up who didn't speak English and you knew that that's a, you know, logic, that's a pretty good sign that you're not a citizen. But you also know that if you process the paperwork that you were just handed, that this person would be dumped onto the voter rolls. So you might take a step to get them the license that maybe in that state they're allowed to have, but to keep them off the voter rolls because they're not voter. You can be prosecuted for that under HR1. And that was quite intentional. It was to keep state and local officials from doing exactly what. what you and I just talked through.

Just making sure that people on the voter rolls are actually citizens. And here's the... Right. What a crazy thought. Can, along with those crazy thoughts, I remember was it two years ago when they started running into the problem with people who are on the voter rolls, which mysteriously then wound up because that's where they come from in the jury pools. And they were getting excused from jury duty because they weren't citizens. And when somebody asked to check that, they said, racism, sexism, massage, I mean, every ism you could come up with.

Right. I mean, we had bills to do this 20 years ago in Virginia, but it wasn't getting done. And, you know, the same couple of steps you just described has happened in other states as well. And if it doesn't matter or doesn't, it isn't help. helpful in cleaning the voter rolls if you don't do anything with that information. Now, maybe they don't sit on a jury, but then they also shouldn't be on the voter rolls. And of course, that's where the jury pool is pulled from. Yep. So as you point out, we know, we know because they have individually, personally admitted it that ineligible voters are on these voter rolls. So what is the hang up with

Republicans for supporting this. I gather, you know, party membership and you don't want to lose your, you know, you don't want to be primaried like Chad Peterson was. You know, you say you got, you have to speak with the one voice. And by the way, as a tangent, all this time and treasure that's being spent telling me that the Democratic Party is in chaos, I'll believe it when I see it on election day, because they're going to sing like a choir come that day. And I think this is street theater to catfish some conservatives into thinking they're done for 10 years and they won't be um it'd be and you've seen this can oh yeah i don't yeah i don't buy that i think they're in disarray over an issue immigration and how to deal with it this falls in that category a bit um they're on

the wrong side of the 80-20 line that you and and carry were talking about yesterday and um and and i that is just polling. Eight states had constitutional amendments to restrict voting to citizenship, to those with citizenship, and they passed by almost an average of three to one. One of them was seven or eight to one. Gosh. And that's in every, you know, color state, blue, purple, red. It isn't just polling. It has shown up at the voting booth. In the Wisconsin special election, a very important one that unfortunately went the wrong way, the Democrat Supreme Court candidate won by 10 points while voter ID was winning by 20. Yeah, go figure that, yeah.

Explain that one to me. But that's the issue in this is that they seem to want, and I mean they, meaning just a small percentage, is able to wield this kind of power. If the conservatives of Charlottesville could figure out the voodoo that they do, they might win some elections. Because maybe there's only 20% of them, but it seems to work for the progressives. You mentioned the non-citizens and the non-citizens voting. And we're now told, Ken, you've heard this, that the mysterious 13 to 14 million votes that weren't there in 2016 or 2012 that appeared in 2024 and then, disappear just as quickly in 2024, that that's just proof that we're engaging in vote suppression,

but they can't point to any person who says we were turned away. Right. It's interesting. So people on the left say are suspicious about it for their reasons, and people in the right are suspicious about it for our reasons. And the good news is if people had the time and money and commitment, they could check. Right. That is a, you can go back and check who voted.

Now, as you know, in using Virginia, for example, as an example, the voter rolls only just became available six months later. and other states can take even longer than that. So to check all the states is the data won't be available for a while. But that is something that can be checked, could be done this summer, and everybody could have the funny feeling. Usually, for both sides, usually when the options are stupid or evil, usually it's stupid. Yeah, sadly. I think it would be easier to fight evil. Yeah, but you can't eliminate the possibility that it could be evil.

And I do think the COVID, everybody voting at home spike from 2020 could explain that difference. But I think it's worth running the ground. Sure. But it's a big, big project. It's a big, big project. And we're focused election transparency initiative when getting the SAVE Act through the Senate. Who's the hangup? I mean, is it Mitch McConnell?

It sounds like he doesn't want to do it. Who are the hangups? I don't know that when it push comes to shove that any Republican will vote against it. The real hangup is, will you get seven senators from the Democrat side to vote to overcome the filibuster to get it passed? And I have to say, I was really disappointed to only see four Democrats vote for this in the House. I was surprised. Five Democrats voted for it in September. I thought at least some of them would learn their lesson from the 2024 election.

I was wrong. Yeah. And to equate the two bodies, you really would have needed to see 40 Democrats, not four, voting for it. to think you could get to the seven. Nonetheless, when you've got people like John Ossoff in Georgia, who's up in 26, we absolutely intend to be lobbying people in Georgia to get him to vote right. Mark Kelly and then Gallagio, however you say, Diego, yeah.

In Arizona, they're in a tough spot on this issue. And so there are, and John Federman has occasionally, voted in the Trump direction. And Pennsylvania feels is pretty, you know, is not a northeastern state. It's really more of a Rust Belt state. Yeah. And John Federman at least knows that.

So there are a few potential pickups out there, but they are getting so much pressure from their radical left-wing base, and they normally respond to it. They normally give into it, which then means we're going to need Republican leadership in the Senate. Thankfully, now that's John Thune and not Mitch McConnell. Right.

To be looking for must pass legislation to attach the SAVE Act to. Okay. For example, you know, a defense authorization bill, something that everybody hates to vote against and to put it in there and to pass it with that. That's the way this has happened in the past. Right. And that's probably what it's going to take this time. But let me ask you.

And last point on this, and because this all kind of ties together with this Abrago-Garcia mess, which I've decided is playing out like Jussie Smollett version 2.0. Yeah, it's a good analogy. Justice for Jesse. Just, oh, what, wait. And they're gone. But, I mean, you've got Van Hollen is down in El Salvador sitting in a hotel room because nobody will talk to him. And more and more frequent.

Well, you know, we paid for it. We're paying for this microphone senator. But you're getting fewer and fewer people who can make the case that, okay, he's a dad. Does that mean he can't also be an MS-13 enforcer and perhaps a human trafficker? Life beater. Right. Yeah. I mean, even the Biden administration, you know, what's his name?

John Solomon has documents that have the Biden administration calling him an alien of trouble or trouble alien because he was stopped with a whole bunch of aliens stuffed in the back of his minivan and no proof of who they were or where they were going. And, of course, he was in the wind by the time they got around to it. How long before these guys, and maybe this is the leverage we used for a. Fetterman and a Kelly to say, listen, look at how bad this has gone for you guys. Save face and do this. Yeah, I mean, you know, you and I aren't going to convince them. They have to come to it themselves. But the fact of the matter is people listening to you and me should be talking to their

senators about this stuff, whether they're Republican or Democrat, making sure they know that we want to see the Save Act. We want to see the preservation of the value of American citizenship, not just in elections, but in border security and in deportation. It is amazing to watch them putting in this kind of effort to bring back an acknowledgmently illegal alien and gang member when Chris Van Hollen was nowhere to be seen when Rachel Moran was killed. I mean, do you know that her killer was just sentenced last week? And that conviction just happened. Right. That is fresh news, not a peep out of Chris Zand Holland.

Of course, not. Incredible. Incredible. Well, you know, somebody sees, you know, the next Chuck Schumer when he looks in the mirror, I think. Ken, and I know this is Mike Colombo, but I just, it struck me where we were talking about border security. You know, the president realizing that, you know, the way around Pasi Cometatus is turned the entire Southern. border for, you know, a few miles in into a military base. I think it was just brilliant.

What is your, as former DHS secretary, you're like, where was this back in 2018? So, you know, listeners may or may not recall that I supported DeSantis for president. And the reason I did was because in the first term, we didn't secure the border. We did well on the border, but there was plenty more to do. We didn't put the military in the border. We didn't confront the cartels. We didn't do work site enforcement. We didn't rein in work permits.

We didn't do mass deportation. We didn't do any of the things he's doing now. So I ended up getting the president I wanted on this issue. But it took him changing his course on all of these issues. This is not just a continuation of the first Trump administration. This is a dramatic change. change from the first Trump administration with a substantially higher level of aggressiveness on the immigration issue. And we needed it back then. We need it now. I'm glad he's doing it.

They're making real headway. They've secured the border. By the way, Pasi Cometatis is no bar to the use of the military to keep the border secure. Militaries are for stopping invasions. Yeah. Whether it's one person, 100,000, a government, or a bunch of people. human smugglers. There is no legal impediment to that. Folks who want to read more about that can find my paper on the subject at the Center for Renewing America. And we covered it very extensively, including touching on the Insurrection Act, that you

hear so much about. So president's got a lot of tools. And he's really hit his peak of aggressiveness and his willingness to use them. And there's no question that a Donald Trump would sign a save act if it got to his desk. Now we've got to figure out how to get it there. And I think probably the way that's going to have to happen is must pass legislation in the Senate is going to have to have the save act added to it. That's at America Renewing.com is where you can read that piece for the Center for Renewing

America. And ETI, of course, I surfed away from the ETI website before, so I'm trying to find Is it eat? Election transparency.org. And there's a lot of focus there by us, of course, on the SAVE Act. It's one of those areas now that overlaps election security and immigration issues because it's by protecting citizens' rights to vote, we're excluding non-citizens, which is the way it's supposed to be. And as I said earlier, most Americans already think the law is that way.

And while it says it, there's no way to enforce it. The SAVE Act gives the states the way to enforce it and to protect our votes, your vote and my vote. Amen, Ken. God bless you. Have a wonderful remainder of Good Friday and the rest of Easter weekend, the wrap-up of Holy Week. And bless you and your whole family. And thank you for everything you continue to do for the country and in representation of all of us here in Virginia. Well, thanks, Joe. I appreciate it.

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