Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday introduced new legislation to curb noncitizen voting, despite the fact that the practice is already illegal and rarely occurs.

Johnson said House Republicans would introduce a bill to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, speaking alongside Trump at Mar-a-Lago as he tried to fend off threats from his right. are doing

“It seems like common sense, I’m sure we’d all agree, that we just want American citizens to vote in American elections,” Johnson said, adding that “a lot of people” are on welfare. If you do, you are registering to vote.

It is already a crime to register or vote as a noncitizen in all state and federal elections, although Washington, D.C., and a handful of municipalities in California, Maryland, and Vermont allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.

And very few people break these rules.

“It’s a crime that not only has the consequences really high and the payoff is really low — you’re not getting millions of dollars, it’s not robbing a bank, you have to cast a ballot,” Sean Morales-Doyle, a The lawyer said. at the Brennan Center for Justice. “But what makes it somewhat unique is that committing this crime actually creates a government record of your crime.”

Both registering to vote and casting a ballot leave a paper trail that is required by law to be routinely reviewed by elected officials. Some records are also available to the public.

“It’s very easy to get caught, and you will get caught,” added Morales-Doyle.

The consequences are also huge: Non-citizens can face jail, fines or deportation for voting illegally. According to the Brennan Center, just registering to vote can lead to up to five years in prison.

On the other hand, Morales-Doyle said, requiring documentary proof of citizenship could disenfranchise millions of Americans who don’t have access to passports or birth certificates.

Several states have attempted to require documentary proof of citizenship in the past, but federal law currently prohibits it in federal elections. Arizona needs this alone for state elections.

Many have investigated non-citizen voting and found little evidence. The Brennan Center found only 30 suspected noncitizen votes among 23.5 million votes cast in 2016, indicating that suspected noncitizens accounted for 0.0001% of the votes cast. Trump’s own election integrity commission collapsed without releasing evidence of voter fraud, even though he claimed 3 million undocumented immigrants voted in 2016, costing him the popular vote. .

But both Johnson and Trump have long made baseless claims about election integrity. Johnson has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and its rigged voting machines, and he has recruited Republicans to try to flip states where Trump lost.

For Trump, however, the proposal fuses two of his favorite talking points: immigration and voter fraud.

“It’s the kind of story that, if you’re inclined to dislike immigrants, is the first thing that rings true,” said former Biden adviser Justin Levitt, an expert on democracy and election policy. “I think it’s helped him remain politically powerful even if it hasn’t been very true.”

When non-citizens vote, it’s usually a misunderstanding or a mistake, Levitt said. He said he recalled an instance where California residents were told in the naturalization process that they had been granted citizenship and immediately skipped naturalization interviews to register to vote. However, they had not been formally sworn in as citizens, and so were not yet eligible.