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Noncitizen Voting and the DOJ’s 16 Cases: Jim Pfaff on The Jenny Beth Show | Sep 21, 2026

Published: September 21, 2026
Network: The Jenny Beth Show with guest host Robert McNeily — Tea Party Patriots Action
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The Justice Department has charged 16 people in seven states with voting in elections they had no right to vote in, and prosecutors found most of the violations years after the ballots were counted. On the September 21, 2026 edition of The Jenny Beth Show, guest host Robert McNeily, in for Jenny Beth Martin, spent the hour with Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff on what those cases say about noncitizen voting: how noncitizens get onto the rolls, why states will not hand over the records to check, and why 16 cases are the tip of the iceberg. The program also covered the filibuster and the 1964 precedent, why citizens run elections, an Ohio ruling against a citizenship check, the economic story Republicans need to tell, Virginia, and an ICE shooting in Austin.

Topics Covered

• The DOJ’s 16 Cases and How Noncitizen Voting Happens
• Not a Rounding Error: New Jersey’s 6,000 and the Real Number
• The 1964 Precedent and the Citizens Who Run Elections
• The Ohio Ruling and Congress’s Power Over the Courts
• Telling the Economic Story, and a Quiet Shift in Virginia
• The Austin ICE Shooting and Mass Deportation
• Key Takeaways

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The DOJ’s 16 Cases and How Noncitizen Voting Happens

McNeily opened with the timeline: what does it say that these violations were found years after the votes were counted? Pfaff answered in three parts. First, people on the left point to a Heritage Foundation project they claim shows little election fraud, yet New Jersey has already publicly admitted that over 6,000 people, probably tens of thousands, are illegally registered to vote. The 16 cases show how hard it is to get the actual information.

Second, the process. Democrats in this century took advantage of the motor voter laws passed in the 1990s, sold as a way to register at the license branch. Those laws passed because a driver’s license then required proof of citizenship in every state. Democrats changed their state laws to lessen the citizenship proof while putting registration at the license branch on steroids, which Pfaff said is specifically what caused the problem in New Jersey. Some states now allow attestation, where a person simply attests to being a citizen.

Third, the back end. Democrat states refuse to validate citizenship when the federal government asks, even though Harmeet Dhillon, pushing these cases from the Civil Rights Division, is in Pfaff’s words 100% backed by clearly stated law to obtain voter records and verify them. The federal government sometimes has more records than the states on who is a citizen.

“This is absolutely at every level, for all the reasons I stated and more, Democrat obstruction because they want to replace American citizen votes with illegal noncitizen votes.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Asked whether anyone actually checks citizenship at registration today, Pfaff said the states are specifically hiding it from the federal government while loosening proof requirements. He would call the refusal obstruction of justice, because laws on the books require states to provide these records at the request of the DOJ. He added that the Minnesota fraud cases have shown judges coordinating with one another to build these obstructions, and called it a serious problem for the rule of law.

Not a Rounding Error: New Jersey’s 6,000 and the Real Number

McNeily put the Democrats’ line to him: 16 ballots out of roughly 160 million is a rounding error. Pfaff said noncitizen voting on any scale is much more than a rounding error because of its significance, and it only scratches the surface. Democrats would have to explain why New Jersey’s governor announced more than 6,000 illegals registered, some hundreds of whom voted, and why other records point to 10 or even 100 times that many on the rolls.

“So 6,000 was the tip of the iceberg of tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of illegals that are actually registered in New Jersey. There’s every reason to believe that this problem is at least that severe in every state that does not require citizenship proof for registration to vote.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

With 43 days to the midterms, McNeily asked whether the real extent of noncitizen voting can be known. Pfaff said there is a very simple way. Every state should turn its voter records over to the DOJ under a privacy agreement, and the DOJ can compare the names against DHS and other records. It will not catch everybody, and Pfaff, who works with data all day long, allowed that data has quirks, but it will catch a large number. His second check: see who is registered at every vacant address, UPS store box and postal box store. The problem is fixable if there is the will, he said, and those unwilling are willing to maintain a massive fraud on the American people.

The 1964 Precedent and the Citizens Who Run Elections

McNeily put Senator Mike Lee’s seven-word post on screen: “Noncitizen voting happens. Stop denying its existence.” He noted that 78.3% of voters, regardless of party, say you should prove citizenship to register, and asked why the Senate has not moved against noncitizen voting. Pfaff said the argued reason is the 60 votes needed to end debate, but that John Thune is lying when he says you need 60 votes to do business in the Senate. If 51 Republicans kept a quorum on the floor and worked through the debate procedures, Pfaff believes the SAVE America Act could pass.

His precedent is the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Then-Democrat Majority Leader Mike Mansfield kept debate going without filing cloture or allowing amendments, and held a group of Republican and Democrat senators on the floor so filibusterers had to suffer, until the opposition was worn down and he got his cloture vote. The SAVE America Act, Pfaff noted, was filed in a manner that also blocks amendments.

“You can really get to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington if you’re willing to get there. And that is something that is, to my mind, the most frustrating thing about Republicans in the Senate, and particularly John Thune, is they’re not willing to fight for what 78, 80% of the American people want.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

With the bill unlikely to pass before the election, McNeily asked why poll watching matters more. Pfaff pointed to the Detroit videos from 2020, when Republican poll watchers were pushed out of a counting area and cardboard went up over the glass. He called it a criminal violation that has never been prosecuted, and said he thinks there are federal violations in it as well.

“Their job is to certify the work of citizens who run elections. And I need everyone listening to me to understand this very, very closely. You are the one who runs elections in this country. It’s not government officials.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Citizens conduct the process in the precincts, cooperatively among Democrat, Republican and other poll watchers, except in California, which Pfaff said has made it illegal for citizens to monitor elections. The principle is popular sovereignty, and citizen involvement is the safety factor while legislative and judicial fixes return us to the elections that worked for the first 230 years. We made the same case in our analysis of citizen poll watchers and the mail-in ballot ruling. On Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna’s post, liked 447,674 times, that dual citizens should not run for federal office, Pfaff called it a gray area: a law barring them would be a good thing, not evidently unconstitutional, and maybe a coin flip at the Supreme Court.

The Ohio Ruling and Congress’s Power Over the Courts

A federal judge has told Ohio it cannot require proof of citizenship when someone registers at the motor vehicle office, with registration closing in 14 days. Pfaff said the judge let opponents argue that other parts of Ohio law allow mere attestation by a third party, and stayed the whole thing over the conflict. He called it legislative malpractice combined with pedantic judicial process, picking at a part of the law to draw out something that was not clearly there, when the legislature’s intent was to make sure only citizens vote and get driver’s licenses.

“I think it’s very clear that Americans want only citizenship voting. That’s all they want. And judges that are unwilling to deal with that, where there is enough understanding of the law to get to that endpoint, are judges that are trying to undermine our system in general.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

A green card holder’s ID, he said, must show clearly that the holder is not a citizen. Lawyers were historically trained in logic to find what a law actually means; when a judge goes looking for a reason to reach a political conclusion, bias has broken that process. If the Sixth Circuit rules after registration closes, “It messes up the election,” but Pfaff asked why the too-close-to-the-election argument and the precedent that went against Trump policies suddenly do not apply here. Judges are not immune to criticism, and he told Christians and Jews in the audience that the fight between truth and non-truth goes back to the serpent in Genesis.

On removing judges, Congress has impeachment, the harder route, and a simpler one Newt Gingrich has talked about for years: eliminate or defund the circuit courts and start from scratch.

“The Constitution only creates the United States Supreme Court. It says that any court which is inferior to the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress creates at its pleasure and at its direction. That also means they can take those courts away and reform them and reshape them.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Unlike the Democrats’ court-packing talk, which has less constitutional backing if any, this takes a simple majority vote. Congress has been unwilling for years, and it just needs to do it.

Telling the Economic Story, and a Quiet Shift in Virginia

McNeily cited the Census Bureau’s September 15 numbers: real median household income of $87,460 in 2025, the highest since 1967, and a 10.2% poverty rate, the lowest on record. Pfaff said the numbers matter to every Republican running, and so does the gloomy sentiment in polls, even where it is more feeling than reality. People fill a 15- or 17-gallon tank and pay $40 to $60 where they once paid $15 to $25. His advice is to tell stories, and he told his own: a 2010 F-250 diesel with a roughly 28-gallon tank, $2.50 to $3 a gallon in spring 2021, $4.50 to $5 by May and June after Biden’s executive orders, back to $3.50 to $3.80 by the time Trump took office, where it stayed until the Iran war.

Now inflation is under 3% and GDP growth was just reported at 5%, which he called massive. He credited the One Big Beautiful Bill’s no tax on overtime and tips, relief for seniors, and immediate expensing for business investment, which is only starting to play out. McNeily added that the administration now removes 23 regulations for each new one; Pfaff added Russ Vought’s work at OMB, with federal employment at its lowest since 1966, down more than 200,000. With 60 open seats, he wants Trump telling supporters to demand that candidates back the Trump agenda because it is working.

On Governor Abigail Spanberger reversing the Youngkin-era girls’ sports rule by regulation, Pfaff said that is tyranny in many ways. Two amendments are on Virginia’s ballot, one on transgenderism and one expanding abortion up to term, and the state’s Catholic dioceses, for the first time in history it seems, are telling parishioners to register and vote against both. TCC is targeting three Virginia congressional races it thinks are winnable, and Pfaff expects surprising results there in November.

The Austin ICE Shooting and Mass Deportation

McNeily reported that an ICE officer in North Austin shot a 28-year-old Venezuelan man, now in serious but stable condition and in federal custody. DHS says he entered illegally and had a final order of removal; his attorney told CNN he had held a valid work permit. Pfaff, noting that both organizations belong to the Mass Deportation Coalition covered in our report on the coalition’s next phase, said he did not know all the details, that the shooting is no less tragic, and that anyone who should be held accountable should be. But he asked why anyone would blame ICE.

“Every person on both sides of the aisle anywhere in this country should be saying, but for the fact that this person came into this country illegally this incident would never have occurred.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He blamed Joe Biden in particular, earlier Democrats, and Republicans who called for amnesty, naming Mitch McConnell. Can someone hold a work permit and a removal order at once? “Shouldn’t be able to.” Removal is an administrative process, a quick review, not the full legal process owed to citizens. Pfaff put the cost of illegal immigration in the trillions of dollars over time, plus the crime, and said Trump has mostly been performing but the coalition is telling him to step it up.

Key Takeaways

1. The 16 cases are the tip of the iceberg – New Jersey admitted more than 6,000 illegals on its rolls, and Pfaff says other records point to 10 to 100 times that. Noncitizen voting is at least that severe wherever citizenship proof is not required.
2. Both ends of the process leak – Noncitizen voting starts where motor voter registration grew as citizenship proof was loosened, and Democrat states refuse to share records the DOJ is legally entitled to.
3. The real number is findable – Match state voter records against DHS data under a privacy agreement, and check registrations at vacant addresses and UPS boxes.
4. The Senate has a 1964 playbook – Mike Mansfield held the floor to pass the Civil Rights Act. Pfaff says John Thune will not fight for what 78 to 80% of Americans want.
5. Citizens run elections – Officials certify the work of citizen poll watchers everywhere except California. Detroit 2020 is the warning.
6. Congress controls the inferior courts – It can eliminate, defund or reshape them by simple majority. The Ohio ruling is legislative malpractice plus pedantic judging.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Sep 21, 2026 on The Jenny Beth Show with guest host Robert McNeily, Tea Party Patriots Action.