Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, Republican nominee for vice president, described the interwoven interests of corporations and the Democrats advocating for open borders at the expense of the American people, calling it “fundamentally the end of American democracy.”

Vance joined the “Joe Rogan Experience” for a three-hour interview released Thursday, where he said the motivation behind the Biden-Harris administration allowing millions of illegals to pour across the southern border is twofold: An electoral power play and kowtowing to corporate interests looking to swindle American workers.

“I do think there’s also a power dynamic to it. In particular, I think Kamala Harris and the Democrats, they want to give these millions upon millions of illegal aliens the right to vote,” Vance explained. “They want to legalize them. They want to make it easier for them to participate in our elections. And that means, fundamentally, the end of American democracy, because you’re talking about 25 million people here.”

Vance went on to explain that even if some of the illegals are allowed to vote, the scales would tip so far in Democrats’ favor that Republicans would not win another national election for decades.

“It will have degraded the voting power of the people who have the legal right to be here,” he said, adding that President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty to illegals is the reason why California has become a “one party state.”

“I’m a conservative Republican. But Reagan screwed up a lot,” he explained. “The amnesty thing he really screwed up. … Because of what Ronald Reagan did in the 1986 amnesty, California is now effectively a permanently blue state.”

Many Democrats clearly wish for illegals to start voting, as some far-left cities have already legalized it for local elections, but even without the explicit right to vote, Vance said that the hordes of illegals pouring across the borders still disenfranchise Americans because they have the power to strip them of congressional representation.

Illegal aliens are counted in congressional apportionment, meaning that the number in a given community can cause a state to gain or lose one of the set 435 seats in the U.S. House, Vance explained.

“The state of Ohio lost a congressional seat in the last census, and states that have high illegal immigrant populations picked up congressional seats,” he said. “So you’re actually taking away congressional representation from American citizens and giving it to illegal aliens. Even if you don’t give them the right to vote, you’re still destroying the voting power of American citizens.”

Vance said that illegals should not be counted toward the apportionment of congressional districts, and that the census should ask whether a participant is a citizen, as the Trump administration attempted to do. Democrats sued to make sure the census could not ask for citizenship status.

Rogan transitioned the conversation to voter identification laws, where he said he has “tried to look at this from the most charitable position,” but ultimately it “only makes sense if you’re trying to cheat.”

The host connected the lack of voter ID to the moves from Democrats to count illegitimate votes. Vance brought up the Biden-Harris Justice Department’s lawsuit against Virginia for removing self-identified noncitizens from voter rolls.

While, in an emergency ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia could remove the ineligible voters, Vance said of the lawsuit, “There’s no argument for this other than you want to facilitate cheating.”

Other than voting and changing American demographics, Vance said another primary reason Democrats want illegal immigration is to appease corporate interests.

“There is a massive corporate lobby for cheap labor in the United States of America, and that is, I think, the main thing that’s going on,” Vance said.

He told Rogan a story of a major hotel CEO who was angry at former President Donald Trump’s attempts to shut down illegal border crossings, explaining that the unnamed person said the quiet part out loud.

“’Well, the reason I hate Donald Trump … is because Donald Trump’s border policies have cut down the number of illegal immigrants. And because I can’t pay illegal immigrants under the table anymore, I have to pay American workers, and they want much higher wages,'” Vance said, paraphrasing the CEO.

“I was like, ‘Holy sh-t! This guy just admitted what is straight-up, Monopoly Man evil sh-t,'” Vance added.

For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.

Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.