SAVE Act addresses an issue that doesn’t exist

The SAVE Act: Almost every­one has heard some­thing about this piece of leg­is­la­tion that is work­ing its way through Congress.  As with so many acts and bills before Congress and state leg­is­la­tures, the title does not tru­ly reflect its purpose.

More specif­i­cal­ly titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, it pur­ports to pro­vide secu­ri­ty in vot­er reg­is­tra­tions when, in fact, it is sim­ply a solu­tion search­ing for a problem.

The over­whelm­ing exam­i­na­tions that have tak­en place regard­ing vot­ing integri­ty over the last few years have unan­i­mous­ly agreed that the secu­ri­ty and fair­ness of elec­tions has nev­er been greater.

And yet some orga­ni­za­tions and groups — and politi­cians for their own per­son­al gains — con­tin­ue to espouse the erro­neous con­tentions that our elec­tions are sub­ject to abuse and fraud and that huge num­bers of inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers are cast­ing votes and skew­ing elections.

JUST FACTS, a con­ser­v­a­tive web­site, is claim­ing that between 10% and 27% of the “ille­gal aliens” in the United States are reg­is­tered to vote and, sub­se­quent­ly, used the per­cent­age of all U.S. vot­ers who typ­i­cal­ly vote to fur­ther sug­gest that between 5% and 13% of the esti­mat­ed 19.1 mil­lion ille­gals in this coun­try are rou­tine­ly vot­ing in our fed­er­al elections.

The study from which these fig­ures arose was actu­al­ly made in 2014 and was reject­ed by over 200 polit­i­cal sci­en­tists as flawed, fur­ther stat­ing that the true per­cent­age of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants vot­ing is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly zero.

Even sta­tis­tics from the Heritage Foundation Database, a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank, for the years 1999–2023 found only 77 cas­es of non-cit­i­zens who suc­cess­ful­ly vot­ed in that time peri­od and 10 cas­es of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who vot­ed.  This in an esti­mat­ed 1 bil­lion votes cast dur­ing the peri­od, only 0.0000077% of all votes.  That hard­ly seems to be a num­ber that would have any effect on the out­come of an election.

The SAVE Act would require Americans to pro­vide either a pass­port or birth cer­tifi­cate to reg­is­ter to vote.  According to the Brennan Center, a lib­er­al think tank, there may be as many as 21 mil­lion Americans who do not have ready access to either doc­u­ment and half of all Americans don’t pos­sess a passport.

The bill would also require states to hand over sen­si­tive vot­er infor­ma­tion, a process which is already under­way under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion (and being resist­ed by numer­ous states).

Even the cur­rent bill, which has yet to clear the Senate, could be altered fur­ther as the pres­i­dent has called for it to include ban­ning mail vot­ing, a process of which he has tak­en advantage.

Hardly any­one would dis­agree with keep­ing vot­ing in American elec­tions sole­ly with­in the purview of cit­i­zens, but vir­tu­al­ly every state already has laws that for­bid non-cit­i­zens from vot­ing.  And the diminu­tive num­ber of ille­gals who have suc­cess­ful­ly vot­ed over a long peri­od of time clear­ly demon­strates that the present laws and over­sight at the local and state lev­els are working.

The effec­tive­ness of coun­ty clerks and state offi­cials in keep­ing vot­er rolls devoid of ille­gal vot­ers (espe­cial­ly in Kentucky) is working.

The SAVE Act is an unnec­es­sary intru­sion into state over­sight and should be reject­ed by Congress.