Later this week, the nation will be given the opportunity to see the legislative front of America’s left wing in action. I’m speaking, of course, of congressional Democrats.
On Thursday, the House will consider H.R. 22, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The bill requires that state officials obtain documentary proof of citizenship before registering someone to vote.
In addition, the bill gives states access to federal databases to allow the states to clean up their voter rolls by removing noncitizens who have been improperly registered to vote.
The bill is necessary because, believe it or not, even though it is a legal requirement that one be a citizen of the United States in order to register to vote or to vote, there is currently no legal requirement that a would-be voter actually provide documentary proof of his or her citizenship before being allowed to register.
The only requirement is that a would-be voter check a box on a form, and then sign the form attesting that he or she is a citizen.
A similar bill passed the House last year and was promptly ignored by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
The vast majority of congressional Democrats, you see, oppose this commonsense reform.
The good news is, the Senate is controlled by Republicans now, so if the bill passes the House later this week, the Senate leadership could begin the process of bringing the bill to the floor of the Senate. Bringing the bill to the floor would require at least seven Democrats’ votes to overcome a filibuster.
Last year, the organization I lead, Tea Party Patriots Action, commissioned a survey by one of President Trump’s pollsters, John McLaughlin. The survey of 1,000 general election voters showed strong support for the idea that only citizens should be voting in U.S. elections: 87% agreed that “proof of United States citizenship should be required to register to vote in American elections”; 86% agreed that “only United States citizens should be allowed to vote in elections for the President, Senators, and Representatives”; and 83% agreed that “proof of United States citizenship should be required to vote in American elections.”
Clearly, there is strong public support for legislation to ensure that only citizens can register to vote in U.S. elections.
Yet the left opposes this commonsense bill. According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights – speaking on behalf of its “more than 240 national organizations” – the bill is a “shameful, divisive attempt to prevent millions of U.S. citizens … from registering to vote.”
No, it’s not. The left has argued for literally decades that virtually any attempt to strengthen election integrity will lead to the disenfranchisement of voters – typically, voters of color. Yet real-life examples show exactly the opposite.
Remember, for example, the 2021 effort to strengthen the election infrastructure in Georgia, and how the left insisted those efforts would lead to fewer people voting in future elections? Remember how 2018 and 2022 Georgia Democrat gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams went so far as to call those efforts “Jim Crow in a suit?” And remember how, after the enactment of the new laws, the voter turnout in Georgia in the 2022 midterm elections “shattered turnout and participation rates,” according to a 2023 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau?
Actually, what the left wants is even worse. Not only has the left argued against efforts to strengthen election integrity, the left has actually promoted registering illegal aliens.
For instance, the last time Democrats controlled the House, their top legislative priority was a bill to federalize election administration and subvert state-level laws ensuring election integrity. In the 2021 “For the People Act” – acknowledged by its designation as “H.R. 1” as House Democrats’ top legislative priority – Section 1012 mandated that states automatically register to vote every individual on certain state databases, regardless of their citizenship status; Section 1015 decriminalized voting by illegal aliens if their registration had been conducted as a consequence of the provisions of H.R. 1 (that is, by H.R. 1’s Section 1012); and Section 1201 created a new criminal offense to be lodged against anyone a prosecutor believed had “interfered” with efforts to register certain individuals, irrespective of the citizenship status of the individual.
When the House voted on that bill, every Democrat but one voted for it.
And then, when the bill went to the Senate, Senate Democrats were so determined to pass it that they were willing to blow up the rules of the Senate by abolishing the filibuster. The bill was only defeated because two Democrats – Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – were more committed to maintaining the institution of the Senate than they were to advancing their party’s political agenda. To the left’s chagrin, Manchin and Sinema refused to vote to abolish the filibuster, and the bill died.
Americans want to know their elections are secure. They want to know their votes will be counted, and they want to know their votes will not be diluted by votes cast by people who have no right to cast a vote in a U.S. election.
Republicans will be voting this week for the SAVE Act to honor the public’s desire for strengthened election integrity by adding a requirement for documentary proof of citizenship before a would-be voter is allowed to register. Democrats will oppose this – and America will see whose side Democrats are on.
Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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