This April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 22, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. This act mandates that states require proof of citizenship when individuals register to vote. Yes, this is one of those dreaded voter ID laws. As for the Illinois Congressional Delegation, all the Republican Representatives (Bost, LaHood, and Miller) voted for it, and all the Democrat Representatives (Garcia, Davis, Jackson, Ramirez, Schakowsky, Budzinski, Casten, Foster, Kelly, Krishnamoorthi, Quigley, Schneider, Sorenson and Underwood) voted against it.
Unsurprisingly, the bill’s passing was an almost strictly partisan affair in nationwide representation, as no Republican in the U.S. House opposed it, and only four Democrats supported it. Of course, it still needs to pass the U.S. Senate before heading to the White House and then becoming law. And even with Republicans in control of both, the fight is not over. This partisan bill has generated some partisan commentary.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) inveighed against this bill, claiming it would “disenfranchise millions of citizens” by requiring “documentation unavailable to millions.” Their explanation? The law requires most citizens to use a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship. This may sound pretty easy for most people, but…
“More than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.”
Wow, that sounds pretty egregious. A law that disenfranchises tens of millions of married American women all at once? If the law really did that, who would even think of supporting it?
But seriously. This almost seems too bad to be true. Do we think that either political party would try to get away with disenfranchising 69 million Americans in one fell swoop? I guess it’s not impossible, but CAP’s claim is so outrageous that I’m going to need some pretty hefty proof before I believe it. Unfortunately for them, a quick survey of the bill puts this doubt to rest.
Section 2(f) of the bill directly addresses this problem. “[I]n the event of a discrepancy with respect to the applicant’s documentary proof,” each state will allow applicants to “provide such additional documentation” that will be necessary to prove their citizenship. So when a married woman’s birth certificate does not include her married surname—after all, it’d be pretty spooky if it did—then she can submit additional documentation showing that she is in fact the same person listed on the certificate.
As Heritage Action assesses this objection,
“This is the same argument the Left pulled out twenty years ago when states began implementing voter ID laws, and that didn’t happen.”
American women have had the annoying habit of getting married and changing their names for centuries. And government officials have had to deal with this fact for as long as anyone can remember. I have a hard time believing that this law is suddenly going to put half the adult population out of luck.
Ultimately, I think the controversy over this bill is really about how seriously we treat the law that’s already on the books. According to current federal law, only U.S. citizens may vote in state and federal elections. So this voter ID law doesn’t expand or contract the electorate, it just provides a way of enforcing what is already supposed to be happening. Yes, it may be inconvenient to have to prove citizenship in order to exercise your right to vote. But that’s part of living in a broken world where bad actors try to abuse good things.
Most of us would rather be inconvenienced by the line at the border than live in a country where no one is screened coming in. And I think we can safely say the same thing about our process of choosing national leaders. So how serious are we about enforcing this law?
