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Last year, Maine voters resoundingly defeated a referendum that sought to restrict absentee voting and require voter ID. Voters across the state saw through the false claims that voter fraud is a problem in Maine and rejected restrictions that would have made it harder for many Mainers to cast a ballot.
Yet, two members of Maine’s congressional delegation support unnecessary federal legislation that would restrict voting rights.
The SAVE America Act, and its precursor the SAVE Act, have been sold as a way to prevent non-citizens from voting in U.S. elections. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal and state elections. That hasn’t stopped Republican-led efforts to restrict voting based on false claims of widespread fraudulent voting.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, a version of which passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week, would set up burdensome and unnecessary new requirements for voter registration and voter identification on Election Day, and require that they be put in place by this November’s election.
Sen. Susan Collins says she backs the bill, which is currently before the U.S. Senate. 2nd District Rep. Jared Golden has voted for previous versions of the SAVE Act in the U.S. House to restrict non-citizen voter registration but opposed the new bill because it includes photo ID requirements for voting.
According to a database compiled by the Heritage Foundation, hardly a liberal organization, there have been 71 cases of ineligible non-citizens convicted of voting in U.S. elections since 1982. While no ineligible voters should be allowed to cast ballots, this is a vanishingly tiny percentage — a fraction of a thousandth of a percent — of the billions on ballots that were cast in those 43 years. The conservative Cato Institute, has also long debunked myths about non-citizen voting.
“Everyone — Democrats and Republicans — should use the new state-level proof that noncitizen voting is virtually nonexistent to push back against the real danger to our democracy: craven politicians using the issue to undermine our free and fair elections,” Cato scholar Stephen Richer wrote in commentary for the institute earlier this month.
In other words, the SAVE Act bills, like last year’s Question 1 in Maine, are clearly a “solution” in search of a problem. We fear, as do many others, that the bills are a way to suppress voter participation while being sold as a way to make U.S. elections more secure, which is unnecessary given the tiny amount of voter fraud that occurs. To support his lie that he won the 2020 election, President Donald Trump has tried to convince Americans that our elections aren’t secure, by attacking absentee voting and mail-in ballots (which he uses), voting machines, voter registration systems, and now he’s spreading the lie of widespread non-citizen voting.
In addition to imposing federal identification requirements for voting, the federal legislation would require all states to adopt new voter registration standards to prove citizenship. A passport, which less than half of Americans have, or a birth certificate would be required. For women who have changed their name because of marriage, a marriage certificate would also be necessary, a step not required of male voters.
For many, obtaining these documents will cost them money and time, adding a price to casting a ballot.
New Hampshire offers a cautionary tale of how such restrictions could impede voting, or at least make it much harder. During an election last March, one woman had to make three trips to her polling place, after gathering more documents, to cast a ballot. Many other voters were turned away, including an older woman who was married in another state.
In other states, purging of voter rolls aimed at eliminating non-citizen registration have resulted in thousands of eligible voters being dropped from these lists.
Stripping the right to vote from millions of people to “fix” a problem that doesn’t exist would be a huge step backward. The SAVE Act, and its spinoffs, must be rejected.
