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At this writing, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) America Act.
The challenge will be in the Senate, where at least seven Democrats are needed to join 53 Republicans to reach the 60 needed to pass the filibuster plateau.
Should this bill be passed and signed into law? Absolutely.
Its core premise is beyond any question or dispute — that anyone voting in a federal election must be a U.S. citizen and provide documentation to prove it.
In a 2025 Pew Research survey, 83% said they favored requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote. The Republican-Democrat breakdown was 95%/71% in favor.
Options for documentation proving citizenship required when registering to vote include a REAL ID-compliant ID showing citizenship, a passport, military ID, a government-issued photo ID showing place of birth in the United States, other forms of government-issued photo ID if accompanied by a birth certificate, comparable document or naturalization certificate.
Those registering by mail must present proof of citizenship in person.
Picture ID will be required when voting.
Complaints about the bill are that some people do not possess any of these options for proving citizenship.
The bill provides other means by which states may establish processes for certifying individuals who have none of the above documentation.
The idea that there are U.S. citizens who will not be able to produce any means of proving or establishing their citizenship is absurd.
Might they have to expend some effort, spend a little money to get what they need? Maybe. But isn’t the point that freedom is not free?
We have individuals who have left their homes abroad and crossed continents to arrive at our country. That it is impossible for an American to come up with an acceptable means of proving his or her citizenship in order to vote is something only the most welfare-driven mindset that sees people as feckless victims — which unfortunately so characterizes today’s Democratic Party — could conceive.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the bill “an abomination, Jim Crow 2.0” and assured that Democrats will “do everything we can to stop it.”
Racist Jim Crow voting laws — poll taxes, impossible literacy tests, grandfather clauses, property requirements — were designed as barriers to vote. The principles driving these laws were racism and discrimination.
The principle of the SAVE America Act is that voting as an American is a special and great privilege and responsibility. The only discrimination in this legislation is against those who do not see being an American, living free as an American and voting in our elections as a privilege and responsibility.
Unfortunately, we find too much of this pathology in the progressive mindset.
We might note that progressives, who are most inclined to use the power of government to spend our money, are also those least inclined to take personal responsibility as citizens.
We Americans like to talk about rights. But the other side of the same coin is responsibility.
The SAVE America Act could just as well be called the Responsible Citizenship Act.
Let’s hope this important legislation is passed and signed into law.•
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Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and author of “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This Is Good News for America.”
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I’m not sure that Parker realizes that only a handful of states have implemented the Real ID law to comply with the stringent proof of citizenship requirements outlined in the SAVE act. Indiana is not one of them. Additionally I recently read that only 17% of Hoosiers have a passport.
I used my US passport for my real ID application because my birth certificate is not in English and says I was born overseas. My wife used her passport as well because her birth certificate would have had be accompanied by two different marriage certificates to link her current name to her birth certificate.
I can see a lot of other people having problems, especially poor people that have lost track of important documents in multiple moves.
Maybe 10 years from now after the loop holes in the Real ID process has been corrected, it might be reasonable to implement more stringent voting requirements, but the short term results are going to be the disenfranchisement of maybe 40% of Hoosier voters. This would be some part of the 87% of Hoosiers that don’t have passports and that either don’t have a copy of a birth certificate or women that have been married and whose names don’t match the certificate.
I wholeheartedly agree only citizens should vote, but the incidence of non-citizens voting is vanishingly rare despite what the right wing propaganda might be telling you. The SAVE act is just a smokescreen to cast doubts on the legitimacy of elections and a very real effort to disenfranchise a large block of voters.