House Passes GOP’s Voter Integrity Bill
But why is a bill ensuring that only American citizens vote in federal elections having such a hard time in Congress?
Desperation has set in among the Democrat Party. There’s much at stake on November 5, and the Party of Joe Biden is facing some unprecedented political headwinds.
And when we say “unprecedented,” we mean it.
Consider where our two major political parties’ presidential candidates have historically stood at this time in the election cycle according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Just after Independence Day in 2004, Democrat challenger John Kerry led Republican incumbent George W. Bush by two points. At the same time in 2008, Democrat Barack Obama led Republican John McCain by 4.2 points. In 2012, Obama led Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 2.5 points. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton led Republican Donald Trump by 4.7 points. In 2020 — and this is where it gets really interesting — Democrat challenger Joe Biden led incumbent Donald Trump by nine points. And today, just after Independence Day 2024, Trump leads Biden by 3.3 points — a swing of more than 12 points from where the race between the same two men stood four years ago.
Polling caveats aside and unrealized “red wave” projections noted, this is a colossal shift in position between the two parties.
Against this backdrop, then, and knowing the Democrats’ historic hostility toward voter identification, we can understand why they’d be so dead set against a Republican-sponsored piece of legislation called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which was introduced by Texas Republican Chip Roy in May and seeks to ensure that only American citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections.
Who could be against such a commonsensical measure? The question answers itself. Nonetheless, our nation’s uphill battle for election integrity got a bit of a boost Wednesday when the Republican-controlled House passed the SAVE Act, albeit in a vote that broke down shamefully close to party lines.
The final tally was 221-198, with a whopping five Democrats crossing over to join their Republican colleagues in seeking honest elections. The honorable Democrats were Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Don Davis of North Carolina, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.
No good deed goes unpunished, though, and this vote was no exception. The legislative body had scarcely adjourned for the day when Newsweek outed those five patriotic turncoat Democrats.
As Fox News reports, “According to [House Speaker Mike] Johnson, the bill requires state election officials to ask about citizenship before providing applicants with voter registration forms. It also requires an individual to provide proof of citizenship before registering to vote in federal elections, allows state officials to accept a variety of documents to make it easy for citizens to register to vote and provides states with access to a federal agency database in which they can remove noncitizens from voter rolls and confirm citizenship for those who lack proof.”
“Why are Democrats so adamantly against ensuring only American citizens vote in our elections?” asked Johnson rhetorically. “They want to turn illegal aliens into voters.”
Wisconsin Congressman Bryan Steil likewise said, “Democrats say it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. That’s true. It’s also illegal for someone to illegally enter our country, but that hasn’t stopped millions and millions of people.”
Good luck getting this bill a fair hearing in Chuck Schumer’s Democrat-controlled Senate. And even if Republicans can convince certain electorally imperiled Democrats — such as Montana’s Jon Tester, Nevada’s Jacky Rosen, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey — Joe “81 Million Votes” Biden has vowed to veto it.
Yet if even one or two politically expedient Democrat senators join every Republican in voting for the bill, how bad would it look for Biden to veto a bill that was passed in a bipartisan manner?
The SAVE Act faces an uncertain and likely bleak future, but that doesn’t mean that Republicans shouldn’t exploit it. Indeed, they should be shouting about the SAVE Act at every campaign stop in every district across every state.
The American people are strongly in favor of fair and honest elections, and, as Wednesday’s House vote showed, the Democrats are strongly against them.
