First things first: Republicans are guilty as charged.

In response to the Republicans’ push for more trustworthy elections, Democrats such as California Senator Adam Schiff are claiming that the GOP’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is simply an attempt to suppress the vote. And he’s right. It is precisely that — an attempt to suppress the vote of two of the Democrats’ most loyal constituencies: dead people and noncitizens.

And, sadly, at the rate we’re going with deportations, we can anticipate a hybrid of these two Democrat constituencies to rear its fraudulent head in the decades to come: dead noncitizens.

Schiff’s conversation yesterday with ABC’s Jonathan Karl is instructive. Karl starts off sneeringly enough, blaming Republicans for the well-founded perception that our election system is broken and favors The Party That Cheats. “Given there’s, Republicans have undermined confidence in, in elections and the integrity of elections, what, what about the, what about the idea of voter ID, a photo ID being required to vote?” he stutters. “Uh, are you in favor of that? Can there be a compromise where Democrats and Republicans put forward photo ID as a requirement for voting?”

Schiff responds in a predictably mealy-mouthed way, avoiding the question of photo ID entirely: “So, Jonathan, what, what you’ve just asked is essentially, Republicans have created distrust in the elections by making nonexistent, by making claims of nonexistent fraud in the elections, uh, and shouldn’t we use the distrust they’ve created, uh, in order to enact a voter suppression law, which is the SAVE Act, which would require people to have a birth certificate or passport — documents that millions of Americans don’t have, almost half the country doesn’t have a passport, and I don’t know where many millions of people would even find a birth certificate, so…”

No, Shifty, no. Karl wasn’t “essentially” asking anything. He was directly and specifically asking you about photo ID. And you dodged the question.

At this point, perhaps growing weary of Schiff’s mini-filibuster, Karl engaged in a fleeting moment of real journalism: “I, I, I, I, I, no, no, no, no, but I asked you, but I was asking you a different question: photo ID. Because, as you know, let’s show, there was a recent poll, there’s been a lot of polls on this, but in one recent Pew poll, 83% of adults support requiring photo ID to vote. Um, 71% of Democrats, uh, favor, uh, uh, requiring photo ID. Is that something that you can support? And if not, why not?”

“It’s still going to be something, Jon, it, it’s still going to be something that disenfranchises people that don’t have the proper Real ID, driver’s license ID, that don’t have the ID necessary to vote, even though they are citizens. Uh, this is another way, uh, to simply try to suppress the vote. And the last thing I think we want to do is discourage more people [Freudian slip], more citizens [Freudian recovery] from voting.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries fared no better with CNN’s Dana Bash. “I understand that you don’t support things like a passport, for example,” Bash prompted. “But requiring basic ID in order to vote is really popular. A Pew poll from a few months ago showed 83% of Americans, including 71% of your fellow Democrats, support requiring an ID to vote. Why are they wrong?”

“I haven’t said that they’re wrong,” Jeffries retorted. “We know that states are the ones that are empowered to conduct elections, and every state should be allowed to decide the best way to proceed to ensure that there’s a free and fair election.” He called the Republican plan “clear and blatant voter suppression” and warned that President Donald Trump’s comments about “nationalizing elections” mean he’s trying to “steal it.”

Schiff and Jeffries have it exactly wrong. Election reform and a more trustworthy voting system will encourage rather than discourage voter participation. Think about it: Are you more likely to vote if you think your vote and all other votes will be cast legally, or if you think it’s a rigged game that favors The Party That Cheats?

There can be no legitimate defense of untrustworthy elections. None. Their very nature hits at the heart of a republic.

The Democrats are thus in a really tough spot — a spot that paints them into an even tighter corner than their support of boys and men competing against girls and women in sports. When 71% of your own voters think you’re on the wrong side of an issue, you’re at risk of being exposed. They’re having a devil of a time explaining why they think blacks aren’t competent enough to get a photo ID, and yet they’re getting all worked up about a cartoonish video that depicts the Obamas as primates. Well, which is it, you racist Democrats?

Nevertheless, there was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer picking up where President Autopen left off by calling the SAVE Act “Jim Crow 2.0.”

What an insult to black voters — especially those old enough to remember the real Democrat legal regime known as Jim Crow.

If only there were more acts of accidental journalism like the one Jonathan Karl engaged in, the Democrats might be forced to admit that photo ID is a wildly popular, bipartisan idea whose time has come.