Not a single Democrat in the Senate is willing to support the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, and a new op-ed from The Washington Post might just explain why.
The SAVE America Act would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID to cast a ballot in federal elections. The current “safeguard” preventing noncitizens from registering to vote and voting is a tiny square box on the federal registration form asking applicants to attest they are telling the truth about their citizenship status. In other words, the honor system.
The legislation passed the House (with a single Democrat voting alongside Republicans) but has stalled in the Republican controlled Senate, with a few RINOs and the entire Democrat apparatus opposing the election integrity legislation.
But perhaps Democrats are opposed to the common sense election integrity measure because the legislation would endanger New Mexico and turn the battleground of Nevada into a solid Republican state, according to analysis from Yale Law School Professor Ian Ayres and Yale research fellow Jacob Slaughter.
The two explain in their op-ed that they estimate at the national level, “89 percent of Democrats and 90 percent of Republicans hold qualifying citizenship documents, a difference that is not statistically significant.”
That seemingly meaningless 1 percent difference, however, would actually be state-flipping, according to Ayres and Slaughter.
“But because the composition of the electorate varies across states, national parity masks meaningful state-level variation — and what we find, looking state by state, is that the bill may significantly advantage Republicans in a few key ones.”