When asked yesterday if he could name one incident of major voter fraud as the Senate began debate on the Orwellian voter restrictive SAVE (Safeguard Voter Eligibility Act), House Speaker and Holy Roller Hypocrite Mike Johnson said:
"Look, we're not going to get into all that. I'm going to tell you what I tell Democrats. You should listen to the American People...This is a 90/10 issue in public opinion polling, and Democrats agree that you should be a citizen and have a photo ID to vote...If they want free and fair elections. If they don't think fraud should be a problem, they should vote..."
Johnson was both evasive and negligent in his remarks.
There is a reason he did not want to litigate the issue of voter fraud yesterday.
It is because it largely does not exist.
A study by the Project 2025 staff at the Heritage Foundation did a study on voter fraud and found that in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the instances of voter fraud was less than one percent in all those states.
The Center-Left Progressive organization Third Way cited the Heritage study in its below take on the voter restrictive Save Act.
"President Trump has already admitted that this bill is about winning the midterms, not election integrity or fraud prevention. The far-right Heritage Foundation found just 77 documented cases of a noncitizen voting over more than 20 years. This bill is a drastic measure in search of a problem. And it would create massive new problems. Approximately 69 million American women have changed their names after marriage, rendering their birth certificates insufficient proof of identification under this bill. And it will create chaos, forcing major changes to voter registration and verification processes, and requiring significant training requirements, and imposing criminal penalties for election workers if these unfunded mandates aren’t implemented quickly enough. It took the US government nearly 20 years to implement REAL ID, which standardized driver’s licenses. Republicans now want states and counties to begin overhauling voter registration systems in just 30 days—without paying for it."
Johnson is right in asserting that most Americans support voter ID.
Duh.
But what he does not say is that Americans would not favor the restrictive identification and voting process provisions contained in the Republican SAVE Act. These are:
- Requiring proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport. As Third Way stated in its comment, for many Americans, that could be costly because they would have to pay to get copies of their birth certificates, which have been lost through the years. Many women and some men would have to jump extra hurdles because they have married and changed their names. Then again, Vice President Vance has had several names through the years. Let's see if he can get through this process.
- Mr. Trump's request to put restrictions on voting by mail and discriminate against trans athletes and minors.
Democratic Political Consultant Rachel Bitecofer, in a recent op-ed on The Cycle Substack site, wrote that the SAVE measure "as It was written to produce inevitable no votes from Democrats to build a narrative to reject the results of 2026 and 2028," calling it "a political trap" that Republicans and their allies in corporate media could use to frame the Democrats as anti voter id. She suggested retitling the bill as the Strip Americans of Voting Ease Act and called on media and Democrats to focus on all the ways Republicans are trying to make it harder for Americans, including their own base supporters, to vote.
Democrats appear to be taking Bitecofer's advice.
In NBC reporting, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said:
“The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0. It could disenfranchise millions of American citizens...This is not a voter ID bill. This is about purging the voter rolls in a massive way, so you never even get the chance to show a voter ID when you showed up to vote because you’d be knocked off the rolls.”
Independent Senator Angus King, knowing that instances of voter fraud are minscule, commented to NBC:
“We don’t have it in Maine. Here’s what we have in Maine: We have Election Day registration, no voter ID, unlimited absentee voting by mail, and drop boxes. The old saying in Maine is: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Georgia Senator Rapahel Warnock supports voter id but questions that some form of IDs are given preference over others, saying:
“You should have to prove that you are who you say you are when you vote. I’ve never opposed that. But they use voter identification as a pretext for determining the electorate that they think will keep them in power. That’s why, for example, a student ID is not good enough, but a military ID is. So, I can tell you, as someone who ran in Georgia and saw what they tried to do with my runoff, that there’s some people that they don’t want to vote.”
Arizona's two Senators also offered their perspectives on Republicans spending precious time on this when there are more important issues like ICE reform and funding Homeland Security, the war against Iran, the blockade against Cuba, and the affordability crisis to deal with.
Senator Mark Kelly posted:
"The SAVE America Act doesn’t “Save” America. And this isn’t about voter ID. This bill requires everyone to re-register to vote in person and your driver’s license, REAL ID, or military ID aren’t even good enough. Imagine all of our seniors who don’t have valid passports and haven’t seen their birth certificates in decades? What about them? How hard will it be for them to register? And how do they get a passport if they can’t find their birth certificates? And what about the cost? If this becomes law, it will disenfranchise many Americans."
Senator Ruben Gallego, focusig on the political reality of Republican electoral misfortunes in the midterms, published a social media video, saying:
"Well, you're all hearing about this thing called the SAVE Act, and supposedly it's to protect the elections. Really, it's to save Donald Trump's ass, because the Republicans are going to lose heavily this election. And not just the House, but also the Senate.
So instead of having a real conversation about how they're going to bring down the costs, they're just going to make it more difficult for people to vote. And this is not about voter ID, because if it's voter ID, then we'd all be able to just use our real ID. No, they want you to use a passport, or an original birth certificate.
And let's not forget, they also want to get rid of vote by mail. They also want to purge in every state, you know, all the voter rolls, and then make it difficult for people to even get back on, should the federal government purge you from your state voter roll. This is all designed to protect the Republicans and the President, because they are losing.
They're losing on the redistricting front, they're losing on the voter front, they're losing on special elections. This is one of many, many things they're going to do, leading up to the 2026 election. So first they'll try to change, you know, who people vote for.
They try to do that on the redistricting front. Now they're going to change who can actually vote, and that's what they're going to do with the massive purge right now. And next after that, they're going to try to change how the votes are counted.
So be ready, beware. This is not a real, real bill about election integrity. This is one big bill to make sure that Donald Trump and the Republicans stay in power, even though they pissed off every demographic of this country, and they want them out."
Chances are nil that the MAGA Save Act, thanks to internal Republican opposition (they like their voters to vote by mail in rural areas) and the Senate filibuster, will see Mr. Trump's desk for a signature.
That said, any officeholder who says they support the SAVE Act at the federal, state, county, or local level and prioritizes this over paying for TSA agents at airports, putting affordable food on your table and health care for your family, and providing oversight of Mr. Trump's war of choice against Iran, should be voted out of office.
They are not on your side and do not serve you.
