Congressman Jared Golden of Maine
The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation is set to hand out its annual Profile in Courage Award on May 4 to a politician or other public figure who the foundation thinks has demonstrated extraordinary political courage, especially when doing so subjects him or her to criticism from those with whom they are ordinarily allied.
If the deadline for nominations hadn’t already passed for this year’s awards, there are four congressional Democrats who would have fit that description. They should be considered for next year’s Profile in Courage Awards.
On April 10, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, 220-208, with the votes of four Democrats who defied their party’s strident, knee-jerk opposition to the measure, which is aimed at ensuring election integrity.
The four Democrats who courageously crossed the aisle were Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii, Jared Golden of Maine, Henry Cuellar of Texas, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state.
Though the SAVE Act would have passed even if the four had voted against it, their support for the legislation—authored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and designed to ensure that only American citizens can vote in U.S. elections—was not deserving of the condemnation they received from within their own party.
Golden, among the last of the dying breed of genuinely moderate Blue Dog Democrats, posted on X: “There are a lot of misleading claims out there about the SAVE Act. Let me set the record straight: I voted for the SAVE Act for the simple reason that American elections are for Americans. Requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote is common sense.”
One of those “misleading claims” about the SAVE Act came from far-left Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who claimed—“without evidence,” as the legacy media like to say when President Donald Trump makes an unproven assertion—that it would disenfranchise “millions.”
“In a bold new departure for the forces of voter suppression, MAGA’s so-called ‘SAVE’ Act will make it harder for tens of millions of eligible Americans to vote, including tens of millions of people, mostly women, who change their names after marriage,” Raskin falsely asserted in a statement to the leftist news site Democracy Docket. Not surprisingly, that website is run by Democrat superlawyer Marc Elias, who is best known for legally contesting election integrity measures whenever and wherever they are proposed.
Raskin’s flagrantly false talking points were echoed by failed 2016 Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who called the SAVE Act a “Republican voter suppression measure that threatens voting access for millions of Americans, including 69 million women whose married names don’t match their birth certificates.”
That’s also flagrantly false, because when women marry and adopt their husbands’ surnames, they need to change a lot of records and documents, from their driver’s license to their Social Security card to their credit cards. Changing one’s voter registration would be just one more record to update. It would only need to be done once—not for every election—and there are two years between elections, so there would be plenty of time to update one’s registration without missing a vote.
Furthermore, it’s beyond patronizing to suggest, as Raskin and Clinton are doing here, that women are incapable of navigating the process to update their voter registrations—as everyone must do if and when they move and change their address, for example.
In similar fashion, opponents of election integrity measures such as the SAVE Act—again, like Raskin, Clinton, and Elias—have no answer when confronted and asked to explain why they think voters shouldn’t be required to show an ID to cast a ballot when there are at least two dozen other business and personal transactions for which a valid ID must be presented:
- Buy alcohol or tobacco or vape products
- Open a bank account
- Apply for a job
- Rent or buy a home or apartment, apply for a mortgage, and sign up for utility services (e.g., gas, electricity, water, and cable TV)
- Buy or rent a car
- Drive a car
- Board an airplane
- Get married
- Adopt or foster a child
- Adopt a pet
- Rent a hotel room, beach house, or boat
- Apply for a hunting or fishing license
- Enroll in school or college
- Buy a cellphone and sign up for cellphone service
- Enter a casino or gamble legally
- Fill a prescription
- Obtain certain over-the-counter drugs
- Be admitted to a hospital
- Obtain a permit to stage a rally or protest march
- Donate blood
- Purchase pornography
- Apply for unemployment compensation
- Apply for food stamps
- Apply for welfare and other safety-net programs
- Apply for Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security
Note that those final four items are government programs that require an ID to prevent noncitizens and other ineligible people from taking advantage of them. Yet, opponents of election integrity don’t think that the process of choosing the elected officials who make the laws governing those programs should be limited to those who can prove they are who they say they are and that they are U.S. citizens.
Voting shouldn’t be the only government program for which an ID is not required.
Moreover, one would have to be living a hermitlike existence akin to that of the infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, in a shack in the middle of nowhere, without electricity or running water, not to need or have an ID.
As such, the only people who would be disenfranchised by the SAVE Act are those who cannot get a voter ID because they are noncitizens—illegal immigrants or those in the country on visas—or otherwise ineligible and shouldn’t be voting in the first place.
And if, as Democrats like Raskin and Elias insist, there are only a negligible number of noncitizens on the voter rolls now, what do they have to worry about if the SAVE Act removes them from the registry? The dirty little secret is, the only reason for opposing the SAVE Act is because opponents want ineligible people not only on the rolls, but actually voting.
“They want illegals to vote,” Roy told national talk radio host Vince Coglianese on Wednesday, referring to his bill’s opponents.
Since there aren’t likely to be the requisite seven profiles in political courage among Senate Democrats to overcome a partisan filibuster when the SAVE Act moves to the upper chamber, Republicans should find a way to include the election integrity measure in their forthcoming budget reconciliation bill so it won’t need Democrat votes.
Peter Parisi is a writer and editor for The Daily Signal.
Reprinted with Permission from Daily Signal – By Peter Parisi
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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