Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act) has been rolling around the halls of Congress for at least two years now. With the Democrats in control of the Senate and Joe Biden in the White House, it just could not build up enough steam to get over the proverbial hill, but this year is a different matter.
So, the question again is what is it and do we really need it? At its most simple level the act would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration. Sound simple enough – we don’t want undocumented immigrants voting, right?
Lend me your eyes for just a few moments and allow me to give you a few comments from the perspective of a retired election administrator (14 years’ experience) from a mid-sized county in Mississippi. Ensuring only citizens can vote is important, but there are more cost-effective ways of doing this. For instance, how many of you have renewed your Mississippi Drivers License for the one that has “Real ID”? You had to produce a certified copy of your birth certificate, didn’t you? Not to get too far into the weeds here, but the Secretary of State’s SEMS (Statewide Election Management System) already communicates electronically with the Department of Public Safety.
Why burden the voters, who would have to find their birth certificate, and the voter registration staff, who would have to handle and verify yet another document? There’s a high likelihood that the information already resides in a state system, which is where voter registration is designed to be managed – not at the federal level anyway.
It is already a felony to vote if you’re not a citizen. Layering on this requirement will result in an unfunded mandate, when what could be helpful from the federal government is sharing of data.
I spent my first 10 years as an election commissioner acting more like a cop, trying to enforce the law. Once a new commissioner was elected (Republican by the way) and came into the office asking a startling question: why aren’t we encouraging people to register to vote? Why are we only purging voters? At first, I said, well, because that’s our job – purging, voter roll maintenance. But then I went back to the U.S. Constitution – something every American should read at least once a year. Voting is an enumerated right. We need to ask ourselves why we would ever even consider doing anything to make it harder for people to exercise that precious right?
Let’s address the law of unintended consequences for a moment. If people aren’t registered, they can’t vote. The SAVE Act will make it harder for people to register – when you move your aging mother, father, aunt, uncle, across state lines to live with you, think about how difficult it’s going to be to get them registered to vote. For married women whose last name is not the same as is on their birth certificate – it’s no longer a simple matter for them to register to vote if the SAVE Act passes.
So, as we continue to bemoan the low turnout numbers in local elections, just remember everything we do that makes it more difficult will further discourage voters. I could bore you with statistics that show how astonishingly low voting by noncitizens really is. Like so many other issues of the day, people are getting worked up with no real facts on the table to justify the outrage. All I can offer is my opinion based on my experience – the SAVE Act seeks to fix something that just ain’t broke. Do we need the SAVE Act? No, we do not.
Trudy Berger served 14 years on the Pike County Election Commission and six years as a member of the Election Commissioners’ Association of Mississippi.
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