As Congress prepares for another nailbiting stalemate over efforts to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded, one particular Republican demand has become particularly urgent. Specifically, members of both the House and Senate Republican cauci – Mike Lee and Chip Roy chief among them -- are calling for any such resolution to also include the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility or SAVE Act.

What is the SAVE Act, you might ask? Put simply, it is something which – in a sane country – should be redundant: namely, a bill which prevents noncitizens from voting in United States elections. It does this by requiring those arriving at polling places to present one of ten forms of legal identification in order to vote. Those who cannot do so would be removed from the voter rolls. Those who can do so, but present fraudulent documents, would face fines or imprisonment. It’s as simple as that. And in our view, it must be a precondition for Republican cooperation with any CR on the table.

Now, granted, fights over CRs are notoriously unpredictable instances of partisan wrangling. “What does this have to do with our budget,” many will ask. To this we say, they have answered their own question with those last two words: “Our budget.” Because, whatever you believe about what that budget should look like, the fact that it belongs to a government which is ultimately controlled by the actual people that government is obliged to represent is the most important element. Refuse to safeguard that, and we are no longer a country, let alone a democracy, but simply a battleground of competing electioneering operations, both foreign and domestic. We, at least, believe the fight to preserve America’s stature as a democracy is worth more than any amount of money.

However, this will not be an easy fight to win. Why? Because the Democrats – and even some Republicans -- are about as dead set on stopping something like the SAVE Act as it’s possible to get. The most high-profile Republican defector, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at least has a facially reasonable objection: that Republicans attaching a bill unrelated to the budget to a CR will create a precedent whereby Democrats will do the same. While we understand his reservations, we are simply skeptical that Democrats will care that much whether precedent has been set or not. This is the party, after all, that likes to “make history” at all costs, even in invidious and tyrannical ways. Their disregard for norms when those norms cease to favor them is blatantly obvious to everyone, and if you doubt that, just look at how quickly the liberal call to pack the Supreme Court went from being a fringe fantasy to part of the 2024 Democratic party consensus. You cannot cower behind intangibles forever; principles without power are delusional.

To be fair, McConnell also argues that the Democrats would never pass a bill with the SAVE Act attached, and even if they did, that President Biden would never sign it. And on that, perhaps, he is correct, at least barring an effective effort to put the Democrats on the hot seat for letting America’s budget dry up in the name of stopping Voter ID measures – something which an overwhelming majority of Americans support. We understand the hesitation to provoke a government shutdown fight – they have historically gone very, very badly for the GOP – but those fights were over fiscal disagreements which the Democrats could easily spin as heartless cruelty. This is about securing democracy itself. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.

However, the objection that the Democrats would refuse to pass this is revealing in its own way, because it begs the question…why? It’s not as if purging ineligible voters from rolls is in any way unprecedented or dangerous. Texas just cut 1 million voters from its rolls. Granted, liberals were hasty to pooh pooh this as simply getting rid of people who were either dead and/or had moved away, but that in itself is a victory. It does not matter one bit to a potential fraudster why an eligible person is on the rolls, so long as they know that person can be impersonated by someone ineligible. Which, without any ID requirement, they can be. Closing that opening is precisely the sort of thing that laws like the SAVE Act should encourage.

The more honest Leftist response, however, came from Democrats who complained that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s choices of who to cull sent a message to Latinos. In other words, they argue that moves like Abbott’s are racist. This is a bizarre idea, since it implies that either a) Latinos are too dumb to know how to obtain a legal ID (which is itself a racist sentiment), or b) most Latinos are here illegally (also a racist idea). When arguments fail to add up that obviously, there is something disingenuous being done, and the most charitable possible interpretation of what that is, is that Democrats truly think everyone living in this country should be able to vote, regardless of their citizenship or even legal status. The ACLU has also weighed in, complaining that they don’t know if the purges are legitimate because they weren’t allowed to review the data. In the same breath, however, they dismiss the move as simply “routine culling” which is being wrongly used to provide evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Naturally, you have to ask, if it’s as “routine” as all that, why all the scare tactics? Again, the most charitable interpretation is that the ACLU simply believes that any attempt to claim credit for removing illegitimate voters will discourage voting by people whose votes are legally illegitimate, but who they still think should have voting rights.

The trouble with these ideas, aside from their obvious contempt for actual American law, is that their consequences would be utterly catastrophic. If anyone who happens to be present in America on election day can vote, then that creates a gigantic incentive for not just corrupt actors in the United States, but even foreign governments to try to rush as many people who share their interests into polling places as possible. If we had a secure border which could prevent mass migration as a form of electioneering, this would be at least somewhat preventable. Unfortunately, we don’t. And what’s more, to sincere globalists, who aspire to end sovereignty, particularly in western nations like the United States, democracy be damned. That is a feature, not a bug.

What’s more, let’s assume, for the sake of argument that the problem the SAVE Act wants to solve isn’t all that large, which is the other argument made by the Left against it. Okay, if that’s true, then why the ferocious attempt to stop it, despite its being favored by 80 percent of Americans? Do they sincerely believe those remaining 20 percent not only are too incompetent to carry ID, but also don’t drive cars, travel, or buy booze or cigarettes? You know, any of the things for which carrying an ID is mandatory? At the basic level of common sense, it’s hard to imagine how adding an ID requirement to voting, assuming that requirement was communicated transparently in advance, would stop any actual citizen from casting a ballot. Which leads to the uncomfortable question: is the Left so opposed to this because they know they can only win by cheating and casting illegitimate ballots?

We think that such a question is not one that should need to be asked in a free country. We think that in a nation like the US, one should always be able to presume in favor of both political parties’ earnest desire to represent that nation’s actual citizenry. This isn’t a high-minded idealistic statement; if anything, it’s an insultingly low bar for a political party to meet. But, if the Democrats want to put that question on peoples’ minds by refusing to fund the government in order to stop a bill which secures American elections, then we are not going to argue with our opponents when they make mistakes. Which is why we call on both House and Senate Republicans to gird their loins and follow through on including the SAVE Act in the next continuing resolution. Because, contrary to what the folks at MSNBC or the New York Times might tell you, we conservatives do believe in “our democracy” – which is to say, the particular democracy which rightfully belongs only to Americans.