Here we are, as threatened last week, to talk about the SAVE Act, which is simmering wildly in the halls of Congress. It is purportedly designed to prevent election fraud. It appeals to the same crowd of citizens who believe we never landed on the moon, W was behind 9/11, Haitian immigrants were dining on the house pets of white neighbors in Ohio, and Aurora, CO, was “invaded” and “taken over” by Venezuelan gangs. For those of us who saw through those charades, the SAVE Act is a solution looking for a problem, a problem that doesn’t exist.
When I was coming of age, the mechanics of our democracy felt as reliable and unnoticed as the plumbing in a house—you only notice the pipes if there’s a problem, like a leak. Nowadays, if you listen to the national rhetoric, you’d think our democracy was in crisis. But voter fraud is less like a flood and more like an occasional, isolated drop of water in an otherwise dry basement.
American elections are difficult to manipulate because we don’t hold a single, centralized national election. Instead, there are 50 state elections, each managed by about 10,000 individual local jurisdictions. For example, a county seat on the North Shore or a precinct in downtown Minneapolis each has its own office with specific procedures, clerks, and local systems for tracking ballots.
Decentralization of election management is our greatest defense. Moving a national needle through fraud requires a bad actor to coordinate thousands of separate local officials and systems. This must be done while evading the eyes of your own neighbors who volunteer as poll watchers. These neighbors aren’t faceless bureaucrats. They take their “non-partisan” oath of office with a gravity that national politicians rarely display.
Looking at the numbers helps put concerns about voter fraud into perspective. The Heritage Foundation is one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the United States. Its Election Fraud Map—a database often cited by those skeptical of election results—shows that out of billions of votes cast over several decades, confirmed cases of fraud represent a very small percentage of the total. Today’s concerns about noncitizen voting follow a similar pattern. Recent audits in states like Utah and Georgia have found noncitizen registration rates hovering around 0.04%, and even those are almost exclusively honest mistakes made at the DMV during the Motor Voter registration process, not coordinated efforts to subvert the will of the people.
Despite the lack of evidence, the SAVE Act requires “Documentary Proof of Citizenship” (DPOC), such as a passport or a birth certificate, to register to vote.
In practice, the SAVE Act functions as a massive unfunded mandate. It imperils local control and disenfranchises eligible citizens. Roughly 21 million eligible Americans lack immediate access to a certified birth certificate, marriage license, or passport. This hits married women, the elderly, and low-income rural voters the hardest. It forces local clerks to act as federal immigration agents, verifying complex documents without providing any federal funding to cover the costs of hiring new staff and acquiring the required equipment.
Minnesota is a national leader in voter turnout. About 47% of Minnesotans do not possess a valid U.S. passport. Under SAVE, half our neighbors would be forced to hunt for a certified birth certificate before they could vote. This act disproportionately affects married women. For a voter in Cook or Lake County to register, they might need to provide not just a birth certificate but also a marriage license to “link” their identity. This is a secondary document that the SAVE Act often overlooks. In a region with a high percentage of seniors, it is worth noting that 18% of citizens aged 65 and older nationwide lack a current, unexpired photo ID that matches their legal name.
What really worries me about SAVE is the centralization of power it imposes. Since our country was founded, American tradition has been that states and counties know their voters best. The SAVE Act reverses this. It places oversight in the hands of federal agencies and imposes criminal penalties on local election workers for clerical errors. This “chilling effect” is already causing a mass exodus of experienced local officials.
British publisher and individualist philosopher Sir Ernest Benn, in his 1928 book, The Confessions of a Capitalist, wrote, “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” SAVE is proof of that century-old quote.
Our elections are, and have always been, more secure than the headlines that follow political propaganda would have you believe. And rigging a national election is literally impossible.
The best way to protect election security is for Congress to repeal the 2010 decision of the Court of Supremes in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows billionaires and corporate money to buy elections. Congress could also pass legislation that ends partisan gerrymandering.
