Isaac Saul (14:47)

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Amazon Representative (16:16)

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Ollie Pet Food Representative (16:23)

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Will K. Back (16:24)

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Amazon Representative (16:28)

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Will K. Back (16:32)

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Isaac Saul (16:36)

Have a great day, Tracy.

Amazon Representative (16:38)

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Will K. Back (16:39)

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Amazon Representative (16:41)

Small business on Amazon.

Will K. Back (16:53)

Now that we've covered some of the main arguments about the bill, let's get into some of the core questions about it. And a lot of these questions are ones that readers and listeners of Tangle wrote in to ask us about, so we're going to try to cover as much ground as we can. First up, how common is noncitizen voting? Well, decades of investigations across the US show that the documented percentage of votes successfully cast by noncitizens is exceedingly small, with no evidence that these votes have ever influenced the outcome of any election. This has been affirmed by sources from both sides and counters allegations of widespread voter fraud among non citizens, which is a group prohibited from voting in presidential and congressional elections and who also face fines, felony charges and deportation if caught voting. A study conducted by the left leaning Brennan center for justice, analyzing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election, found 30 suspected cases of noncitizen voting, or 0.0001% of the votes in those jurisdictions. In October, the Bipartisan Policy center scraped a Heritage foundation election fraud database for ballots successfully cast by noncitizens and found 77 instances from 1999 to 2023. Now, we do want to note that the Heritage foundation has since argued that this database is only a sampling of proven fraud cases and not the comprehensive list, although they have not provided that comprehensive list. Additionally, the Cato Institute has published reports rejecting any widespread non citizen voter fraud. Cato's Walter Olson, whom we interviewed for this piece, told us that non citizen voting is not a threat to US Election integrity. Quote there isn't very much of it and there doesn't seem to have been enough of it to change the results of any federal races, he he said. In October 2024, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger initiated an audit that identified 20 registered non citizens among the state's 8.2 million voters, only nine of whom had ever voted in an election, and none voted in the November 2024 election. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose referred 653 alleged non citizens to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who was able to secure indictments against six individuals for voting without U.S. citizenship. Following the audit, LaRose said that, quote, investigations like these are key to keeping voter fraud exceedingly rare and give voters greater confidence in the integrity of our elections, end quote. One of the noncitizens indicted in LaRose's audit was Canadian board Nick Fontaine, who said he had assumed he could vote because he could sign up for the draft. The Ohio investigation revealed another potential problem. Recently naturalized citizens can register to vote immediately after their naturalization ceremonies. However, citizenship proceedings are documented on the federal level, while voter registration processes rely on information from county or state agencies. Jen Miller, executive director of Ohio's League of Women Voters, said, it's very possible that the Board of Elections is processing correct voter registration materials, but that the database that the Secretary of State is using is not updated as quickly, end quote. Now, investigations conducted by Arizona, Alabama, Texas and Virginia have appeared to yield higher numbers of noncitizen registered voters 50,000, 3,251, 6,500 and 7,603, respectively. But these numbers have since come under scrutiny. Arizona has 50,000 registered voters without proof of citizenship on file, but they haven't been shown to be non citizens. Alabama's Secretary of State admitted that thousands of those suspected noncitizens had managed to prove their citizenship, and a federal judge halted their removal from the state's voter roll less than a month before the 2024 election, Texas revealed its total had come from Governor Greg Abbott, combining a list of 581 people whom the Secretary of State's office confirmed to be noncitizens with a quote verbally provided list of names purged for not responding to letters concerning their citizenship. In Virginia, the state had given those whose citizenship was challenged in an audit 14 days to prove their citizenship before removing them from voter rolls. During a federally protected 90 day period before the election, Virginia held that the individuals did not qualify for this protection because they were likely noncitizen voters, which the Biden administration challenged to the Supreme Court on behalf of immigrants rights groups. The court sided with the state but did not provide a detailed justification for their decision, as is common with emergency appeals. Although at least some of the 1600 people affected by the order were US citizens. So while there have been instances of noncitizens casting ballots, our current safeguards seem to do a relatively good job at deterring them from voting at the point of registration and at the polls. The cases where non citizens have registered and voted have not revealed any coordinated effort and seem to largely stem from misunderstandings, administrative errors and a lack of data sharing between states and the federal government. Next question have we tried this before? Well, if passed, the SAVE act would implement the first federal proof of citizenship requirement in order to register to vote in US History. However, the federal government has passed other voter identification requirements over the past few decades. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote act hava, which required first time voters to present identification either upon registration or upon arriving at their polling place. The law did not require photo identification and instead provided an expansive list of options to prove identification, including utility bills. The law was not strictly about voter ID regulations, but rather a holistic set of provisions aimed at streamlining elections following issues with the 2000 election in Florida. Along with voter ID requirements, HAVA included provisions to help improve absentee voting overseas, military voting, and voting access for those with disabilities. HAVA has a mixed legacy, with some scholars believing that it proposed reforms on an aggressive timeline that created administrative errors but also helped us to improve voting technology. Individual states have also introduced requirements that voters show some form of identification at the polls in order to vote, starting in 1950 with South Carolina, Hawaii in 1970, Texas in 1971, Florida in 1977, and Alaska in 1980, then followed suit. In 1999, Virginia attempted a pilot program requiring voters to show voter ID at the polls, but it was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court after a lawsuit from the NAACP alleging that the law disproportionately and illegally impacted Black voters. In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder to strike down section 4B of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That section contained a formula based on historical racial discrimination to identify states that were required to seek preclearance to implement voting laws. As a result of the Court's decision, states like Texas had introduced voter ID laws that had been blocked by Section 4B, and those laws immediately took effect after the Supreme Court's ruling. However, voter ID laws enacted in North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin would be struck down throughout the rest of that year. 2017 as of 2024, 35 states have implemented some form of voter identification requirements, though only three states passed some form of proof of citizenship requirements, and those states were Kansas, Arizona, and Tennessee. Kansas's law was ruled unconstitutional in 2018, while Arizona's and Tennessee's are still in effect but apply only to state elections. In our interview with Sarah Gonski from the Institute for Responsive Government, she highlighted Kansas's proof of citizenship law as the most analogous to the SAVE Act. According to an analysis by the IRG, the Kansas law blocked over 30,000 potential registrants in just two years, approximately 12% of all voter registrations during the period, and Kansas officials conceded in court that over 99% of affected voters were US citizens. Both Arizona's and Tennessee's laws were passed relatively recently and their long term impacts have yet to be seen. Tennessee has yet to hold an election under its new law, but its requirements differ from those put forward by the SAVE Act. Whereas Tennessee allows for a real ID driver's license as proof of citizenship, the SAVE act does not. Meanwhile, Arizona has created some errors impacting potentially hundreds of thousands of voters.

Ollie Pet Food Representative (25:56)

Who.

Will K. Back (25:56)

Might be impacted by the SAVE Act. The bill requires that every first time voter or registered voter who is changing their status to re register in person with documents that the SAVE act specifies as sufficient to prove citizenship a passport, military identification card or a photo ID paired with another form of government ID such as a birth certificate, similar to the documents required when filing an i9 at a place of employment. The provisions in the bill therefore impact the following groups of people first all voters who are changing their status first and foremost, the bill requires anyone who is registering to vote for the first time to prove their citizenship in person at the time of their registration. The SAVE act would require any voter who is moving, changing their name or otherwise updating their voting status to physically go to their local government with documentation to prove their citizenship. Currently, the process to register to vote for the first time or changing voting status can be done online or by mail. Next noncitizens Any noncitizen will not be able to register to vote. Several municipalities have laws allowing residents who are not US Citizens to participate in local elections and this law could supersede those provisions. Any other non citizen attempting to illegally cast a vote in an election would have to present fraudulent documents and register in advance in order to do so and as we mentioned before, would run the risk of significant criminal penalties if caught. Next, those with changed names. This group includes roughly 69 million married women who have changed their surnames, as well as likely hundreds of thousands of transgender citizens and others when re registering, any voter whose name as it appears on their proof of citizenship ID does not match their name in the voter roll or whose name on their birth certificate does not match the name on another government ID will have to present additional documentation such as a marriage license in order to prove their citizenship. However, no action is required of registered voters who have already changed their names and are not making a change to their voting registration. Next Town clerks municipal offices responsible for maintaining voter rolls will need to verify every citizen who wishes to register to vote. This creates an extremely complex administrative burden, according to a letter signed by Secretaries of State, administrators and election officials from 15 states. Next people without passports over half of all US citizens do not have passports, meaning that over 140 million US adults will need to supply an alternative photo ID along with supporting documentation, which many Americans do not have on hand and can present an additional burden in order to register to vote. Finally, disproportionately affected subgroups only one in four Americans with a high school degree or less, and only one in five Americans with under $50,000 in annual income have a passport. Voters with lower levels of education and women who have changed their names for marriage are more likely to support Republicans, though low income voters are more likely to support Democrats, so it's unclear which group faces a larger administrative hurdle to register to vote.

Isaac Saul (29:13)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

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Will K. Back (30:11)

The next question is are the states set up to deal with this and will the federal government help at all? The simple answer is no. States and municipalities are not prepared to deal with the changes that the SAVE act is proposing since they institute them in a short period of time. We quoted a joint letter from election officials and Secretaries of State above making that point, and here's a key quote from that letter. Quote Most election officials or registration agencies would undoubtedly need to extend their office hours to accommodate evenings and weekend hours, as well as staff for increased in person voter registration transactions. In states that allow election Day registration, voters have up until the time they appear at the polling place to present the proof of citizenship, further complicating the job of Election Day workers. End quote. That's not just a partisan talking point from Democratic politicians either. The experts we interviewed also all agreed that the SAVE act was creating administrative hurdles for state and local governments and not providing the resources for them to help. R Street's Chris MacIsaac, who supports the bill, acknowledged these significant implementation challenges in the current version of the bill, saying it would create, quote, additional red tape for both citizens and election officials, end quote. However real those challenges are, they may still be manageable. Joe Burns, the former New York Election Administrator, suggested that while the bill might create some initial hurdles for election offices, it also provides considerable leeway for them to adapt to these new requirements to their existing systems, which could be a strength in the long run. The final question we'll tackle here is Would the SAVE act affect mail in or absentee voting? Since the SAVE act is a voter registration bill, it does not affect mail in or absentee voting. However, it would impact those seeking to register by mail or online. Anyone updating their registration or registering for the first time would now be required to submit their proof of citizenship in person at their local election office. The text of the bill specifically addresses this by saying that anyone who submits an otherwise valid form by mail via the National Mail Voter Registration form will not be eligible to vote unless they meet this in person requirement. In our interview with Sarah Gonski, she noted that this provision could create an additional challenge for voters who live in rural areas. Quote, many rural voters live several hours from the county seat and under the SAVE act, they would have to make an appointment, get in a car, drive all the way there. She said these rural offices often have one or two staff members who aren't equipped to handle a high volume of customer service issues that might arise with this new requirement, end quote. So now that we've covered some of the background of the bill, what supporters and critics say, and some of the key questions, let's get into our take. This take was authored by Tangle's Executive editor, Isaac Saul. This is one of the more bizarre takes I've ever had to write because I am totally aligned with the goals of the bill and simultaneously extremely skeptical of the ways in which it gets us there. Consider this. I've already written about my opposition to non citizens voting even in local municipal elections. I think the idea is frankly ridiculous. Noncitizens in the US Are afforded, or should be afforded many of the same rights as citizens and get access to many of the same benefits. That's all well and good, but voting for obvious reasons should be a key part of the benefits package for being an American citizen. Now, I'm aware of the counterarguments, particularly that noncitizens contribute to their communities in a litany of ways and should have some say in local affairs, but I don't find them compelling. If the leaders and laws that govern the citizenry are not determined by the citizenry, then I'm unsure what the purpose of citizenship even is. It really, truly makes no sense to me, and I've been a little bit shocked even by the small pockets of Democratic political groups spending capital on passing laws that allow non citizens to vote. I've also written about my support for voter ID laws, which is a position I've come to recently. That's relevant here because I'm perfectly comfortable with the government requiring some kind of identification for people to vote as a frontline protection against voter fraud. Many studies have found that the impact of voter ID laws have on suppressing the vote is wildly exaggerated. While the requirement is commonplace across the Western world, I also care a great deal about something else. The trust Americans have in our elections. So much so that I've dedicated literally hundreds of thousands of words to it. I want people to trust our system and poll after poll shows that voter ID requirements are exceedingly popular. As National Review notes, a Gallup poll taken in October found that an overwhelming majority 83% of Americans favor proof of citizenship requirements for first time voter registrants and 84% support voter ID requirements. Two thirds of Democrats support citizenship verification and voter ID despite passionate opposition from the party's lawmakers, activists and media apparatus. End quote. So why am I so skeptical of the SAVE Act? Well, there are three big reasons. First, I don't think our local governments are ready to deal with this law's implications. I've argued that voter ID law needs to include a program to help provide photo ID for the surprisingly high number of Americans who don't have one, which would help obviate that major barrier to voting as well as break the weird dependence we have on providing government issued photo ID with the ability to drive. In this case, any such bill absolutely needs to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into election offices. 155 million people cast ballots in the 2024 election and as noted above, the SAVE act would require the millions of those voters who want to change their status as well as any first time voter to provide physical proof of citizenship and require local governments to file all of their documentation. It would mean navigating the complicating factors from every impacted group, like married women who have changed their names. The law has no phase in period. It would take effect immediately. And everyone we talked to for this piece called out that omission as a problem overwhelming election officials pushing already strained resources to the brink and leaving little time to educate voters about the change. It is truly hard to overstate how much that undertaking would be and how underfunded and poorly equipped our election systems are to deal with it. As Sarah Gonski told us in our interview, this bill provides just one way to address some of our election problems, but it's the most extreme and disruptive way. I think that's a fair assessment. I called out many of these issues when we first wrote about this bill last year, but I've seen nothing in the latest iteration of the bill that addresses them. These issues, combined with severe criminal penalties for election officials who make a mistake, could actually make our elections less secure by making it more difficult for election officials to do their jobs. Second, the bill is trying to address an issue that is actually incredibly small. I believe that Democrats have erred by inviting attention to this issue by advocating noncitizen voting at the local level, and I think we should nip that in the bud. Opponents of the bill often fail to address the arguments for taking proactive steps to address real vulnerabilities in our electoral system. After all, checking a box to affirm your citizenship isn't much of a check at all. Even though states routinely audit their voter rolls, this process will not necessarily catch an ineligible voter before they've had the chance to cast a ballot. Cato's Walter Olson told us that every system can be improved, including ours, and he's right. But right now, noncitizens voting in federal elections is, by every piece of available evidence I can find, extremely rare, and basically a non issue. We have so many problems with our election systems to address, modernization, gerrymandering our primary system and others, and noncitizens casting ballots is near the bottom of my list of priorities. Third, and finally, I don't think this law would have a positive impact on the trust in our electoral system. That's one of my biggest motivators for supporting voter ID reforms, which are widely supported by Americans. Again, the latter is true no matter what I say, and maybe that's the trump card here. But in terms of increasing confidence in elections, I'm more unsure than ever that laws like this would help. Arizona has had a citizenship requirement for over a decade, yet it's still at the center of bogus election fraud claims every year. Wisconsin has had a voter ID requirement for a decade, yet it has also been at the center of election fraud claims in the last few cycles. And when that law became part of the state constitution, this year, people acted as if it was somehow new that voters would now be required to present an id. All in all, the aims of the bill align with many of my previously held views and concerns. We shouldn't allow noncitizens to vote. We should have a voter ID requirement. We should worry about how little confidence there is in our elections. And yet the bill is clumsily written, does not provide the resources for these major changes, and has hardly been revised since since we called out a lot of the same issues last year. For those reasons, it's hard to get behind all right, that is it for today's Friday edition on the SAVE Act. Thanks so much for listening and supporting our work. We'd love to hear what you think about this piece. Any additional questions you have, feedback, criticism, concerns, feel free to write into us and let us know. A quick reminder that we are going to be off on Monday, April 21 in observance of Easter Sunday, so we'll be back on Tuesday. For now, have a great weekend. Thanks y'all.

Isaac Saul (40:15)

Thank you for listening to this Tangle Media Production Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul and our Executive Producer is John Lal. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Lal. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kbach and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75 and John Law and to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.

Amazon Representative (41:14)

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Ollie Pet Food Representative (41:29)

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Progressive Insurance Representative (42:14)

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