As the midterm elections in November draw closer, renewed attempts to undermine our democracy are on the rise. Instead of creating confusion and introducing prohibitions that make voting more difficult, we should be considering ways to make voting more accessible for all eligible voters.
Recently, Sen. Dave McCormick called for a national voter ID law to be enacted ahead of this fall’s midterm election, and State Treasurer Stacy Garrity called on Gov. Josh Shapiro to “secure elections” and ensure that noncitizens aren’t registered to vote. It is disheartening that such high-ranking elected officials would seek to disenfranchise so many of their constituents based on a myth that noncitizens are voting.
The SAVE Act, which is currently under debate in Washington and which President Trump has declared to be his top legislative priority, would disenfranchise millions of voters across the country in the name of “fixing” a “problem” that doesn’t actually exist.
The notion that undocumented immigrants are voting in elections and therefore the results are “stolen” is simply not true. Permanent residents who aren’t citizens, including green card holders and foreign nationals, would jeopardize their residency status by even attempting to vote. There are already robust safeguards in place to ensure that only eligible voters make it to the rolls, and the false narrative that our elections aren’t secure only serves to erode our faith in the hardworking Americans who run our elections.
In addition to requiring identification to vote on the federal level, they would also enact stringent requirements for the types of identification accepted to register to vote in the first place. Would-be new voters, as well as anyone who wishes to update their registration, would be required to show a U.S. passport, birth certificate, citizenship or naturalization certificate in order to register, with estimates showing if this proposal is enacted, tens of millions of voters across the country will be impacted.
These proposed proof-of-citizenship requirements are based on disinformation.
Last summer, the Department of Justice requested Pennsylvania’s full voter file, including sensitive information such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers, under the premise of ensuring that noncitizens aren’t registered to vote. Thankfully, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, who is tasked with protecting the integrity of our elections, including the security of our personal data,refused this request.
Schmidt, a Republican who faced threats in 2020 for standing up to claims that the election had been stolen, deserves to be applauded for his steadfast commitment to democracy. This year, that leadership will remain invaluable.
This is all happening against the backdrop of Trump calling to “nationalize” elections and calling out Philadelphia specifically. This effort is not only blatantly unconstitutional, as the Constitution unambiguously gives states the power to conduct elections, but it would also make the system much more vulnerable to manipulation.
Currently, elections are run by county governments under the oversight of the states. Having a diffuse election system with local control acts as a safeguard against any attempts to manipulate election results. In order to do so, bad actors would have to compromise thousands of systems, but if voting were to be nationalized, elections would be much more vulnerable to tampering.
This is not to say that our election system is perfect. In fact, there are several proposals that have been debated in recent years that would improve our system dramatically, like establishing early in-person voting, allowing independents to vote in primary elections and allowing counties to begin processing mail ballots before Election Day to ensure timely results. Instead of advocating for national control of our state and local governments, our Pennsylvania senators should be focused on these kinds of simple, commonsense improvements, in addition to ensuring that every eligible resident is registered to vote.