5 Dems Who Voted For SAVE Act Silent On Voting For It Again

In July of 2024, the House passed the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. Now, the legislation will soon be up for a vote again.

Many Democrats still choose to champion insecure election practices, despite broad popular support for safeguards like voter ID and proof of citizenship. A whopping 198 Democrats voted against the legislation, while 10 Democrats did not partake in voting.

But a few sided with Republicans to pass the SAVE Act when it passed in July, and again in September when it was attached to a continuing resolution, evidently recognizing the popularity of common sense electoral reforms.

Five Democrat representatives — Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas; Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. of Texas; Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina; Rep. Jared Golden of Maine; and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington — voted to pass the SAVE Act alongside 216 Republicans in July.

In September Golden, Davis, and Gluesenkamp Perez were the only three Democrats who voted to pass the continuing resolution that included the SAVE Act. Golden later explained that “citizenship in the United States confers awesome responsibilities and exclusive rights in equal measure — including the exclusive right to vote in American elections.”

“To me and the people of my district, these principles are noncontroversial,” Golden continued.

[READ NEXT: No, We Don’t Already Have ‘Effective Safeguards’ To Verify Voter Citizenship]

With the SAVE Act coming back before the House, The Federalist asked these five Democrats whether they would once again vote to secure American elections. None of the representatives responded to multiple inquiries about how they plan on voting on legislation that Golden once described as “noncontroversial.”

The SAVE Act “would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to make documentary proof of citizenship a requirement for voter registration,” as The Federalist previously reported. The NVRA “enables driver’s license applicants to register to vote through state motor vehicle agencies. While registrants must attest to their citizenship status by checking a box under penalty of perjury, there is no enforcement mechanism.”

The Help America Vote Act requires states to check information about newly registered voters in federal elections against information stored in the state’s motor vehicle administration database. An individual who lacks a driver’s license can provide the last four digits of his Social Security number.

Notably, foreign nationals can obtain both of those documents, so neither one is sufficient evidence of a voter’s citizenship. And in some states, prospective voters can easily slip through HAVA requirements. As previously reported, registrants in California who lack both a driver’s license identification number and a Social Security number can simply provide proof of identity — not citizenship — to register. Some acceptable forms of proof of identity include low-security IDs like a gym membership, utility bill, or credit card.

Americans also overwhelmingly want to safeguard elections from noncitizens as the SAVE Act would do. A Gallup poll from October found that 83 percent of Americans support “providing proof of citizenship when registering to vote for the first time.”