Dusty Johnson misrepresents the SAVE Act, which would make it harder for all Americans to register to vote
On April 10, I received an urgent email message from South Dakota's lone representative, Dusty Johnson, requesting my opinion on a pending issue of great importance. The question was posed as follows: “Do you agree that only U.S. citizens should vote in U.S. federal elections?”
It was very important that he have my opinion, and the opinions of other South Dakotans, because the House of Representatives was about to vote on the so-called SAVE Act, which passed the House that day on a party-line vote of 220-208.
Presumably all Americans agree that voting in federal, state or local elections should be limited to U.S. citizens. However, the SAVE Act goes a step further. If enacted into law, it would require all voters to prove their citizenship by presenting a passport or a birth certificate. Dusty Johnson intentionally misled his constituents by implying that the issue was merely whether non-citizens should be allowed to vote.
There is no evidence that we have a problem with non-citizens voting in our elections. In fact, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is a conservative Republican, ordered an audit of voter rolls in his state in October of last year, right before the presidential election. The finding was that just 20 of Georgia’s 8.2 million registered voters were not U.S. citizens, and there were another 156 people whose citizenship required additional investigation.
In a state with a large metropolitan area and a large immigrant population, that suggests that the problem of non-citizens participating in our elections is vanishingly small.
That should not come as a surprise. When you register to vote, you typically must sign a statement, under oath and under penalty of perjury, in which you state that you are a U.S. citizen. How many people will risk being sentenced to prison so that they can sneak in and cast an illegal vote?
The SAVE Act would disenfranchise women, rural voters, Tribal members, college students, military voters and senior citizens who are not able to meet this onerous requirement. About half of Americans lack a passport, and an estimated 69 million women changed their name when they got married.
The SAVE Act would end most voter registration drives, requiring any new voter or any voter who has moved to a new jurisdiction to stand in a long line and present documentation that they may not have. Eliza Sweren-Becker, who is a senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, called it “five-alarm fire for American voters and for election officials.”
It's no secret that Dusty Johnson wants to be our next governor. He presents himself as a problem-solver who can work across the aisle to benefit the American people, yet he is currently reluctant to hold a town hall meeting and answer questions from his constituents.
Moreover, he is not above intentionally misleading his constituents by posing a question on an issue where he already knows how he will vote, knowing that the question grossly misrepresents the issue at hand.
Unfortunately, South Dakotans have recent experience with a governor who could not be honest with us. Do we want to make that mistake again?
Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney and a regular contributor to The South Dakota Standard.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
