The following was written by Mark Meckler

Welcome to Congress, where lawmakers who showed photo ID to hop on a plane to fly to the nation’s capital argue that you should not have to show photo ID to vote for them.   

In a line often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, it has been said that, “When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.’” Although likely apocryphal, the joke perfectly encapsulates the public’s growing frustration with Congress’s failure to pass the SAVE America Act, President Donald Trump’s signature voter eligibility legislation. 

Why not pass the SAVE Act — unless, of course, one has something to profit from shady elections?   

Over 80% of Americans support mandatory photo identification for voters, according to Pew Research and Gallup. To hear Democrats in Congress talk about it, however, one would think that photo IDs were oppressive Jim Crow relics (Sen. Chuck Schumer, for example, has repeatedly blasted the SAVE Act as “Jim Crow 2.0”). If that is true, I regret to inform you that airports, hotels, and Olive Garden are all racist institutions! 

Yes, Olive Garden may require a photo ID for its Never Ending Pasta pass, and restaurants may require it for adult beverages. But according to the Senate Democratic Leader, photo IDs for elections “would introduce the 21st century equivalent of a democracy that tolerates literacy tests and asks people to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar.” 

Schumer’s language is not only comically alarmist. It is patently dishonest. 

Republicans have proudly championed voting rights since the end of the Civil War. 

Abraham Lincoln spoke favorably of granting “the elective franchise upon the colored man” three days before John Wilkes Booth assassinated him. The 15th Amendment, championed by Ulysses S. Grant, achieved Lincoln’s dream less than five years later. In his inaugural address, James Garfield celebrated the amendment as “the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution in 1787.” 

Unfortunately, racist Democrats continued to find ways to circumvent Republicans’ progress. In 1900, the violent Sen. Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman bragged about how southern states had disenfranchised “as many [Negroes] as we could under the [Reconstruction Amendments]” by imposing poll taxes and literacy tests. Although framed in race-neutral terms, these measures sidestepped the 15th Amendment in practice and were selectively enforced against Black voters. 

The 24th Amendment finally abolished the poll tax in 1964.  

The quest to expand voting rights to as many Americans as possible stands out as one of our proudest achievements. The passage of the 15th and 24th Amendments enabled us to live out the true meaning of our creed: that all men are created equal. We should defend those victories at all costs. 

Those who tell you that basic photo ID laws would restore Jim Crow are either misinformed or lying. The SAVE America Act would apply universally to all voters. There’s nothing race-based about it.   

After decades of fighting to extend the right to vote, we ought to be just as eager to maintain its weight and integrity. We do that by ensuring that only Americans can vote. If the ballot box is left unregulated and non-citizens are allowed to participate in our elections, the hard-won right will be diluted. Mandatory photo ID and proof of citizenship laws should be a noncontroversial way of ensuring that our government answers only to “We the People of the United States.”

Of course, Democrats decry Republicans’ declamations about election fraud as baseless and hysterical. But just this week, New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill revealed that she “learned that a serious software error in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens between June 2023 and June 2024…. These individuals answered ‘no’ when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers’ licenses and identification cards, but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.”

That’s quite the “accident.” And believe me, if a mere “software error” at the DMV in New Jersey can add 6,600 non-citizens to the voter rolls, it can happen elsewhere, too. 

But the same party that let millions of illegal immigrants flood into the country under the previous administration now wants you to believe that no such accident ever happens. They want you to think that the 80% of Americans who support mandatory photo ID laws are actually a radical, fringe minority.   

Congress, in other words, is not only ignoring you. It is slandering you. 

The SAVE America Act is ultimately an issue of self-governance. Who will decide American elections: U.S. citizens or illegal aliens sponsored by a feckless Congress? If our “representative legislature” can evade the will of the American people on an issue as important as this one, it is no longer deserving of the title.

The fate of free and fair elections is on the line. But more than that, the fate of the American system of government — government of, by, and for the people — is at stake. 

It’s time for you and me to remind Congress of who’s really in charge.