Warning Signs Pile Up for Election Integrity

While Democrats are increasingly confident about winning the midterms on the merits, Republicans seem to be more and more determined to rig them.

The week in election integrity news was dominated by the passage of the “SAVE America Act” in the House of Representatives. Republicans claim that the measure is needed to prevent noncitizens from voting, which is a problem that doesn’t exist. In reality, as we explained, the legislation would do very little apart from trying to preserve the GOP’s congressional majorities and protect Donald Trump from oversight.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the president, Republicans, and conservative influencers spent the week spreading misinformation about what the bill would and wouldn’t do. While the legislation won’t pass in the Senate unless the GOP nukes the filibuster, their full-court press was a means to an end in itself because it lays the groundwork for Trump to claim that the midterms were “stolen” if the Democrats win.

While much of the bill’s focus is on its proof of citizenship and voter ID provisions, an aspect that has been overlooked is its requirement that states “clean up” their voter rolls.

In the past, Republicans have used such purges to kick eligible voters off the rolls, e.g., because they had been inactive for a couple of cycles or because an individual’s names in different government databases didn’t match perfectly. The latter affects naturalized citizens and Hispanic voters disproportionately because they are more likely to have special characters in their names that one database may display differently than another.

It should be noted that ProPublica this week published a story that casts severe doubt over the effectiveness of a federal tool that is supposed to flag noncitizens but that, according to the news outlet, is highly error-prone.

The fight over these voter rolls will be a major issue this year.

Trump has made it clear that he wants to seize control of the election, and one way in which the administration hopes to accomplish that is by collecting the names and personal information of voters. That is why it has been calling on states to not only make these rolls but also other identifiable information of voters available to the federal government.

That issue came to the forefront last month when Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) in which she dictated the conditions under which the Trump administration would be willing to end its “surge” of masked government agents in the state.

One of these demands was that Minnesota turn over its voter rolls even though that has nothing to do with immigration at all and the federal government doesn’t have the authority to demand this information.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped the administration from trying to get its hands on this information. Over the past year, it has requested access to the voter records of most states. Some of them have complied.

After Nebraska’s Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge from the voting rights organization Common Cause, GOP Secretary of State Bob Evnen said he would turn voter information, including dates of birth, addresses, and partial Social Security numbers, over to the Department of Justice.

However, not all red states have been eager to comply.

In West Virginia, Republican Secretary of State Kris Warner said he would not turn over the requested data.

“West Virginians entrust me with their sensitive personal information. Turning it over to the federal government, which is contrary to State law, will simply not happen,” he said. “State law is clear: voter lists are available in a redacted format from my office, but I’ll not be turning over any West Virginian’s protected information.”

Finally, the Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday ruled that Democrats could go ahead with their plan to hold a referendum in April that will allow the state’s citizens to vote on a new congressional map that would be much more favorable for their candidates.

In the current political climate, the map is expected to net the Democrats four seats in Congress. However, even if voters approve, the courts would ultimately still have to sign off on the effort, which is a response to the GOP’s efforts to boost their numbers through an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting effort.