I’m old enough to remember the House Republicans ousting Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House and taking 22 days to settle on his replacement. It’s not ancient history–the whole saga took place between October 3 and October 25, 2023. If you want ancient history, you can go back to 2015 when I correctly predicted that McCarthy would lose his bid to become Speaker, or to January 2, 2023 when I correctly predicted he would fail as Speaker and be replaced before the year was out. The Republicans haven’t had a strong Speaker since convicted child molester Dennis Hastert resigned in 2007, and the main reason is the far right doesn’t want to govern.
This problem is about to come again for McCarthy’s successor, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who will try to avoid the umpteenth effort by MAGA/Freedom Caucus Republicans to cause a government shutdown. The fiscal year ends on September 30, and Congress needs to pass some kind of continuing resolution to keep the government fully operational beyond that date. This is the precise issue that brought McCarthy’s short term with the Speaker’s gavel to grief one year ago.
There are enough House Republicans who will never vote for a continuing resolution (CR) that Johnson can’t do it using just Republican votes. But even assuming he could, the Freedom Caucus is making the demand that he attach the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act).
There are all kinds of problems with this bill. To begin with, it seeks to address a problem that doesn’t exist, which is non-citizens voting in federal elections. Both parties agree that citizenship is and should remain a requirement for voting in federal elections, and this is reflected in current law which makes it a crime for non-citizens to register or vote. Because it’s a crime, and because one vote so rarely is determinative of outcomes, there’s almost no incentive for non-citizens to attempt to vote, and they almost never do. There are some local elections where they are permitted to vote, but in that case it’s legal and has nothing to do with the federal government.
A second problem is the bill imposes mandates on state and local election officials without paying for them. Republicans claim to hate unfunded mandates, but that’s not consistently true. Federal Republican officeholders would much rather make their state and local brethren come up with the money for programs than take responsibility for authorizing the spending themselves. And if this makes people angry with the federal government, so much the better. It fits right in with their anti-government messaging.
A third problem is that the bill is all about proof of citizenship, and “more than 9 percent of American citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, don’t have proof of citizenship readily available.” This is especially true of college students and the homeless, who would be disproportionately and wrongly disenfranchised by the new requirements in the SAVE Act.
This can be seen in Arizona where they passed a similar bill way back in 2004, The Supreme Court ruled that their proof of citizenship requirement violated the Voting Right Act, so Arizona created a separate voting list just for federal elections that includes people who are barred from voting in state and local elections for lack of citizenship documentation.
Arizona’s federal-only list provides insight into how a national documentation requirement might impact voters in practice. Analysis conducted by Votebeat found that rather than noncitizens, college students and individuals experiencing homelessness—both transient populations that are more likely to lack identifying documentation—were disproportionately represented on the federal-only list.
For all these reasons and more, with a few exceptions, the Democrats won’t for the SAVE Act, which will make it difficult for Speaker Johnson to pass. With a slim 220-211 majority, Johnson needs 215 votes to pass a bill, and he has several members who probably won’t vote for a CR under any circumstances. But even if he can pass a CR with the SAVE Act attached, there’s no chance that the Democratically-controlled Senate will follow suit.
At that point, the House would face the choice of backing down and funding the government without conditions (which is exactly what got McCarthy bounced) or forcing a partial government shutdown in October of a presidential election year. Either outcome would be bad for the GOP, which is why reasonable Republicans want to avoid the fight in the first place.
The MAGA folks can only see the messaging upside of making it appear that the Democrats are in favor of non-citizens voting. That’s what they think they’d accomplish by forcing the Dems to cast a vote against the SAVE Act. It’s messaging that dovetails with Donald Trump’s constant lies about the issue, and I can see some advantage in having a unified message, even if it’s total bullshit. But it ignores how things will actually play out. The Republicans will ultimately lose in their effort to enact the SAVE Act, but not before weakening Speaker Johnson, dividing the caucus, making the rank-and-file angry with the leadership, and stressing everyone out once again about a shutdown.
Reminding voters about the historic dysfunction of this term’s House Republicans is political malpractice, but I don’t see how it can be avoided, especially since Trump supports the effort. Eventually, Johnson will pass a clean CR just like McCarthy did in 2023, and the GOP will having nothing to show for it but diminished election prospects.
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