Republicans somehow wrongly believe that shutting down government will support election integrity

AOL.com reports:  "With just over six weeks until Election Day, the poll finds Vice-President Kamala Harris with a 5-point lead over former President Donald Trump among registered voters, 49% to 44%. While that result is within the margin of error, it’s a clear shift from July’s poll, when Trump was ahead by 2 points before President Joe Biden’s exit."

Echo opinion published in The Washingon Post by the Editorial Board:

Threatening a shutdown, Trump reminds voters what his first term was really like:  Republicans threaten to hold up funding the government unless Congress makes voting harder.

OMG! The country is again hurtling toward a government shutdown on Oct. 1 and, instead of helping, former president Donald Trump is showing voters he intends to govern in a second term much like he did in his first — chaotically.

At issue is whether Republicans should make the passage of a restrictive voting measure a condition for funding the government. “I would shut down the government in a heartbeat if they don’t get it,” Mr. Trump said on a podcast two weeks ago. “It should be in the bill, and if it’s not in the bill, you want to close it up.”

But, 😡😩House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) plans to do just that. So,  he intends to hold a vote on a funding bill that includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which is supposed to crack down on illegal voting in national elections, despite scant evidence that this is a problem. 

Noncitizen voting is already a serious crime — punishable by prison, removal from the United States and a permanent bar on admission to the country. The legislation would require documentary proof of citizenship for people to register and cast ballots, including mail-in voting. This would add a barrier to electoral participation that would probably result in many legitimate voters being deterred and legitimate votes not being counted.

The act, which already passed the Republican-controlled House as stand-alone legislation a few months ago, would require states to purge their voter rolls and even let individuals sue election officials who register voters without first checking their documents.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1996 already requires states to use a common voter registration form, which includes attesting, under penalty of perjury, that the applicant is a U.S. citizen. Violators can and should be prosecuted.

Given the penalties, it’s not surprising that noncitizen voting in federal elections is rare. The Heritage Foundation has spread deceptive videos that suggest rampant illegal voting by noncitizens in swing states such as Georgia, but the think tank’s own database shows just 23 documented instances of noncitizens voting in federal elections from 2003 to 2023 across the entire country. (We have consistently opposed noncitizens voting in municipal elections, including the District of Columbia, but national legislation concerning federal voting would not stop that.)

Without any evidence, Mr. Johnson claimed this spring that “we all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable.” After winning in 2016, Mr. Trump claimed that 3 million to 5 million illegal votes were cast in states such as California, denying him a popular vote victory. (He could never answer: Why wouldn’t these illegal votes have been cast in the battleground states that decided the election?) A commission Trump appointed in 2017, failed to discover any proof before disbanding. Gut feelings — particularly ones that line up with political interests — do not substitute for evidence.

Governance-minded Republicans recognize the strategic folly of  Johnson and Trump’s brinkmanship. Staffers for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have warned privately that forcing a showdown on voting in a government funding debate could open the door for Democrats to tack on their own voting-related legislation. Another twist is that Republicans under Trump might wind up discouraging Americans who would have voted for the GOP.

Republicans’ preoccupation with clamping down on voting access stems from a time when they benefited from suppressing the vote, particularly among minority voters. For their part, Democratic leaders favor passing federal legislation, such as the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Act, that would increase voting access.

Yet spending much time sorting out who would gain politically from this or that voting bill risks missing the principles at stake. Regardless of who would net votes, making it harder to cast ballots is wrong absent some urgent threat to voting integrity. To the extent there is such a threat, it is on the part of politicians who sow doubt about the nation’s electoral system — and propose new rules that would burden millions of Americans.