Editorial: Oppose efforts to deny eligible voters their right

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, February 24, 2026

By The Herald Editorial Board

A little more than 250 days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections and efforts continue to upset a system of elections in Washington state — including a vote-by-mail system used successfully for 35 years — that assures access to a keystone of democracy and deserved confidence in that process.

No fewer than three bills have been proposed in Congress, including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE), which has passed the House and now has the support of 50 Republican senators; enough for passage if joined by the vice president’s tie-breaking vote; were it not for the current filibuster rule’s 60-vote threshold.

The SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate when registering to vote, while the SAVE America act would also require that same proof in order to cast a ballot; the Make Elections Great Again Act would go even further, banning universal mailing of ballots to registered voters and invalidating mailed ballots received after Election Day, among other requirements.

While supporters have sold the SAVE Act as a reasonable tool for election integrity, weeding out noncitizen voters, it is legislation in search of a problem that exists only in numbers too minuscule to matter. Numerous audits and reports have failed to find more than a handful of instances where non-eligible voters have cast ballots. Louisiana, for example, reviewed its voter rolls back to the 1980s and identified 390 registered voters who were likely noncitizens; of those 79 had cast at least one ballot over that 40-year span. Utah performed a similar review of its 2.1 million registered voters and did not find a single instance of noncitizen voting and only one instance of an ineligible person registering to vote.

To solve that nonexistent problem, millions of potentially eligible voters could be disenfranchised.

If required to show proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to such documents, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. About half of American don’t have a passport and millions lack access to a physical copy of their birth certificate. Additionally, millions of women whose names differ on their identification would have to produce a marriage certificate or other document in order to explain the change in names.

Washington also still faces a challenge from the federal government in protecting the personal information of those registered to vote.

Washington and 24 other states — Democratic- and Republican-led — are facing lawsuits from the Department of Justice that demand the surrender of information from their rolls of registered voters, including complete driver’s license numbers, full birth dates and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers.

Since the filing of the lawsuits — or rather the attempt to file the lawsuits — the release of that information has been opposed by state and local election officials, in particular Washington Secretary of State Steven Hobbs, who in December said the DOJ was welcome to the information that is publicly available and sufficient to confirm the assurance by the state that its voter rolls are being properly maintained.

Hobbs, updating newspaper reporters and editors last week, said the state has still not received an explanation of why the full information requested is necessary, nor what the federal government intends to do with it.

“What are (they) going to do with the data? That’s the big question,” Hobbs asked. “We have asked that question to Assistant Attorney General (Harmeet) Dhillon, and she has not given us the reason why. I think we can all take guesses as to why, maybe, but we’re not going to give up the data,” Hobbs said.

Concerns elsewhere have focused on that information as part of President Trump’s continued attempts to drum up doubts — without justification — regarding the 2020 election result for Joe Biden. Earlier this month, the FBI raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing ballots and other 2020 election records, a reasoning for which has not been explained by the Department of Justice or the FBI.

But Washington state also is waiting for proper notification from the DOJ on the federal lawsuit, Hobbs said, noting that three attempts to serve the state were improperly filed by the agency’s civil rights division, which the secretary of state said has suffered a loss of three-quarters of its attorneys.

“We’re still waiting,” Hobbs said. “We have really good attorneys, so maybe we can help them file properly.”

In the meantime, legislation in the state would further strengthen the state’s protection of voters’ private information. Senate Bill 5892, which has passed the Senate and is now in the House, would prohibit county elections offices and state and local election officers from releasing such information, making it a class C felony.

Were the SAVE Act to pass Congress, Hobbs said it would result in difficulties for state and for county elections offices, although he said he was confident it wouldn’t go forward. While the legislation has passed twice now in the House, it died last year in the Senate.

Yet all that now stands between the SAVE Act and passage are Senate Democrats and perhaps two Senate Republicans.

The legislation now has 50 Republican senators lined up in support, 10 votes shy of breaking the filibuster barrier. Egged on by President Trump to nationalize elections and “take over the voting,” Republicans are now exploring one option to get the SAVE Act past current filibuster rules, forcing Democrats and themselves into the old-school “talking” filibuster of Hollywood lore from the 1939 Jimmy Stewart film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Just without the charm of the Frank Capra classic.

Currently, any bill that doesn’t have 60 votes in the Senate is basically dead, but the issue would stay alive under a talking filibuster, prolonging debate on the act and forcing Democrats to hold the floor to stall a vote but requiring Republicans to remain on the floor at the same time.

Only two Senate Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — have voiced objections to the legislation. McConnell may be the most influential on the matter. As chair of the Senate Rules Committee, McConnell has reportedly declined to schedule a vote on the SAVE Act, blocking even an attempt at forcing a talking filibuster.

Still, 50 Republican votes in the Senate is the closest the act has come to passage, a mark for which more voters — those interested in protecting their voice in all elections — should make clear their opposition to regarding any attempt to disenfranchise eligible voters, especially in service of a solution that rather than solving a problem that doesn’t exist will only create more.