With polling showing over 80 percent of Americans in favor of voter ID laws, it is hard to come up with reasons why you need an ID to board a plane but not vote in a federal election. That was particularly glaring this week when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) required people to show an ID to attend his campaign events after opposing an ID requirement to vote. So if you want to hear Ossoff speak against voter ID, you will have to show your ID. Now Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has a rather bizarre argument: the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, if passed, would likely violate the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
CNN Host Kasie Hunt told Raskin that “Voter ID is supported by the majority of Americans. But there are Democrats on the Hill and you voted against this? Why not support voter ID?”
Raskin then had this curious response:
“… what’s wrong with the Save act? What’s wrong with it is that it might violate the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote, because you’ve got to show that all of your different IDs match. So if you’re a woman who’s gotten married and you’ve changed your name to your husband’s name, but you’re so now your current name is different from your name at birth. Now you’ve got to go ahead and document that you need an affidavit explaining why. And why would we go to all of these, troubles in order to keep people from voting when none of the states that are actually running the elections are telling us that there’s any problem.”
In fact, under various voter ID laws, states can create systems to address issues such as different maiden names or name changes following a divorce, including requiring a standard attestation provided by the state. Nothing in the SAVE Act requires birth certificates be brought to polling places. It allows for the use of a signed attestation supplied by the state.
As for identification, various forms are allowed:
The legislation would require documentation that shows an individual was born in the U.S., including either:
- An ID that complies with the REAL ID Act and indicates the holder is a citizen;
- A passport;
- A military ID card and military record of service that shows a person was born in the U.S.;
- A government-issued photo ID that shows the person’s place of birth was in the U.S.;
- Other forms of government-issued photo ID, if they’re accompanied by a birth certificate, comparable document or naturalization certificate.
Now, on the 19th Amendment, Raskin’s argument is simply ridiculous. Indeed, if this were credible, why has it not been used successfully against prior state voting ID laws? Rather than making this claim on CNN, it would be interesting for Raskin to try it in court once the SAVE Act passes.
It is unlikely to succeed because the 19th Amendment guarantees the right to vote, but, like all citizens, women can be asked to prove their eligibility to vote. The suggestion that requiring a signature on an attestation form is a barrier to voting is simply incredible.
The Nineteenth Amendment provides:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Requiring proof of your identity neither denies nor abridges the right to vote. Indeed, for supporters of voter ID laws, it protects the right to vote by ensuring that only eligible voters are counted in elections.
Would requiring the REAL ID also violate constitutional rights like the right to travel or association for those with name changes? Of course not. The government may require basic identification for such transactions while creating reasonable methods of addressing name or address changes.
The claim of a 19th Amendment violation is spurious but par for the course in our current political environment. As with claims that democracy is about to die, these inflammatory claims are designed to distract voters who overwhelmingly support Voter ID. Democratic members are unified in opposing such laws. That is a debate that should be resolved on the merits, not meritless constitutional claims.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Voter ID is a healthy sign that law anticipate misbehavior, rather than letting a crisis develop before responding. The Dem argument that there is currently no problem (non-citizen voting) is factually correct, but telegraphs “we don’t legislate until things boil over into a crisis”. That’s not a responsible way to manage. Voting is not going to be allowed to be gamed by partisan zealots.
Now, if only the Supreme Court would declare that partisan gerrymandering is self-serving corruption.
..another KooKooism from Raskin… how did this man ever go so far off his rocker? they’ve been asking me for a Govt. ID as long as I can remember at my VA precinct and no one ever suggested I would lose my right to vote….
18
“How did this guy go so far off his rocker you ask? He got a ride on the Yellow Democrat short bus. Driven by Hillary Clinton while they all feasted on Jerky snacks. Mad Dem disease.
They must have went too deep on his recent hair transplants…remember him wearing a bandanna over his head for about 8 months?
I have always wondered what bad lawyers, many of whom were so marginally competent that they were unemployable by a law firm or unable to attract private clients or chase enough ambulances, did to make a living. Rep. Raskin just answered my inquiry: they to get themselves elected to Congress.
That doesn’t work alone as an explanation; they don’t generally go directly from law school to Congress, so they do have to find something to do in the meantime. In Raskin’s case he was a professor of constitutional law, of all things, at American University Washington College of Law. Others find similar sinecures, such as jobs in political campaigns or as political staffers.
If there is voter I’d it should be social security number and nothing else. Every other way is an attempt to disenfranchise.
That’s as good as no ID at all. You can’t get a job with just a SSN, nor open a bank account, nor do pretty much anything else. Nohing else accepts a SSN as ID.
And of course even a valid SSN doesn’t mean you’re eligible to vote.
The last thing you want floating out there is your social security ID. With that in hand, anyone can steal your ID. A drivers license or other form of government ID is fine.
It’s also illegal to use the ss# as ID.
Very old federal law prohibits that and on older cards it states that the SS card is not to be used as ID.
Showdown don’t know what you think your talking about.
I believe what Raskin had demonstrated and is a reflection as to the extent of how low the Congressional Democrat office holders will stoop. He is either being irrational or is unable to comprehend the writings, could be both in this case, of the Constitution. He and other democrats believe that Trump is unfit to be in office? Those who voted for Raskin are either embarrassed or a reflection.
D’s argue that the process for exercising a right (to vote) should be easier (less “onerous”).
Yet when it comes to exercising a different right (to own a gun), D’s demand —
An entire system of onerous steps: a government-issued photo ID, fingerprinting, a background check, sometimes a “cooling off” period of up to 14 days, a permit from law enforcement (that you are compelled to carry), training (at your expense), a *national* licensing system. Oh, and ditto much of that onerous system to buy ammunition.
The D’s demand to make it easier to exercise the right to vote is *not* a principled argument. It is, yet again, one of convenience.
Some idiot at the NJ DMV refused to give me a Real ID because I have never used the middle name that appears on my NYC birth certificate and I have a valid NJ drivers license. I also have a local marriage certificate showing both my maiden and married names: Apparently we citizens need to save the government from its own stupidity.
I left newjerkistaniland in dec’93 . Never looked back. The DMV there is so Kafka Esque to be like the movie Brazil. And if you have to go to Trenton to the top of the DMV food chain…yeah what a disgusting treatise of bureaucracy and blue city decay indeed !.
OT
The search for Nancy Guthrie continues. The septic tank is being searched.
Thank you, PT. I try to avoid anything about Raskin.
^^^ RICO Cortez, Jasmine Crackedpot, Rashida Nolabia, too, and so many others. 😔
Raskin is full of Schiff!
There should be a small test for everybody (they must answer all correctly) at the Polling places.
Pass it – You can Vote
Fail it – You can not Vote
1. Who was the first President of the United States?
2. How many States are in the United States?
3. How many Stars and Stripes on the American Flag?
That should screen out about 50% of the population.
I have always said that in addition to ID cards, voters should have IQ cards.
Including many U.S. citizens that recently graduated from public schools.
Or “How does the constitutional-amendment process work”?
Trump’s legal team failed that test trying to do it through Executive Order. Should they be outlawed from voting?
There was a time in America when you had to have skin in the game to vote. Property and or business owner. The riff raff on the street were known to have a cheap price per vote – hence no alcohol on voting day. Some things never change only it’s govt checks & welfare that have taken the place of the bottles of booze of days old.
All people have a stake in govt. policy. The question is, do they understand enough about policy choices to vote in their own interests, both long-term and short-term and that of the wider society? Are they able to think independently about such choices? Or are they merely putty in the hands of professional opinion-shapers (infowarriors)?
Congress made a huge mistake outlawing literacy tests. The basic idea of literacy tests was completely valid and proper. It was only the implementation that was sometimes (NOT always, or even most of the time) abused, and gave them a bad name. Rather than banning them, Congress should have made them mandatory, but required that they be administered fairly and imposed harsh penalties, including prison time, for deliberately abusing them. It should still do that.
. The vote will be either to destroy the United States or to keep it, to be or not to be.
It’s evil. Quite amazing…
Thank you PT, I listen to or read your opinions only. I do listen to Professor Dershowitz but he’s seldom on now after his son’s passing. I’ve developed an aversion to hysterics and nonsense.
. You’ll live to feel the mistake of dual citizenship among other mistakes.
What is that saying? Vin, vidi, vici? 👀
There’s nothing the US can do about how other countries manage their citizenship laws. So there’s nothing the US can do to stop dual citizenship.
* It can and does require those becoming US citizens to renounce their former citizenship, but there’s nothing it can do if the foreign country rejects that renunciation.
* It also can’t do anything about those born with dual citizenship.
* It could take away US citizenship from those citizens who choose to become naturalized somewhere else, but that would take a constitutional amendment.
BITCOIN is the currency of the Devil and must be exorcised from humanity.
How was Raskin able to graduate from law school and pass the bar?
. He thinks he’s being funny. He’s a fraud, phony, bad actor.
And serve as a professor of constitutional law for more than 25 years!
But the truth is most lawyers would be capable of a similar error. There’s nothing in a legal education that would teach them otherwise.
Raskin is an idiot.
“BUT” He’ll get re-elected. So Who’s the idiot? Him, the People that elect him, and the PAC that backs him.
“Why, they’’re nothing bur a pack of cards!”
Simpley put Raskin is an idiot and wrong about everything.
Simply
George,
Here is a Thomas Jefferson quote for you:
“With respect to modern languages, French, as I have before observed, is indispensible. Next to this the Spanish is most important to an American. Our connection with Spain is already important and will become daily more so. Besides this the antient part of American history is written chiefly in Spanish.”
George,
Has Trump ever done anything that runs counter to what the Founding Fathers wrote about?
George is not available at the moment. He is too collecting all of the dildos thrown at ICE Officers by the lebians
bwahahahaha
Minneapolis anti-ICE agitators launched dildos at federal agents as they were leaving the Whipple federal building.
https://x.com/TimcastNews/status/2020277109147775334
God bless America.
And ALL “protestors” must be prosecuted per local laws for stalking, interference, obstruction, assault, battery, trespass, disturbance of the peace, creation of a nuisance et al.
The only thing these citizens can do legally is “peaceably to assemble.”
The next step of the President must be martial law in the same vein as that Great American President, Abraham Lincoln.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law…abridging the…right of the people peaceably to assemble….
No never. But Obama and Biden both did that.
Both are criminals how does that bless America? Obummer lied, illegally went after his political opposition denying democracy and braking US law. O’Biden sold us out to just about every foreign adversary with influence and bribe taking. How does that bless America? You are a fool.
Buttrack Obongo was never a “natural born citizen,” never eligible for the presidency, and never anything but a fake affirmative action figure ensconced, and deliberately not struck down, by the communist black-robe juristocracy.
0bama was born a US citizen. That makes him a natural born citizen. He was over 35 years of age, had lived in the USA for 14 years, and had not yet been elected president twice, so he was eligible.
Trump silencing his critics is unconstitutional.
You can’t support Trump and the Constitution at the same time.
c’mon, who are you kidding? NO ONE can shut up Trump’s critics, especially not even logic.
I almost wish what you say was true just for the peace and quiet but i would miss the hilarity of the left’s wrestling with reality.
TDS is a mental disease they suffer from derangement and multiple delusions.
Thank you – excellent post
No if you support Trump you support the Constitution. If you support Democrats you do not support the Constitution. Trump hasn’t done anything about President hasn’t already done
His Supreme Court wins prove that. And at the same time the Supreme Court slaps down the anti Constitution district judges Oblunder and O’Biden appointed.
Trump is not silencing critics
Biden did that and even the tech people that helped him.admitted that. Biden like all communist tried to establish his ministry of truth with his nonsense ‘Disinformation Governance Board headed by a known communist. If Trump was silencing his critics you wouldn’t be here spewing your lies. Your presence proves my point
The loudest voice in this country for the last several years has be the Democrat Party doing everything it can to destroy Trump. Their incitement to violence resulted in 2 attempts to assassinate him resulting in the death of one assassin and one bystander. The left’s voice succeeded in killing a young father in a vain attempt to silence his voice advocating for free speech. People are dying because of your speech.
So true. Everyone knows that the legislative, executive, and amendment power is vested in a judicial branch juristocracy of the United States of America.
Who ever thought that the president was actually the president, uhh, nobody!
Odd as it was under Obammy and Briben bitler that censorship became all the vogue in going along with their eurotrashian compadres. The EO that abolished the smith Mundt act was just the first overt public attack on our collective on American soil. Briben almost got his handler ” Disinformation Governance Board” installed and would have been run by a myriad of former CIA and USAID apparatchiks all with dep rooted ties to old European money and allegiances. Now the Eurotrashians have this Digital Services Act to literally abolish free speech except that allowed by their Borg Collective and are trying to silence US tech companies . The American Demorat party has been on board with them on this state sponsored censorship from the get go and almost got it forced upon Americans.
Another part of this debate that deserves serious discussion is the process by which citizens exercise the vote. Proving citizenship is only the most basic threshold. It establishes eligibility, not capacity.
In nearly every other area where citizens exercise authority or privilege, we require some demonstration of understanding. We do not issue driver’s licenses unless someone shows they know the rules of the road and can operate a vehicle safely. Yet when it comes to voting, an act that determines the direction of the entire country, the question of civic knowledge or preparedness is almost entirely absent from the discussion.
Before this is dismissed as an attempt to exclude the “uneducated,” that is not the argument. Civic knowledge can be learned. Education is accessible. The issue is not class or background, but capacity and preparation. We already accept capacity thresholds elsewhere. We set a voting age because we presume that below a certain point, individuals lack the maturity or understanding to exercise an independent vote, and parents or guardians act on their behalf.
That raises a reasonable question. If capacity matters at 17 but is assumed at 18, what is the measure we are relying on? Reading a ballot is not the same as understanding the system or the consequences of a vote. If self-government depends on informed participation, it is not unreasonable to ask whether we should be willing to discuss what standards of civic readiness we believe matter, and why.
This is not an argument for exclusion. It is an argument for taking citizenship, and the responsibilities that come with it, seriously.
In the past, it was presumed that you learned American History in school. Thus how and why the government works. I will admit that I did not pay that much attention in my senior history class however the earlier classes as well as my parents were informative. I was able to learn while out on my own through work (no college) and such so that at the age of 21 when I was allowed to vote I had a pretty good idea of what and where. Unfortunately at that early age it was with the Democratic party until I was faced with Carter bringing up a family.
That’s a fair point rcs, and I think it gets at the heart of the problem. There was a time when we largely assumed a baseline of civic education from schools, families, and lived experience. That assumption made sense when those institutions actually provided it.
Today, that common foundation is far less reliable, which is why these questions are resurfacing. It’s not about judging past choices or early political affiliations. Most of us evolve as we gain experience, responsibility, and perspective. The issue is whether we still expect citizens to acquire the knowledge necessary to exercise self-government, and if not, what fills that gap.
That’s the conversation we seem reluctant to have.
. Olly, it’s in yearly education from generation to generation. Education was seized by the anti American groups and it went unnoticed. Termites were eating away at your house until the beams and rafters fell in. Is that what you’re asking? Affirmative Action became DEI and CRT. Incompetence was promoted by a dark leadership. People are searching now for that leadership. We know the funding was the American taxpayer. It isn’t difficult to do. Just need hatred, cleverness and money. Gaming the system worked out fabulously.
They don’t need elections anymore. Once ruined, plundered, it’s open to foreign grab.
Sorry, I don’t know what you’re asking.
. When will ballots be printed in foreign languages, at least primary language! It’s time!
/s
In Santa Cruz County in the state of CA., a lot of the documents are printed in Spanish as well as English. In fact I remember numerous occasions where Spanish was the first printing on the sign then English at the county building. That was at least 10 years ago, they may be printing in Spanish now. I think that S.F. is printing in Chinese but they have had a historically high percentage of the Chinese population.
We used to have literacy tests. In some places these were administered dishonestly so as to exclude people who were completely literate, but rather than fix the problem by ensuring honest administration, Congress threw the baby out with the bathwater by banning the tests.
That was a huge mistake, and should be corrected. Congress should repeal the ban, and in fact should require some sort of test at the time of registration. It should also impose strict safeguards to ensure that any such test is administered honestly and impartially, with heavy penalties and prison time for not doing so.
From a systems perspective, the failure of past literacy tests was not the objective, but the process. The output we want is an informed electorate capable of exercising self-government. When a process is abused, the rational response is to redesign it with safeguards, not to abandon the output altogether.
If civic knowledge matters to the health of a constitutional republic, then the question is how to measure and cultivate it honestly and uniformly, not whether it should matter at all.
“Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open So fruitfull a Source of Controversy and Altercation, as would be opened by attempting to alter the Qualifications of Voters. There will be no End of it. New Claims will arise. Women will demand a Vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their Rights not enough attended to, and every Man, who has not a Farthing, will demand an equal Voice with any other in all Acts of State. It tends to confound and destroy all Distinctions, and prostrate all Ranks, to one common Levell. I am &c.”
John Adams to James Sullivan, 26 May 1776
_________________________________________________
“The Founders intended to establish a ‘Stakeholder Republic’ modeled after classical antiquity, where the franchise was a restricted privilege reserved for those with the ‘independent will’ provided by property ownership. They shared the modern Chinese premise that a stable state must be managed by a qualified, vested elite rather than a direct democracy of the masses. By failing to ‘hold the line’ on property requirements, as John Adams predicted, the U.S. transitioned from a fiscally restrained republic of producers to a mass democracy of consumers. From this perspective, the current $35+ trillion debt and the expansion of the welfare state are the direct results of allowing those without a financial ‘stake in society’ to vote themselves the property of others, ultimately fulfilling the Framers’ deepest fears of democratic collapse.”
– Gemini (Google)
. Only land owners should vote! They have an investment.
/s
It is embarrassing to have a president with nothing better to do than to pick fights with late night comedians.
It is embarrassing to have late night comedians with nothing better to do than to pick fights with a president.
Thanks everyone! I have so many I’d like to thank!
I am wrestling back the title of anonymous in the spirit of the Federalist Papers.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
I’d rather have that culture war than a senile puppet and a brain dead DEI appointed VP. Would’nt you ?.