What Golden wrote: “The SAVE Act and the politics of fear”
The SAVE Act passed in the U.S. House and will next head to the Senate for a vote. Senator Angus King says he opposes this harmful legislation. Senator Susan Collins? Her stance is less certain, but this gives us an opportunity to ask Collins to back Maine standards on voting rights. We can't go backwards. Use this form to write to your Senator.
Representative Jared Golden recently published a piece on his Substack that was reprinted at the Bangor Daily News explaining his vote on the SAVE Act. Apparently stung by criticism from within his own party, he uses this piece to lay out his rationale for supporting the bill. The League of Women Voters was among those who urged him to vote “no,” and we were disappointed with his vote. But what’s done is done, and we would have left it there. However, his apologia goes on to do so much more damage by propagating false information that we feel compelled to offer this fact check. Some of Golden’s claims are false. Others are misleading or woefully incomplete. We are correcting the record below.
Claim: His vote for the SAVE Act in 2025 got so much more opposition than his vote for the same bill in 2024. That must mean that people are using his vote on the SAVE Act to pursue political power through fear mongering. If the bill was OK with people then, why is it not OK with people now? Golden: “Unfortunately, it’s often easier to capitalize on fear than it is to build political power by bringing people together…Some are using misleading fear tactics about voter suppression because they think it will give them an upper hand in politics and elections.” Rep. Golden singles out the ACLU and Indivisible as having activated their networks in opposition to the SAVE Act.
Fact: There has been consistent opposition to this bill from voting rights groups and experts since it was first introduced. That includes such nonpartisan groups as the ACLU, the Brennan Center, the League of Women Voters, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, among many others. Last year, however, the sitting president, who backed expanding rather than limiting voting rights, would have vetoed it. As such, Jared Golden’s support of the bill was a non-issue. It would never have become law under the last administration. This year, the threat is real: the new president supports limiting when and how people register to vote and cast their votes, has actively promoted conspiracy theories about fraud, and will surely sign the SAVE Act if it passes both chambers.This is not a fear tactic: this is taking the man at his word.
Claim: Rep. Golden implies that opponents of the SAVE Act are in favor of noncitizen voting. “Ensuring that American elections are only for citizens is a proposition supported by 83% of Americans.” Opponents of the SAVE Act, by insinuation, resist that proposition.
Fact: This is a linguistic trick. Opponents of the SAVE Act do not dispute the proposition that only citizens should vote. That is current state and federal law. Rather, they accept the established fact that non-citizen voting is “vanishingly rare” (according to the Brennan Center for Justice) and reject the assertion that the SAVE Act will meaningfully reduce that extremely small number.
Claim: The documents that would be needed to register to vote under the SAVE Act are readily available and most people already have them: passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate with matching valid state ID. 93% of eligible Mainers have a driver’s license that will work.
Fact: LOTS of people will need to take action, spend money (currently, the passport fee is $130), and go to some trouble to complete their documentary proof. Only 48% of Americans are currently passport holders. Only 27% of Maine people have a REAL ID. A regular drivers license by itself will not be enough. Under the SAVE Act, previously accepted forms of identification, such as tribal, military, and student IDs are no longer accepted. Those who don’t have a certified birth certificate will need to pay for a copy from the state or country where they were born. And that’s even IF your name on your valid ID matches your name on your birth certificate. For the 69 million women whose last names do not match their birth certificate, if they don’t already have a passport, the process will be significantly more complicated and onerous, as it will be for trans people and everyone who has changed their name, as well as citizens born in foreign hospitals.
Claim: Most Maine people already have proof of citizenship. “If you’re a citizen registering to vote for the first time in Maine, you must provide either a driver’s license number, a state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number — all of which require documentary proof of citizenship to obtain.”
Fact: These forms of ID do NOT require proof of citizenship to obtain. Non-citizen legal residents of Maine and the U.S. are entitled to get a Social Security number, a regular drivers’ license or state ID without proving citizenship. How does Rep. Golden not know the difference between being legally present in this country and being a citizen?
Claim: The lack of readily available documentation is not a barrier to voter registration because the SAVE Act provides a failsafe: It “requires states to allow citizens who for some reason lack documentary proof of citizenship to sign an affidavit, under threat of perjury, affirming they are a U.S. citizen.” The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is tasked to develop this and a way to supply additional documentation. States can also develop processes of their own.
Fact: It’s hard to envision what this failsafe would entail. As required by federal law, Maine voters already take a citizenship oath under threat of perjury when they register. If the drafters of the SAVE Act view this as insufficient – which they must, or there would be no need for this law – then it’s hard to envision what the new processes would look like, except that they must be more rigorous. No one knows how such a process will work and, given the possibility, provided by the act, of prosecuting registrars for insufficient rigor in enforcing it, there are real incentives against allowing a person in this situation to register and vote. Of course, state processes will vary and some states will make it very difficult to vote. Even if Maine’s standards are not as onerous as others, what happens in other states affects the rest of the country’s elections, which in turn affects federal majorities and public policy everywhere.
Claim: Maine will still enjoy high voter participation. “I am confident that under the SAVE Act, our state can both ensure that only citizens can cast ballots and that no one faces unnecessary barriers to registering to vote. Maine has one of the best voting cultures in the country, and I don’t see any reason why the SAVE Act would change that.”
Fact: The SAVE Act raises new barriers to voting for eligible citizens. Maine does have a long pattern of high turnout, but that’s not by accident. We have encouraged voter registration, and Maine people have supported policies like same day voter registration, which was protected by a landslide People's Veto vote in November 2011. The SAVE Act most certainly increases personal and administrative barriers for new registrants and people re-registering. Young people and low income people move more, so this especially affects them, along with married women, rural voters, military voters, and tribal voters. Note also that the underlying documents take money and time to obtain, so this most harms lower income people.