Washington D.C. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago before later becoming a U.S. citizen, has blocked the Trump administration’s effort to expand the federal SAVE database so states could verify whether registered voters are American citizens. The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system was specifically designed to allow government agencies to verify immigration and citizenship status. The administration’s position was simple: if federal law requires citizenship to vote in federal elections, then states should be permitted to verify citizenship using a federal database that already exists for that purpose.
The court argued that states could face administrative burdens and that eligible voters might be improperly affected, or in other words, upholding the Constitution is of less importance than defying Trump. What is astonishing is that we have now reached a point where verifying citizenship before voting is considered controversial. The government can verify your identity for taxes, employment, banking, travel, Social Security, military service, and immigration benefits, yet somehow, citizenship verification for elections is treated as an unacceptable burden.
This ties directly into what I wrote yesterday regarding the absurd position that virtually anyone in the world can influence American elections. Foreign governments spend millions lobbying Washington. Foreign corporations influence policy. Foreign media outlets shape public opinion. Foreign money finds countless paths into the political system. Yet when someone proposes verifying whether registered voters are actually citizens, the political establishment suddenly claims the process is too risky.
The Constitution does not grant voting rights to the entire world. The foundation of a republic is citizenship. If citizenship no longer matters when determining who participates in elections, then what exactly is citizenship? That is the question nobody wants to answer. Instead, we are told that asking the question itself is somehow inappropriate.
Time and again, courts appear willing to block virtually any measure associated with election verification, border enforcement, immigration control, or citizenship requirements if it originates from the wrong political camp. The public is not blind. Millions of Americans look at rulings like this and conclude that the institutions entrusted with upholding the law are increasingly detached from common sense.
Republics do not fail because people ask too many questions. They fail when institutions become afraid of answering them. Confidence is the foundation of every political system. Once confidence begins to erode, polarization accelerates, trust disappears, and society fragments into competing camps that no longer believe the rules are applied equally.
If citizenship is required to vote, then verifying citizenship should not be controversial. The fact that this has become one of the most divisive issues in modern politics tells us just how far the country has drifted from the principles upon which it was founded.