The liberal attack against the proposed SAVE Act (which would establish national voter integrity requirements) is that it “discriminates” against women who change their names with marriage.  According to critics, the bill requires presentation of a birth certificate and another form of identification (e.g., a driver’s license), whose names should match.  Because most women change their surnames upon marriage, their driver’s licenses likely would not match their birth certificates.  Liberals insist that the bill aims at “fixing” a problem that does not exist while its real motivation is to disenfranchise women.

Let’s look a little closer.

Birth certificates are needed to prove that somebody is a U.S. citizen.  Only citizens are entitled to vote (even though New York City tried to introduce voting for non-citizens, an effort swatted down by the state’s highest court).  But we also need secure identification (e.g., a driver’s license) to prove who someone claims to be, since birth certificates have no pictures (and even if they did, the picture would be obsolete).

A U.S. passport can substitute for these two documents, since it proves both citizenship and identity.  But many Americans do not have, and fewer carry, a passport.

A driver’s license alone does not meet these two requirements.  For one, it does not prove citizenship.  Many Democrat states, in fact, issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.  It’s part of their “global welcome package” for illegals, including driver’s licenses, resident tuition, etc.  They claim that illegals will drive anyway, so it’s “safer” to have them licensed.  Curiously, that criterion seems to apply only to violating the law to enter the United States illegally.  No state says, for example, that since some people will kill anyway, let’s ignore homicide laws.

After 9/11, Congress told states to issue driver’s licenses that were “REAL ID” compliant — i.e., issued only after thorough documentation of who a person is using multiple pieces of evidence.  That deadline has been constantly pushed back, and still some states have a two-tiered license system.  In any event, no driver’s license proves citizenship.

So if liberals are complaining that proving citizenship and identity to vote is more arduous, they have only themselves to blame: They chose to “document” their beloved “undocumenteds” with driver’s licenses in the hope of blurring them into American society.

Would providing a birth certificate plus a marriage certificate plus another identity document solve the problem?  I am not sure, and the text of the legislation does not seem to envision that. 

One problem is that civil documents in America are extremely local, usually the products of cities or towns, sometimes states.  Counterfeiting is not difficult, and a black market in fake documents would likely spring up with sufficient demand.  We also live in a mobile society.  How is the average poll worker in Connecticut to know what a real marriage (or, for that matter, birth) certificate from Half Moon Bay, California should look like?  U.S. passports are at least standard nationally.

This brings me to my proposal: Why not bite the bullet and issue a national identity card?

Lots of nations issue national identity cards.  They are standard, issued according to one common set of national criteria that prove who one is and whether he is a citizen.  They are usually renewed every ten years, so identification pictures remain accurate.

A national ID card would wipe out the possibilities of document fraud.  It would set a common standard of identity and citizenship verifiable nationally — not just for voting, but for a variety of purposes, like proving employment eligibility.  Right now, employers are supposed to certify somebody has a right to work in the United States based on a variety of documents.  A national ID card would set a trustworthy standard.

The United States has, in fact, a quasi-national ID: the Social Security card.  That “secure” piece of paper is issued to anybody who needs to pay taxes — i.e., to citizens and non-citizens alike.  It has no picture.  It has a name and a number, with no further proof of anything. 

We have coasted along on Social Security cards and state driver’s licenses for decades.  When 9/11 terrorists used documents to carry out their attacks, Americans saw how that system could be exploited and momentarily got the nerve to demand real accountability.  But with time, that faded.  The constant slide in implementing the REAL ID proved that.

There is no good reason to oppose a national ID card.  Sure, some liberals will call it an “invasion of privacy,” even as they have no qualms about other, less secure documents to prove eligibility for various things, from buying alcohol to working to driving.  And some right-wing libertarians will channel their inner Gordon Lightfoot, believing that the “surveillance state” is tracking them as they relocate to “some hidden valley where ... the lonely puma calls.” 

News flash for libertarians: Don’t use EZ-Pass on the toll road up to that valley.

Our piecemeal approach to national security has created the incoherent quagmire that makes it difficult to know who is who, who is entitled to do what, and who should be or not be in this country.  A national ID would permanently eliminate a repeat of our mass illegal immigration problem by putting ready and indisputable proof of identity and status in the hands of every citizen.  It would also make the handing out of documents like driver’s licenses by sanctuary states less useful.  Indeed, REAL ID could be amended to require possession of a U.S. national ID card as an essential prerequisite to getting a secure state REAL ID driver’s license. 

Whatever logic opposition to a secure national identity card had in the past, it puts America today one step away from a potential and avoidable national catastrophe.  Fortress America is less a “fortress” when a plane can arrive from halfway around the world or a terrorist can walk across a land border.  Knowing who’s who in your country hardly should seem to be a controversial proposition.

Image via PickPik.