How Kamala Harris accidentally sold the SAVE America Act

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2028 presidential front-runner, recently criticized the SAVE America Act because it would require people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote.

Well, yes.

Sometimes the strongest argument for legislation comes from the people trying to defeat it.

Requiring someone to establish that he is a U.S. citizen before being added to the voter rolls is not some hidden provision critics just uncovered. It is the point of the bill.

The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship before registration for federal elections. Harris meant that as an indictment. Supporters see it as the safeguard at the heart of the legislation.

Recent events are making the distinction harder to dismiss.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security warned election officials in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania that tens of thousands of noncitizens appeared on state voter rolls.

Less than a week later, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) acknowledged that roughly 6,600 noncitizens had been registered because of what she called a “software glitch.”

Calling it a software glitch may explain how it happened. It does not answer the more important question: Why did the system allow it to happen at all?

New Jersey does not prove that every state has the same problem, and an erroneous registration is not the same thing as an illegal vote. But it does demonstrate the basic case for prevention rather than cleanup.

How long did the vulnerability exist? Why was it not caught sooner? And why should states wait until ineligible registrations occur before verifying eligibility?

The New Jersey episode becomes even more revealing because lawmakers had already spotted the weakness.

In May, state Sens. Jim Beach (D) and Kristin Corrado (R) introduced bipartisan legislation intended to prevent New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission from prompting people to register to vote after they had already indicated they were not U.S. citizens.

Think about that for a second.

The software glitch did not invent the vulnerability. It exposed a problem legislators were already trying to fix. That is precisely why supporters of the SAVE America Act want safeguards at the front end of registration, before election officials are left explaining how ineligible names reached the rolls.

As Texas Public Policy Foundation Chief National Initiatives Officer Chuck DeVore wrote in “How to Ensure That Only Citizens Vote,” “When non-citizens vote for any reason, citizens’ votes are diluted and thus disenfranchised.”

RELATED: The SAVE America Act cannot save this electorate

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The argument is not that eligible Americans should face needless obstacles. It is that citizenship should be established before someone is placed on a federal voter roll, protecting the weight of every lawful ballot.

That position is hardly outside the mainstream.

A recent Fox News poll found that 83% of registered voters favored requiring photo identification to register and 77% favored requiring it to cast a ballot.

Most Americans appear to regard verification as a reasonable expectation, not an extraordinary burden. Which makes the Democrats' position even stranger.

Earlier this year, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats support voter ID.

Then came the vote. Senate Democrats opposed Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted's voter ID bill, which would have required voters to present valid identification before receiving a ballot in federal elections.

So what exactly do they support?

The debate has become almost comically inverted. Critics say proof of citizenship goes too far. Democrat leaders say they support voter ID. Then, when a voter ID requirement reaches the Senate floor, they vote against it.

Meanwhile, New Jersey has supplied a real-world example of what happens when verification comes too late.

Kamala Harris meant to make the case against the SAVE America Act. Instead, she described exactly why its supporters want it.

The contradiction now extends well beyond Harris: Democrats say they support verification while opposing the mechanisms designed to perform it.

Sometimes the strongest argument for legislation comes from the people trying to defeat it.