Fixing a problem that doesn't exist

The SAVE Act passed the House in April, 2025. As it awaits consideration in Congress, we spoke with Jason Carter from the Carter Center. Yes, like that Carter. Jason is asking why Congress is working on a vanishingly rare problem: noncitizen voting. The SAVE Act, if it becomes law, will require additional proof of citizenship for all Americans seeking to register -- or reregister -- to vote. The goal? To stop all noncitizens from voting -- which rarely happens. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:30Hannah McCarthy?

  This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 1:32Nick Capodice?

  I'm Nick Capodice.

• 1:34Hannah McCarthy?

  Nick, you know what I've been singing to myself a lot lately?

• 1:41Nick Capodice?

  Well, it could be any number of things, Hannah. Is it Stephen Sondheim?

• 1:47Hannah McCarthy?

  It's not always Sondheim, Nick.

• 1:49Nick Capodice?

  It usually is.

• 1:50Hannah McCarthy?

  What I have been singing a lot lately is "I Have Confidence" from The Sound of Music. And I'm not sure if I'm allowed to sing it here for copyright reasons. However, the line that keeps coming to me is, "All I trust, I leave my heart to. All I trust becomes my own." I have confidence in confidence alone.

• 2:13Nick Capodice?

  I wish you could sing it, I really do. That Julie Andrews is a treasure.

• 2:18Hannah McCarthy?

  She is. But you know what I think it is for me, Nick? We know that a lot of people say they have lost trust. They have lost confidence. In the whole lot of it, the whole system, all the people, be they sitting on Capitol Hill or down the street from us. And to that, I say fooey. Where'd you get that one from?

• 2:39Nick Capodice?

  Experience?

• 2:40Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, well, sure. But Nick, what if that experience isn't what we think it is? What if that mistrust is misplaced? What if, Nick, we had confidence that spring will come again? Maybe it's even spring right now.

• 2:58Nick Capodice?

  It's literally spring right now, Hannah.

• 3:00Speaker 07

  Oh, let's see if I can make it easier.

• 3:07Hannah McCarthy?

  Here's Jason Carter.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  In the United States and everywhere around the world, democracy depends on trust.

• 3:13Nick Capodice?

  Jason Carter? As in Carter Carter?

• 3:16Hannah McCarthy?

  As in Carter Carter, the grandson of the late President Jimmy Carter. Jason is a lawyer and the Chair of the Carter Center.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Since it was founded, the Carter Center has done work in over 80 countries. And that work has been both in terms of peace building, a lot of which is democracy and human rights, rule of law, conflict resolution, and also in health, which is disease eradication, health system strengthening, doing the work on the ground in these places that we believe builds up people, alleviates human suffering, and draws people closer together. We've also observed over 120 elections in more than 40 countries.

• 3:57Nick Capodice?

  Okay, the disease eradication thing is pretty straightforward. I mean, it's a gargantuan goal, but I understand it. I'm not sure what observing elections means.

• 4:07Hannah McCarthy?

  Right. Okay, so observing elections. People from the Carter Center get invited to watch the election process in other countries. The idea is they will check out voter registration, election law, the election itself, and then they offer feedback for nations that are trying to do democracy right. Why? Because the Carter Center can be neutral about it. Basically, they are not invested in the results, but in the process. And because they come from the United States, a successful democracy. Way ahead of you.

• 4:42Nick Capodice?

  All right.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  We realize that as we go out and talk about democracy as an American organization, we have to do that with real credibility. And we were looking around, both at the way the world was looking at American democracy, the way that American democracy was projecting itself out into the world. And we realized that both, we needed to get involved for the Carter Center's own credibility.

• 5:08Hannah McCarthy?

  The Carter Center spends a lot of its time observing other countries' elections, not observing the United States' elections. Until now. We started with trust, right? That is what I am thinking about right now. So is Jason.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  There's a variety of things that have happened over the course of the last several decades in the United States that have eroded that trust in the election system. And democracy depends on trust.

• 5:38Nick Capodice?

  Right. I mean, when you're living in a country where there is a nationwide call to "stop the steal," a belief that elections are fraudulent, full of bad actors and lawbreakers, not actually the democratic process they purport to be.

• 5:53Hannah McCarthy?

  And we are living in that country.

• 5:55Nick Capodice?

  We are. This is a big part of the reason people say democracy is in trouble, because people don't believe in it.

• 6:03Hannah McCarthy?

  Here's how I'm looking at it. America is Never Never Land. Democracy is fairies. And every time you say you don't believe in fairies, a fairy dies. Where did we get the idea that fairies don't exist? A whole bunch of Captain Hooks who grew up, stopped believing in the thing that makes this world beautiful, and want to convince all of us to stop believing in it too.

• 6:25Nick Capodice?

  Start clapping. I do believe in fairies. I do, I do.

• 6:29Hannah McCarthy?

  Belief shapes reality, right? So the Carter Center is looking for ways to bring trust and confidence back. I'm mixing metaphors and mixing movies, but I don't care.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  And so we are looking at a variety of different ways to both reach out to people that are alienated from the system and also use the leaders that exist now to help increase that trust. And that's our focus. What is it that we have? What are the principles for trusted elections? And what are the ways that we can get those principles out into the United States to make sure that we're doing things right? You have to do things correctly, and you also have to be seen to do them correctly, right? The fact that we have a strong election system, the fact that we have a very decentralized election system in the United States, essentially run by the 50 states and some territories. You know, the fact that in Georgia, for example, where I live, you know, we have county election boards.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  It makes it very difficult, very difficult, to steal an election, for example. It makes it almost impossible to have any significant fraud that can affect the outcome of an election, right? That can thwart the will of the people.

• 7:38Hannah McCarthy?

  One useful tactic in making sure that we do not believe in democracy can actually be pretending that what you are doing is protecting democracy. Like Captain Hook double-crossing Peter Pan. For example, you write a law that you say will make our elections safer. I rise in support of the SAVE Act.

• 8:00Hannah McCarthy?

  The American people are done messing around with a weak-kneed system.

• 8:04Nick Capodice?

  The SAVE Act would cripple American elections. The SAVE Act is required if we're going to have election integrity. I rise today in strong opposition. I rise in support of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  You know, an election law like the SAVE Act will come in and and the purpose of it is from the beginning is based on something that that is solving a problem that doesn't really exist.

• 8:28Nick Capodice?

  All right, the SAVE Act, I have heard about this one. This is the thing that passed the House in April?

• 8:33Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, and it's now waiting on Senate consideration. We're recording this episode in May 2025, and it was about a month ago that the House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  The SAVE Act in essence is something that purports to address different types of election fraud, most particularly fraud by or voting by non-citizens.

• 8:57Hannah McCarthy?

  I'll tell you what the SAVE Act will require of voters in just a moment. We will also have a whole episode on President Trump's executive order about elections. But first, a reminder that non-citizen voting in American elections is already illegal. It is also incredibly rare. I decided to look at the data published by one of the think tanks that has actively lobbied for the SAVE Act, the Heritage Foundation.

• 9:19Nick Capodice?

  Thank you to the Heritage Foundation.

• 9:23Hannah McCarthy?

  They say their database contains many confirmed instances of non-citizen voters. It contains 79 people who have done so. 79 people over four decades, in everything from school board elections to presidential. And I know this because I read every report.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Those people get prosecuted. There it is, you know, they're punished with both crimes and imprisonment. And so it is, we have a very robust system of laws that address what happens when someone is caught with voter fraud. And we also have an enormous number of people who are out there looking to find this type of voter fraud, right? I mean, folks are out in in in a variety of contexts, you know, we have very, very good surveillance.

• 10:12Nick Capodice?

  We should also point out here that if you're caught voting as a non-citizen, you could face deportation.

• 10:18Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes. So I was trying to think of something comparable to this, like, what's another federal crime that is nonviolent, but if it's committed by many people can have a serious impact on the democratic system? So I thought about the tens of billions of dollars we miss out on every year because of tax evasion.

• 10:36Nick Capodice?

  How many people commit that crime?

• 10:38Hannah McCarthy?

  That data was a little more elusive, but the IRS estimates about a million people.

• 10:43Nick Capodice?

  A million? Per year?

• 10:46Hannah McCarthy?

  Per year. So we have laws about taxes and tax evasion. We prosecute people for tax evasion, not nearly as many, relatively speaking, as we do for noncitizen voting. Collecting taxes is absolutely essential to a functioning government that sustains a functioning democracy. And look, I'm not naive. The current Congress has expressed more interest in weakening the Internal Revenue Service, the agency that monitors tax evasion, than it has in strengthening it. They've rescinded tens of billions of dollars in funding. There's even a proposed bill to abolish it, along with income taxes.

• 11:22Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, the current Congress doesn't seem to be such a big fan of taxes.

• 11:26Hannah McCarthy?

  But my point is, there is a federal crime that is way more widespread than noncitizen voting, and it's the kind that could be addressed in a law. But a law like that, one that beefs up the IRS, for example, is incredibly difficult to pass. So how and why did the House manage to pass a law about something that barely happens?

• 11:49Speaker 00

  One of the keys that we look at when we're talking about, does this election law help or hurt? Does this election law build trust or undermine trust? An election law like the SAVE Act will come in and the purpose of it is, from the beginning, is based on something that is solving a problem that doesn't really exist. So you have very little of this type of voter fraud at all. It is currently being addressed in significant ways. And so when you pass a law that purports to fix a problem that doesn't exist, it increases the sort of the idea that this is necessary when it's not. And so that's a significant problem right off the bat.

• 12:34Nick Capodice?

  All right. But what exactly, Hannah, does the SAVE Act say? Like, if it becomes a law, what's going to happen?

• 12:41Hannah McCarthy?

  I'll get into all that after a quick break.

• 12:45Nick Capodice?

  But before that break, a loving reminder that we wrote a book. We did. It's called A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works, and it is your friend. It is your companion. It is your warm and reassuring hug when you need it. It is a reminder of how far you've come and how powerful you are. And if that sounds nice, you can get it wherever books are sold.

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• 15:43Speaker 03

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• 16:22Hannah McCarthy?

  We're back. We're talking with Jason Carter from the Carter Center, a nonprofit that does a lot of work in the world, including globally supporting democratic elections and human rights. And before the break, Nick, you asked me what the SAVE Act says and what will happen if it becomes law. So if it does, you will need a valid US passport or birth certificate in order to register or re-register to vote. And there are a bunch of other accepted documents for certain people, certain classifications. But for most voters, we're talking passport or birth certificate. Some states already do this, by the way.

• 16:58Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, New Hampshire does this.

• 17:00Hannah McCarthy?

  Yep, the state where Nick votes rolled this out this year, 2025. Now, here's one big concern that opponents of this bill keep bringing up.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  If you are a married woman whose name no longer matches the name on her birth certificate, then you may have a problem getting registered to vote.

• 17:17Nick Capodice?

  I've heard about this, Hannah. If you took your spouse's name when you got married, then your legal name doesn't match what's on your birth certificate.

• 17:25Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah. In that case, you would need a passport or one of the many other documents listed for people who are, for example, tribal citizens or military personnel. Now, Save Act supporters say, don't worry about it, because the Save Act requires states to decide what they are going to do about that. Like, what kinds of documents they will ask for, for extra proof of citizenship.

• 17:47Nick Capodice?

  What kinds of documents will they ask for?

• 17:50Hannah McCarthy?

  That is up to the states. A marriage certificate, maybe, if you can find it. But you brought up New Hampshire, Nick, where married women did get turned away this year, sometimes multiple times, because of this issue. Some of them came back, some of them didn't. There was one story of a woman who had been married three times, but still had her first husband's last name. Her first marriage certificate had been lost to history for a while at that point. And you can always order a copy for a fee, but that doesn't help when it comes to same-day registration.

• 18:23Nick Capodice?

  Okay, so if this act passes and becomes a nationwide thing, there are going to be people who need to do some serious administrative work.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  There's some estimates that it would be 20-something million Americans who would have a hard time finding the documents that they need in order to register or re-register to vote under this act.

• 18:43Hannah McCarthy?

  So you heard Jason ask some questions about this proposed law. Number one, does it help or hurt? What do you think about that one, Nick?

• 18:53Nick Capodice?

  Oh, well, uh...

• 18:56Nick Capodice?

  It was proposed to prevent a very rare form of voter fraud that we already have laws for. And because laws tend not to be 100% effective, I suppose the SAVE Act could get the numbers down a little more.

• 19:09Hannah McCarthy?

  The numbers I have seen are between .0001 and .0008 percent of votes are from non-citizens.

• 19:21Nick Capodice?

  Maybe they're just going after another zero after that decimal, I guess.

• 19:24Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay. So that is the help. Here's where Jason sees a hurt.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  When you look at a change in election laws, if there are winners and losers, you have to assess who it is that's benefiting from this law, right? And when you say you have to have a passport in order to vote, the kinds of people who have passports are the ones that take foreign trips, right? And so you're talking about a group of people that are going to be, per se, wealthier. You're going to the kind of folks who have all of the documents that they need for a variety of other things. You know, the folks that are least likely to have these documents are folks that are poorer, frankly, and don't have that kind of access to things like a birth certificate. They have to go and in a lot of states, you have to pay to get one, right? Or to get a copy of it.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  And so you're talking about increasing burdens on people's right to vote that make it more difficult for people to vote. If you create an undue burden on the right to vote, then there's going to be the people who feel that burden. And the folks who are least likely to handle that, you know, tend to be less able to, you know, they're the ones who don't have the kind of resources that others have. And so when you're burdening the right to vote, you're basically burdening the right to vote of poor people more than you are of rich people.

• 20:39Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, the other question Jason asked is, does this law build trust or undermine trust? Now, I can tell you that proponents of the SAVE Act say it will restore trust in American elections. Here's what Jason says.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  It's an act that does a variety of things, but it is also one that fundamentally, I think, sort of continues this idea that undermines the trust in the system rather than increases the trust.

• 21:04Nick Capodice?

  All right, I want to go a little deeper on this one. How would this change make us trust the system less?

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Number one, you know, you're telling people that the federal government should have a bigger role. And that, I think, undermines some of the trust that people have in the system today. I think, number two, because there is the dissolving, quote, "purporting to solve a problem that doesn't really exist," you're perpetuating this idea that we have major, major problems in our election system when we don't. And I think that continues to build this mistrust.

• 21:37Nick Capodice?

  So, we do have this decentralized system in the United States today. The Constitution tells us that states are in charge of the place and manner of elections, which is why some states have already passed what is essentially their own version of the SAVE Act. But if the federal government steps in and passes federal legislation, it's basically overriding states that chose not to.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  By the way, this is not just a Republican versus Democratic issue. The Democrats have made a variety of efforts to take over some election aspects from the states and give them to the federal government. And I think in general, when we do that, we have to really assess everything through that lens of, is this increasing trust or is this reducing trust in the system? And I think that people generally tend to like their local election officials more than they like the federal government. They tend to have more trust. And so I think when you move election rules and regulations away from the trusted locals and the trusted states to the federal government, it's a downgrade.

• 22:40Hannah McCarthy?

  The federal government has, by the way, in the past, done some sweeping intervention when it comes to elections and voters. In modern history, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed to stop race-based disenfranchisement in states across the country. Prior to that, there were amendments to the Constitution to allow women and people of color to vote, and changes to laws that prevented tribal people, or even, in one case, pretty much any non-white person at all, from voting. But these changes were about expanding rights. Jason says the SAVE Act is not that.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  Why do you want to make it harder for people to vote? And the answer, I think, in this instance, cannot be that there is some fraud issue. It has to be there's some partisan power grab. And so there are good reasons, and there are bad reasons for the federal government to get involved. But what our job is, as observers of the process, is to figure out how we can bring people together to do things to solve the real problems in our system without making this partisan enough that it, again, continues to undermine that valuable trust.

• 23:45Nick Capodice?

  So Hannah, I'm thinking about the way you started this conversation, that you have confidence, you have faith. But Jason started this conversation by telling us that several decades' worth of stuff has eroded trust. And I know that studies and polls are showing a frightening lack of national trust in the system and in other people in general. And without that confidence, democracy cannot exist. So where'd you get it, huh, Hannah? What makes you so special?

• 24:18Hannah McCarthy?

  Okay, one, I don't think that I am all that special. I think that there are a lot of others like me. But to answer your question, research and second opinions.

• 24:29Nick Capodice?

  Half of our listeners just tuned out.

• 24:30Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, let me put it another way. A mechanic walks by my car and is like, "Whoa, big problem. Your car is supposed to have five wheels. This is an emergency. You need to pay me to fix it right now." Now, the first thing I'm going to think to myself is, wait a minute. That has never been a problem before. My car is running great. The second thing I'm going to do is check my manual, which will tell me four wheels are the correct number of wheels. The third thing I'm going to do is talk to my regular mechanic, who I trust, and ask him if this is really a problem. He will tell me no. I will go on with my life.

• 25:10Nick Capodice?

  So are you saying that everyone who lost their trust got scammed by the government version of the old five-wheel myth?

• 25:16Hannah McCarthy?

  What I'm trying to get at is that it's pretty freaky when someone who is supposed to know things tells you something is broken when you thought it was okay. Now, my car might not be the smoothest ride in town. It could probably be better. It requires maintenance. I have to file paperwork. But it does what it is supposed to do. Scammers, Nick, cause extra work for all of us. They make us doubt. They make us check the manual. They make us double-check with people we do trust. This is an extremely annoying thing, not to mention extremely time-consuming.

• 25:53Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, but if you didn't do it, you'd get hit with a $1,000 wheel mod bill that you didn't need.

• 25:58Hannah McCarthy?

  Or I would always wonder. I would start to doubt. I'd worry there were other things wrong with my car. I'd think the car designers were maybe wrong all along. Maybe they're the ones scamming me. Every small inconvenience, every oil change, would start to feel like proof that this car's a lemon. I would spiral. It is hard to get yourself out of a spiral.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  One of the things that we have learned across the world in many, many dozens and dozens of countries, more than 100 elections, is that once people lose faith in the system, it's hard to build it back. Because it's always easy to point out there was this problem or there was that problem. And I think the key is that students and everyone else need to get the facts about what the law is, right? It is dramatically illegal to commit voter fraud. It is dramatically illegal to vote as a non-citizen. And we enforce those laws really well in this country. And so if we are doing that, and if people hear an anecdote or a story about a problem here or a problem there, make sure that people are putting it into context and saying,

• 27:04Speaker 00

  you know, maybe you don't like the outcome of this election, but really, it's not because the system is broken. It's because, you know, we've done a variety of things to lose an election.

• 27:15Nick Capodice?

  Wow. Yeah, you know, we don't say that enough, Hannah. People lose elections, right? For a lot of reasons. They just do.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Lots of people have lost elections in a variety of contexts. And the key to me is just make sure that people understand the facts. Make sure that people understand what we have and what the safeguards are in place, and then not be sore losers.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  I have won elections and I have lost elections, right? I've served in the state legislature in my state. I ran for governor 10 years ago, 11 years ago now, and I lost. Now, I just feel like we all have to understand that something has happened in our country where there's folks who can't talk to their parents because of partisan politics. There's folks who have uncles that they used to love that they can't talk to anymore because of partisan politics. And we have to figure out a way to break that down. We have to figure out a way to have people be opponents without being enemies. And if we can't do that in our own families, then how are we going to ask people to do that more broadly?

• 28:23Speaker 00

  And I just think that the polarization has become alienation in some ways. And so for me, the great thing about being out of partisan politics in some ways, and I still support folks, I still campaign for folks, I still do the things that I want to do within my political party, but I no longer say that the other side is like an enemy just per se. We can't do that. We have to find ways to come back together and to say, hey, I listen to you, I want you to listen to me, let's have this conversation. And I frankly think that we're getting back to that, that that pendulum is swinging a little bit, even if it doesn't seem like it out there in the realm of the hecklers.

• 29:14Hannah McCarthy?

  We do not have to let myths and scams drive us apart. We do not have to be miserable. We do not have to stew in paranoia. We do have to ask, who is making us miserable? And why? Who is telling us that people with different opinions are our enemies? Who is telling us that gentle breeze is a hurricane? Confidence is hard. Anyone who has been a teenager can tell you that. And I am working really, really hard at it. If democracy is trust, is confidence, then I have confidence in confidence alone.

• 29:58Hannah McCarthy?

  This is my system. This is your system. And it is not the system that is broken. I can tell you that much. So I am giving my whole heart to it.

• 30:09Nick Capodice?

  When you wake up, wake up. It's healthy.

• 30:26Hannah McCarthy?

  That does it for this episode. It was made by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Cappadicei. Marina Hanke is our producer. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. The Carter Center is doing a lot of work on democracy and trust building. We did not have time to get to it all in this episode, but if you want to learn more, which is totally up to you, you can check out their website, carterscenter.org. Ask us questions if you've got them at our website, civics101podcast.org. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  ...fact is at the heart of the brand new season of Bear Brook, the critically acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In this season, Bear Brook investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? Don't miss it. Follow Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know what I'm doing. Need a break. Forget it, I quit. Escape to Pluto TV.

• 31:50Speaker 02

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• 31:52Speaker 01

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• 32:14Speaker 03

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes. Para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro. Para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos, y los que no vende cerca. Para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos. Para los que piensan y los que hacen. Para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.