When Hawaiʻi Sen. Brian Schatz voted for a Republican-led budget deal last month, he didn’t pretend it was a good bill. But he voted for it anyway — not because he supported its provisions, but because it prevented a government shutdown.

It was an act of compromise, transparently made for the good of the country.

Hawaiʻi Congressman Ed Case’s recent vote in favor of the SAVE Act doesn’t read like a compromise. It reads like a lawmaker becoming compromised — by political pressure, misinformation or fear.

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The SAVE Act, which passed the House in April almost entirely along party lines, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. That means no more registering online, by mail or at community drives without showing up in person with a passport, certified birth certificate or other documentation — some of which millions of Americans don’t readily have.

A driver’s license won’t be enough. Just updating your voter registration? Same requirements apply.

Voting rights groups have warned that the bill could disenfranchise millions. Hawaiʻi’s other U.S. representative, Jill Tokuda, pointed out in a tweet that 70 million women who changed their names after marriage could face new hurdles. She also mentioned that 48% of Americans don’t have passports. Data from the Brennan Center for Justice shows that more than 21 million citizens of voting age don’t have easy access to proof-of-citizenship documents.

Despite those concerns, Ed Case was one of only four Democrats to vote yes.

Congressmanʻs Disturbing Explanation

“My vote on the SAVE Act was based on my review of the actual bill before me, its legislative history and other information, and my view that most of my constituents believe we should assure that noncitizens do not vote,” Case wrote in an email to me.

“While it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote,” he said, “there are clear gaps in verification across the country based on widely varying individual state requirements. This has contributed to claims of illegal voting and doubts in election results which I believe should be addressed with consistent national standards.”

In a public letter, he also said that fears over voter suppression are “overstated.” He added, “Voter suppression is in any event illegal under separate laws and can be separately pursued if and when this or any other requirement is used as an excuse to deny the right to vote to all eligible.”

That statement deserves scrutiny. Not just for what it claims but for the double-standard it reveals.

Case is dismissing fears of voter suppression because it’s illegal and supposedly overstated. Yet he justified voting for the SAVE Act because some people fear that noncitizens are voting — even though that too is illegal. As he wrote to me, “I’m not aware of significant concerns with noncitizen voting in Hawaiʻi, but we don’t know what we don’t know, and my vote in any event was about the country.”

So which is it? If fear is enough to change federal law, why doesn’t it apply both ways? Why is fear of voter suppression “overstated,” but fear of noncitizen voting — for which there is far less evidence — cause for sweeping reform?

It’s a dangerous contradiction. And it’s how voting rights get slowly, systematically, rolled back — not all at once, but piece by piece, justified by vague unease and claims that “we don’t know what we don’t know.”

In our correspondence, Case also wrote: “Many of the concerns expressed about this bill did not match the facts of the bill itself. For example, some claim this bill would disallow millions of citizens from voting, which is not true since it does not affect anyone who’s already registered and further provides several specific avenues to verify citizenship for those that aren’t.”

When Democrats join Republicans to restrict voting access they validate the very myths that fuel the attack on our democracy.

But that doesn’t reflect how voter registration actually works. While the bill technically applies only to new registrations and updates, Case is ignoring the reality that more than 12% of Americans move each year. In the two years leading up to the 2020 election, more than 91 million people registered to vote or updated their registration. And since 2020, mass efforts to remove potentially ineligible voter rolls have increased significantly as have inaccurate purges, which leave legal voters without a ballot.

Those purged voters would also need to re-register under the stricter SAVE Act requirements.

Those “specific avenues” to verify citizenship? They include showing up in person with documents — or submitting other evidence that a local election official must subjectively evaluate.

That’s not a safeguard. That’s a gatekeeping mechanism that will disproportionately affect people without flexible work hours, reliable transportation or immediate access to a government office — often the same people whose votes are least protected by the system.

Iʻve Made The Same Mistake

Unlike Schatz’s vote on a budget deal, Case didn’t present his vote as a compromise to achieve a larger goal. He made no argument that he was trying to stop something worse or gain leverage on a future priority.

“There was no other reason for my vote,” he told me.

That’s not compromise. That’s being compromised.

Compromise means making a difficult decision in service of a greater good. It requires moral clarity and a willingness to own the cost. Schatz hated the bill he voted for, but he voted for it anyway — and he told us why. Case, by contrast, seems to believe the SAVE Act is good policy. That’s what makes his vote so damaging.

Because this isn’t just about policy, it’s about precedent. When Democrats join Republicans to restrict voting access — even under the guise of national standards — they validate the very myths that fuel the attack on our democracy. They give cover to bad-faith actors and lend credibility to conspiracy theories that have already done real harm.

It wasn’t until I started listening to the people whose lives looked different from mine that I began to understand what voter suppression actually looks like.

I’ve made the same mistake and supported similar, albeit less stringent, policies before. As a Republican lawmaker in my late 20s, I advocated for voter ID. I naively thought it was harmless.

I had a driver’s license. I knew where to get my birth certificate. And the more vocal parts of my constituency were worried about fraud. So I thought, if people are concerned, what’s the harm in asking for ID?

I justified my decisions based on the narrow worldview I had at the time. It wasn’t until I started listening to the people whose lives looked different from mine that I began to understand what voter suppression actually looks like.

It’s not always overt. It’s often bureaucratic. And it hides behind phrases like “election integrity” and “citizen verification.” I’ve also learned that voting rights — once taken away — are almost never fully restored. That’s why they have to be defended, even when the pressure is high and the misinformation is loud.

Ed Case had a choice. He could have stood with his party and voting rights advocates across the country. Instead, he gave in to a fear he admits isn’t backed by facts.

That’s not compromise. That’s surrender. And we can’t afford to call it anything else.