Her support for the “wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing bill” shows “display of loyalty to the president”

 

Augusta, Maine – A new editorial from the Portland Press Herald criticizes Susan Collins for supporting the SAVE Act, legislation that would “impose yet more stringent and onerous requirements on voters.”

 

Collins recently announced she would provide a “crucial vote” to support the SAVE Act, which could strip voting access from more than 300,000 Maine women.

 

Portland Press Herald: Maine voters do not wish to be ‘saved’ by SAVE Act | Editorial

March 1, 2026

 

  • Passed by the House, this wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing bill has been stalled in the Senate. Why on earth does it have Sen. Susan Collins’ support?

 

  • Maine is not a state that is worried about voter fraud.

 

  • We can say this with considerable confidence; a referendum question that would have placed limits on voting in the name of “election security” was defeated by voters, just months ago, by a lot. By 64.2% to 35.8%, to be exact.

 

  • Maine’s Question 1 looks like child’s play compared to the federal SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) America Act, which would impose yet more stringent and onerous requirements on voters. The shorthand “voter ID bill” conveniently obscures the lengths the legislation goes to by focusing on the least oppressive of its measures.

 

  • Question 1 would have introduced hurdles and labor for thousands of voters; the SAVE Act threatens to do that for millions. Would that it were only about the presentation of ID at the polls.

 

  • Editorializing against Question 1 back in October, the Maine Trust for Local News board put it like this: “Trust in civic, social and political institutions and processes in America is swimming against a powerful current these days, and in recent months we’ve heard from plenty of concerned readers who say they just want things tightened up.

 

  • Spiritually, the same criticism can be leveled against SAVE America, a pet proposal of President Trump’s — enthusiastically singled out as deserving of congressional support in last week’s State of the Union address, a very lengthy speech during which the president did not make mention of other sometime pets, like Greenland or Affordable Care Act subsidies.

 

  • Listening to the president attempt to inject a sense of fear and suspicion Tuesday by saying that “they” (Democrats) are only concerned with “cheating” (“They cheat.”), it would be challenging for any of us to separate the drive to push this legislation through from mounting Republican anxiety about the outcome of the 2026 midterms.

 

  • Due to the burdensome nature of its requirements, even the most wishful Republican supporter of SAVE must understand the high administrative unlikelihood of its being anywhere near implemented by that time.

 

  • That hasn’t stopped almost every one of that party’s senators from lending their support to the bill, including Sen. Susan Collins, who surely heard about the comprehensive defeat of Question 1 in Maine last fall and can understand the message of jaded dissatisfaction that result was intended to send.

     

  • This makes Collins’ support of SAVE a particularly defiant display of loyalty to the president — if not a complacent one. 

 

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