Nicole Malliotakis went to Fox News Digital last week to make a case that sounds like plain common sense.

New York City's mayor, she said, requires photo ID to use a city-run supermarket program, and multiple forms of identification for a city snow-shoveling program — but opposes requiring any ID to vote.

"Sadly, you see the hypocrisy when you see programs like Mayor Mamdani wanting to require photo ID to utilize a government-run supermarket or when he wanted you to use a photo ID, not just one, but multiple IDs for a snow shoveling program."

Her conclusion: the Senate should pass the SAVE Act. "We've passed it out of the House now four times and is up to the Senate to get the job done," she said. She added that "over 80% of America wants it," and that the only holdouts "are the Democrats who are in Congress right now."

There is one problem with the whole argument, and it isn't a small one. She stated it herself, in a single sentence, without noticing:

"If you want people to be confident in the outcome of the election, then we need to pass the Save America Act. We need to require voter ID."

Those are two different things. She said them as though they were one.

The SAVE Act is not a photo ID law. Every example Malliotakis used — the grocery program, the snow shovels, the library card comparison her allies reach for — involves showing a card that says who you are. The bill she voted for asks for something entirely different, and much harder to produce.

What the bill actually requires

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act requires documentary proof of citizenship — a U.S. passport or a birth certificate — presented in person, in order to register to vote or to update an existing registration.

A driver's license does not satisfy it. Neither does a state ID card, a Social Security card, a utility bill, a benefits card, or the photo ID you'd show at a city grocery counter.

So the comparison collapses. If New York required, to buy subsidized groceries, that you appear in person with your birth certificate — and that the name on it match your current legal name exactly — that would be the SAVE Act. Requiring a photo ID is not that. It is the thing New York already does at the polls.

We've written the full breakdown of the bill before. The short version:

• More than 21 million Americans of voting age don't have ready access to documentary proof of citizenship.
• Roughly 80% of women change their surname when they marry, so their birth certificate no longer matches their legal name — and a mismatch is enough to stop a registration.
• It all has to happen in person, during business hours.

Malliotakis represents Staten Island and part of southern Brooklyn. For anyone there who has married and changed their name, moved between boroughs, or never had a reason to hold a passport, an in-person daytime errand with original documents is a real cost, not a formality.

Her "over 80%" is measuring a different bill

This is where the framing does its work.

Polling that finds lopsided public support consistently asks about voter ID — showing identification at the polls. That is a popular idea, and it's already New York law.

Nobody polls at 80% in favor of "requiring every citizen to appear in person with a passport or birth certificate to register, and to re-register the same way after moving or marrying." When Malliotakis cites 80% support and then names the SAVE Act, she is borrowing the popularity of one policy to sell another.

That's not a slip of the tongue in a live interview. It's the same substitution South Carolina's new senator made when she compared the SAVE Act to showing a card to check out a library book. The talking point travels because it works — and because the actual requirement, stated plainly, does not poll at 80%.

She voted for it. Here is the record.

Malliotakis is not describing something she supports in the abstract.

On April 10, 2025, the House passed H.R. 22 by 220 to 208. Malliotakis voted Yea, as the clerk's roll call shows.

She is entitled to that vote. What she is not entitled to is describing it as a photo ID requirement to constituents who would find out otherwise at the registration desk.

The problem the bill claims to solve

Malliotakis's stated reason is confidence in election outcomes.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already a federal crime, and it is already almost nonexistent. When the Brennan Center surveyed election administrators who together tabulated 23.5 million votes in the 2016 election, those officials had referred roughly 30 suspected incidents of noncitizen voting for investigation — 0.0001 percent of ballots. Forty of the 42 jurisdictions studied reported none at all.

The SAVE Act would not remove a single illegal vote that isn't already illegal. It would add a documents requirement that falls on married women, seniors, renters who move, and people who work hourly shifts.

On confidence in elections, specifically

If Malliotakis's concern is that Americans trust election outcomes, there is a more direct place to look than voter registration paperwork.

In January 2025 she became one of twelve members of Congress to sign a resolution expunging Donald Trump's impeachment for inciting the attack on the Capitol — an attack aimed at stopping the certification of an election. Eleven days later she went on CNN and said the rioters "do need to serve the time."

You cannot spend one week arguing that the 2020 result should never have been contested and the next arguing it should be erased from the record. Confidence in elections is not damaged by citizens registering to vote. It is damaged by elected officials who treat the outcome as negotiable when they lose.

Where constituents could ask her about this

They can't, in person. Staten Islanders have been showing up outside her district office on Mondays — including with cupcakes for Medicare and Medicaid's 61st birthday — and she still has not held a town hall. Nearly 37,000 people in her district are projected to lose health coverage from the budget bill she voted for.

A town hall is exactly where someone would get to ask the simple question: Congresswoman, I've been registered here for thirty years and I changed my name when I got married. What document do I bring?

Her Fox News answer, which she gave to a national audience instead, was that citizens need to hold senators accountable.

The senators are not the ones who voted for this bill four times.

Source

• Fox News, "New York City's lone Republican in Congress accuses Mamdani, Schumer of 'hypocrisy' in voter ID fight" by Robert McGreevy (August 14, 2026)