Republicans in Annapolis want to SAVE Maryland from voter fraud.

In Washington, the GOP wants to SAVE America by forcing voters to prove they are citizens.

The basic concept sounds reasonable. Right?

“This is the bedrock of our society,” state Del. Kevin Hornberger recently told other lawmakers in Annapolis. ”We have to ... have assurances that the folks that are voting are permitted to do so.”

There’s no evidence of widespread fraud. Just convenient fantasies spun out of a few rare cases, like that Des Moines school superintendent detained by immigration authorities who registered to vote years earlier while living in Maryland — but never voted.

What the heck. Why not go with a belt and suspenders?

You know, just in case.

Because this very reasonable idea is a trap.

It’s a Republican effort to convince you that, somehow, the Democrats are cheating.

Millions of people have swallowed this fable, powered by the racist idea that brown immigrants are replacing white Americans.

“If you go into the Department of Motor Vehicles in the state of Maryland, and you are an illegal — uh, an illegal alien can own a car, they can get a driver’s license, they can do that — you sit at a computer screen, and this screen flashes up and says, ‘Well, do you want to register to vote?’” U.S. Rep. Andy Harris said recently on Capitol Hill.

“So in fact, the way it’s established, the way some states have established voter registration, allows the illegal alien to register to vote.”

The Eastern Shore Republican, as he often does, left out what doesn’t support his theory.

Signing up to vote at the MVA has swelled the ranks of voters in Maryland, but it’s illegal to register if you aren’t eligible.

There is no evidence that the state Board of Elections somehow misses massive numbers of immigrants breaking that law and perverting elections.

Here’s how to see through what serial fabulists like Harris, Hornberger and others are trying to foist on the public.

On Capitol Hill, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act would require voters to register in person for national elections, presenting a birth certificate or passport to prove they’re citizens.

In Annapolis, Hornberger’s SAVE Our Elections Act would require Maryland to run its voter rolls through a federal database used to vet people seeking federal benefits — the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program.

Pardon the pun, but here’s the Trump card.

Voter ID requirements represent the same kind of barrier to voting rights that literacy tests posed until they were outlawed in 1965. You have a constitutional right to vote, and anything the government does to block that right fails the sniff test.

“This legislation shifts the burden of verifying eligibility away from government systems and onto individual citizens,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown and other Democratic AGs wrote Wednesday in a joint letter opposing the federal bill.

Millions of Americans can’t produce a birth certificate or other proof, or don’t have documents that reflect their current legal name.

SAVE America’s requirements would functionally end mail-in registration and “motor voter” registration systems. Maryland and the dozens of other states that rely on them would have to launch massive overhauls just before the midterm elections in November.

The bill also would force state voting administrators to purge voter rolls of anyone with out-of-date or otherwise faulty information, to federal satisfaction.

The Maryland legislation would accomplish something similar, attempting an end run on efforts by the state to protect its constitutional responsibility for running elections.

The SAVE database Hornberger wants to use is run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and if there’s one federal agency with suspect motivations right now, it’s ICE.

In July, the Trump Justice Department demanded Maryland voter rolls and details of its methods for preventing fraud by criminal immigrants.

Jared DeMarinis, the state elections administrator, responded with details of the process — pointing out that it’s already online — but declined to turn over voters’ names, party affiliations and addresses.

In December, federal attorneys added Maryland to the list of states they’re suing for the information. It’s not a request that should fill anyone with confidence.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” President Donald Trump told podcaster Dan Bongino, a former Maryland Senate candidate and briefly Trump’s deputy FBI director. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

The bills in Washington and Annapolis — in case the names haven’t given you the clue — are a coordinated attempt to do that.

It’s more sophisticated than the fake electors, midnight calls to voting officials and Jan. 6 insurrection that followed the 2020 election, but the result would be the same.

SAVE our Elections is one of a slate of bills in Annapolis that Republicans say will bring election accountability, but are really about creating a perception of corruption.

Democrats, wise to the game, won’t let them pass.

SAVE America will probably go down to defeat in Washington, too. It passed the Republican-led House, but it is blocked in the Senate by the filibuster — 60 votes to get almost anything done.

Republicans, undeterred, will keep on spinning yarns about voter fraud.

“I have personally witnessed a lady going from poll to poll voting,” Del. Bob Long said.

The Baltimore County Republican testified before the same committee that heard Hornberger’s bill, supporting his proposal to require photo ID at polling places.

He said he saw the woman arrive at two polling places in a “handicap van” and vote.

“How she did it, I don’t know. But I’m just saying it is, it’s possible.”

Except he didn’t see it.

On Thursday, Long admitted that he saw the woman sign in to vote once, and then spotted her at a second polling place. He didn’t see her vote.

But when it comes to election fraud, you know what you know.

Even when you don’t know.