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We need to pay attention — very close attention — to ALL the Republican shenanigans in Washington. While the cameras closely follow Donald Trump and the daily disaster at the White House — the tariff fiasco being the latest — a huge story is happening on Capitol Hill. It’s garnered scant coverage but could be enormously damaging to our democracy. Republicans in the House have taken a giant step toward making it much more difficult to vote, especially for women and young people.
It’s safe to say I have strong feelings about voting rights, going back to the early 1960s, when I witnessed Black Americans turned away from the polls in the Deep South. In our effort to remain a free people, nothing is more important and fundamental than our right to vote. And that right is currently under attack by the United States Congress, the very body that is supposed to protect voting rights.
Remarkably, the House passed a bill today that restricts rather than expands voting. A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate.
“My Republican colleagues crafted and passed one of the most damaging voter suppression bills in modern history. There’s no doubt that women, military members, and people of color will be disproportionately impacted,” Congressman Joe Morelle said in a statement.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known, apparently with no intended irony, as the SAVE Act, would require showing a passport or birth certificate matching one’s legal name to register to vote.
The SAVE Act is nothing but codified voter suppression. Sponsors and supporters of the bill will tell you it’s about safeguarding our election process. Once again, for those in the back: Our elections are safe.
For years, Trump and MAGA have repeated false claims of massive voter fraud. It is a myth used to enrage the base and reduce the number of people who can vote. No one has produced evidence to support these spurious allegations. Note that there was nary a mention of voter fraud when Trump won in 2024.
Let’s go down the long list of reasons this bill is ill-considered at best, unconstitutional at worst.
Americans would no longer be able to register online, by mail, or through voter registration drives, which accounted for 50 million registrations between 2018 and 2022, compared with 12 million in-person.
Millions of Americans don’t have access to their citizenship documents, and it’s worse for Americans of color. Approximately 8% of white people and 11% of people of color have neither a copy of their birth certificate nor a passport, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
An estimated 13 million Americans can’t put their hands on their birth certificates. Getting a replacement is cumbersome, time-consuming, and often costly, depending on the state.
About half of American adults do not have a passport. It is even more difficult and more expensive ($165) than getting a birth certificate, which, by the way, first-time applicants need. And the Elon Musk-led “efficiency” operation hasn’t made cuts at the State Department yet; I’m guessing obtaining a passport will be harder and take longer in the months to come.
And that’s not even the worst of it. One’s birth certificate must match their legal name. That will be a problem for the 70 million American women who changed their last name when they married.
“In the 105-year history of my organization, the League of Women Voters, this may be the most brazen, sweeping attack on American women’s voting rights we have ever seen,” wrote Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, in a Teen Vogue op-ed.
The impetus behind the SAVE Act is obvious if you have been paying attention. In the current era, the more people who vote, the better it is for Democrats. As Kamala Harris said, “When we vote, we win.” So Republicans are trying to suppress turnout by making it harder to vote. And the voters they would be keeping from the polls tend to be Democrats.
According to exit polls, more than half of voters in the 2024 presidential election were women, and 53% of them voted Democrat. Almost two-thirds of non-white voters voted on the Democratic line.
The SAVE Act would also make it harder for those with limited financial means, those with disabilities, older Americans, and those in rural areas to register to vote.
Historically, the United States Congress has taken the lead to support voting rights.
After the Civil War, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1870 to support the 15th Amendment, giving the right to vote to Black people. It supported the 19th Amendment in 1920, enfranchising women. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most sweeping voting legislation in our nation’s history, prohibited voter discrimination based on race or color. Subsequent laws have expanded voting rights for people with disabilities, the elderly, and overseas military.
Today, the House has reversed more than a century of work to support American voters. The passage of the bill is a new low for a legislative body that was already scraping the bottom.
The SAVE Act will require many Americans to jump through hoops to participate in their own democracy. If the Senate passes this appalling piece of legislation, it will be acting in service of conspiracy theories, rather than in service of the American people.
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Stay Steady,
Dan
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