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House Passes SAVE Act to Solve a Nonexistent Problem
The House just passed legislation requiring proof of citizenship to vote, even though documented noncitizen voting is virtually nonexistent.
Here’s What Just Happened.
The House just passed the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote, and gives DHS the right to seize voter rolls in any state. That puts us one step closer to obliterating voting rights in this country, and chips away at the foundation of free and fair elections.
The bill passed along party lines, although one Democrat - Henry Cuellar of Texas - joined Republicans in voting in favor.
Even if this thing dies in the Senate, it will live rent-free in the minds of voters who were already inclined to believe Trump’s lies that elections are rigged. The rhetorical impact is impossible to understate. As propaganda, it’s more valuable than gold.
What Trump is trying to do here is ratchet up the paranoia around the delusion of Democrats mobilizing undocumented voters in order to throw the midterms, where Republicans face the possibility of massive losses.
But that’s yet another baseless lie. Voter fraud by undocumented immigrants is an imaginary problem cooked up by Trump to feed to the base.
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It’s Smoke and Mirrors
The SAVE Act would impose so-called proof of citizenship, which is really just a fancy way of saying, “we don’t want young people and married women who change their last names to be able to register to vote.” It also makes it explicitly clear that government-issued ID does not include student IDs issued by colleges and universities. Even if it’s the flagship institution of that state.
Republicans want to make the burden of proof that you’re a US citizen sky high. But when you start to break that down, it gets messy, fast.
Proving citizenship in a country that doesn’t issue national ID cards isn’t easy.
What about a passport? Nope. Most Americans don’t have a passport - that includes Republicans.
How about driver’s licenses? That’s a mess. Real IDs haven’t been rolled out everywhere, and even where they have, not everyone’s got one. And states issue drivers licenses to green card holders and legal visa holders. It would be a disaster.
How about an original birth certificate? Nevermind that I haven’t laid eyes on mine since right around the time of my birth. This is the party of a guy who questioned Barack Obama’s citizenship, and when he produced a birth certificate, Trump said, “Not real.” If they can do it to a sitting president, what’s to stop them from doing it to you?
And think about this: if Trump succeeds in court in doing away with birthright citizenship (which he’s attempting to do right now), a birth certificate wouldn’t mean anything anyway.
Taken together, it’s clear: this is just about making it harder for anyone to vote, and easier to challenge the validity of elections.
The SAVE Act is a Solution in Search of a Problem
What might be considered “voter fraud” is, in nearly every instance, honest mistakes either by voters or election officials, according to a study by Justin Levitt at the Brennan Center for Justice.
For example, a person with a felony conviction might honestly believe themselves eligible to vote when the conviction renders them temporarily ineligible. Or an election official could think some form of ID is required when it’s not. That’s not fraud. That’s a flaw in the system.
Double voting is also extremely rare, it’s high risk (criminal prosecution), low reward (one vote).
Also extremely rare:
voting by dead people
voting by people with criminal convictions
voting by people with fake addresses
voting by dogs (2 existing cases, ever)
and voting by noncitizens
That last one - Levitt’s study found exactly no instances of a noncitizen knowingly or purposefully voting illegally. And why would they? The penalty is deportation.
Trump’s own investigation into illegal voting by migrants turned up not one shred of evidence of widespread fraud.
Out of 49.5 million voter registrations checked, 0.02% of the names were investigated as possible registered noncitizens. There was no evidence that any of those people had actually voted. A serious blow to Trump’s unfounded hysteria over droves of illegal voters sandbagging elections in favor of Democrats.
But Facts are Inconvenient
Which is why Trump has completely ignored them and called for Republicans to “nationalize” elections.
Part of that effort was on display last month when Pam Bondi demanded Minnesota turn over voter rolls as one of only three requests Tim Walz could fulfill in exchange for an end to the ICE chaos there. The subtext in that move isn’t exactly subtle.
If DOJ wants to engage in mass voter suppression and kick people off the rolls at scale, they need to know which people to kick off. You can’t disenfranchise the people you want to, unless you know who they are by name, by address, by date of birth, by social security number or - and this one is important - by party registration.
Another arm in the offensive: Trump sent Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard to Georgia with the FBI to seize truckloads of 2020 ballots. That raid serves as proof of concept for seizing ballots moving forward. If Tulsi can cook up some bogus justification for the DNI to seize ballots (China! Italy! Switzerland! Hugo Chavez!) then Trump has carte blanche to seize more ballots from more jurisdictions.
What’s Really Going On Here
Trump and the Republicans are running scared. Terrified, actually, because they see the writing on the wall about what’s coming for them in the midterms.
Trump’s approval ratings are in the toilet. Republicans are losing elections by double-digit margins from 2024. So the Republicans will do everything they can to ram this legislation through. It made it through the House and now it’s headed to the Senate. Now, there’s a backstop there, because John Thune has shown no interest in watering down the filibuster - a tool the Democrats will likely use to block this - because Republicans like it, too.
But Trump wants the filibuster gone, and who knows how much pressure Thune can take before he cracks and gives in. That would be the opening Republicans need to get the SAVE Act passed and put the nail in the coffin of voting rights in this country.
That’s why it’s so important to get on the phone, call your Senators and keep the pressure on them to fight to preserve free and fair elections, which is the foundation of our democracy.
Call the Senate Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
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