The GOP’s sweeping new anti-voting bill cleared the U.S. House Wednesday, setting up a high-stakes battle in the Senate.
The House voted 218-213 to pass the SAVE America Act, which experts have said could disenfranchise millions by requiring voters to show documentary proof of citizenship at registration and to provide photo ID when they cast ballots.
Republicans have argued for voter ID broadly, pointing out that there isn’t much to prevent a noncitizen from casting a ballot in a federal election — besides the fact that it’s a felony, easily caught, and would lead to deportation all for the chance to cast one out of hundreds of thousands of votes.
What’s interesting, is that many of us already do register with the state governments.
Its goal isn’t to regulate voting. It’s to suppress it.
Yep. Very easy to disenfranchise many people this way.
Particularly, anyone whose name or SAAB on their passport or birth certificate doesn’t match their photo id. Anyone who works during DMV hours and can’t take time off to renew an ID. Especially those who don’t drive (and thus don’t need a license).
So let’s see, that’s mainly women, genderqueer, and the working poor. Alright alright.
Who else?
I’m sure that a lot of the unhoused don’t have easy access to their birth certificate or passport.
Anybody who cut ties with their parents and can’t access this paperwork. So no strong family values.
Oh yeah. The millions of Americans who can’t even dream of leaving the country who never even got a passport in the first place.
How is this not a poll tax?
And I’m gonna guess that this is going to make mail in voting more difficult? Or perhaps we will have to verify our ID with an app, this getting all of our info while also removing anonymity from voting, at a time when one party is not just hostile, but downright violent towards members of the other.
How about this…the republicans get to have a poll tax if the Democrats get to have a literacy test. If we are gonna make voting harder, lets make it harder for both sides. Deal?
Obviously that’s quite tongue in cheek.
If I recall, any state that requires ID to vote has to give the ID free or it IS considered a poll tax. So this is going to put a lot of expense onto state governments without any federal funding to offset it.
They’re just going to not do it. Shrug their shoulders and say “oops, not enough time to implement it but we have to have the election now” and will get a finger wagging from the Supreme Court.
or it may get a 9-0 ruling against it with no follow-up :/
That seems to be a major point of this government. Who is paying for all those national guard deployments, loss of renewable subsidies, SNAP, etc.
Crash the economy, which makes people afraid. Scared people are more likely to vote for a strongman.
True but you’d think they’d at least want a very different “strongman” than the one who did the crashing.
One would think, but a lot of people are miseducated as to the cause and effect of these things (to put it as politely as I can).
Agreed. The goal is to design a system where you must prove your right to vote rather than be allowed to cast a vote with passive validation after the fact. Folks who can’t prove their right to vote are primarily low-income voters who are presumed to vote Dem.
As this is not the least restrictive means to accomplish the legitimacy of the election, it does not pass constitutional muster (good luck with the current Supreme Court though). I also wonder how this might infringe on the rights of First Nations (literally completely ignorant here) and states right to administer their own elections.
The big group this impacts is married women — in particular it has a name-matching requirement which will block a large fraction of married women from voting. They’re doing this because women have consistently been more likely to vote for Democrats than men:
This makes it very much worthwhile for Americans to ask their Senators to block this legislation by any means necessary.
What they are going to create is a world where women refuse to take their husband’s name. I’m certain the right will be up in arms over that as well. Par for the course for the poster children of unintended consequences.
If their goals were ever what they say they are, there is almost always a better policy that could drive that out come, but every time the right’s solution is “just make them.” And then big fucking Pikachu surprise when that doesn’t work out like they plan.