They know exactly what they’re doing. And it’s not about “securing the vote.”
It’s not about “safeguarding against voter fraud.”
The SAVE Act is about Republicans in Congress peeling off enough voters to cling to power this November.
Fortunately, Democrats are on democracy’s side and are blocking it in the Senate.
The GOP knows it can’t convince enough voters that a reckless war, illegal tariffs and stratospheric prices at the pump and grocery store serve their interests.
The Republicans know they can hang on in Congress only by getting enough voters to stay home. And by the way, they don’t want them voting from home, either.
If Republicans got their way, they would insert language the president wants to end mail voting — which, by the way, he does frequently from his Taco Bueno by the Sea.
MAGA’s decaying master has ordered Senate Republicans to send him no bills until they pass the most deceitful and anti-democratic piece of legislation ever conceived in Congress.
It’s one more gambit in a decades-long GOP quest to make it harder for Americans to vote. Forget what the Republicans say the SAVE Act does. It is meant to choke democracy off at its source: the people.
The tooth end of that boa constrictor stands for “Safeguard America’s Voter Eligibility,” a reptilian lie. The hind end of the snake – the “Act” part — stands for, “Enact now, before Republicans lose Congress.”
For years red-state Republicans have promoted a lie about the non-threat of noncitizens voting. They’ve exploited the lie by passing a host of “voter I.D.” laws meant solely to suppress the vote. The Brennan Center for Justice has studied thoroughly the matter of noncitizen voting and has pronounced these measures “a solution in search of a problem.”
This president has more felonies on his record than states have found voting by noncitizens in recent years. Voter fraud? He’d be on trial for that very thing right now — conspiracy to defraud the United States — if not for reclaiming power.
So here’s what he wants with the SAVE Act, and why it has to take effect immediately.
Democratic turnout in the fall — more accurately “anti-MAGA” turnout with revolted independents joining in — will be high for an off-year election.
But a poli-sci truism is this: “All elections are won at the margins.” That applies even to so-called landslides.
Republicans say this is a “voter ID” bill, and that a vast majority of Americans support that. Well, let’s see. What does this monstrosity do?
To register to vote, it requires presenting, in-person, hard evidence of citizenship, foremost a state-authorized certificate, not something with a mere doctor’s signature.
Millions of Americans — 11 percent — don’t have their birth certificates. It would take months to acquire them. Anyone who’s sought one knows.
One “alternative” is a current passport. More than half of registered voters lack that. More months of hassle, there — as well as a cost that is tantamount to a poll tax.
Then there’s the problem of married women who lack certification that reflects their married names. What about them?
The bill has language requiring states to, um, fix that. What? By November?
This is endemic to the GOP rush to pass this measure. As a nation, we are nowhere near a place where requiring proof of citizenship wouldn’t disenfranchise millions. Our president couldn’t care less. All he wants is power.
Maybe the scariest aspect of this partisan monstrosity is that it would require states to submit voter rolls to Homeland Security to verify the citizenship of every voter. It also mandates that state purge rolls every 30 days whether or not a federal election is in the offing. Talk about a goliath of red tape with great potential for partisan purging.
The SAVE Act does nothing to help states handle these matters. It unconstitutionally would rip away states’ powers to run elections, and hand them unfunded mandates.
As with the mid-decade redistricting stampede set off by the most corrupt and conniving president in our history, all of this is the coin of rigging elections.
It’s not the American way. It is, however, the Republican way.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
