Will Trump’s Voter Suppression Act Work Against Him?
There are Demogorgons hiding in his Republican plan to swing votes his way.
Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made.
Personally, I have no idea where my birth certificate is. I’m pretty sure it’s in a bank deposit box in New York that has sat dormant since my mother died more than a decade ago. I never did the paperwork to gain access. I do, fortunately, have a passport, and an active one at that. I’ve been privileged to travel around the world and to have filled it with bizarre stamps many times over.
Almost half of Americans, however, do not have a passport. And among those people, most are lower-income, according to the Pew Research Center. Their form of government ID, therefore, is usually a driver’s license. Which means that if the Trump administration’s key piece of voter legislation — known to Democrats as a sneaky form of voter suppression — passes in Congress, these non-passport-holders will need to have a license with Real ID. This would be in accordance with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, which requires Americans to prove their citizenship to vote. It was passed by the House on April 10 and awaits confirmation in the Senate.
I was at a dog park a couple days ago when a fellow dog mom started talking about this — if the SAVE Act is passed, might Democrats have a chance in the next presidential election? she wondered. Her thinking was that lower-income, rural Trump voters likely wouldn’t have passports and probably wouldn’t have updated their licenses to Real IDs. These things are possible, yes. In fact, if the SAVE Act becomes law, we’re all going to have to vote in person and bring either a passport, or a REAL ID and a birth certificate (or, in a few states — Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Vermont — an enhanced license (or passport) alone). And this is going to hurt low-income, rural voters the hardest.
Mail-in and online voting would go out the window, with the act requiring people to vote in person.
The Center for American Progress, a progressive, nonpartisan policy group, writes that just as the SAVE Act “threatens to disenfranchise millions of citizens overall, 60 million rural Americans would face some of the greatest obstacles to making their voices heard if the bill becomes law… . Citizens in Alaska and Hawaii could even be forced to take plane rides,” with polling places few and far between. They estimate that the longest commute to vote among rural voters would be a four-and-a-half-hour round-trip drive to their nearest election office.
But this hardly only affects potential Trump voters. In fact, the act is not expected to pass the Senate due to Democratic opposition — this is actually the Republicans’ second attempt at trying to pass the SAVE Act. Last year, it also made it through the House but failed in the Senate.
While Republicans say the legislation is essential in order to guarantee that only citizens vote in U.S. elections, Democrats like NY Rep. Joe Morelle believe the bill is capitalizing on fear and division in this country. He told The Associated Press in April: “This bill is really about disenfranchising Americans — not noncitizens, Americans.”
U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House committee that handles election legislation, said during those same April debates that the bill “is meant to ‘restore Americans’ confidence in our elections’ and prevent noncitizens from voting.”
Prevent noncitizens from voting. That’s a key motive. And it’s also an unfounded scare tactic.
It is illegal — and exceedingly rare — for noncitizens to vote in U.S. federal or state elections. “There is no evidence that unauthorized immigrants, green-card holders, or immigrants on temporary visas are voting in significant numbers, despite some claims that ‘millions’ of noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections,” writes the Brennan Center, a progressive nonprofit law and public policy institute. “In fact, audits by election officials and numerous studies reflect that voter fraud by noncitizens is extremely rare.”
And there is yet another Demogorgon hiding in this Republican plan to swing votes their way.
“This legislation would immediately disenfranchise the 69 million women who have changed their names after marriage or divorce,” Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat from North Carolina, told AP.
And, as we know, Trump and his party don’t have a particular fondness or respect for women overall. Tens of millions of women who have changed their name because of marriage would need to scrounge up many documents about their name change to prove their citizenship. As it happens, 54 percent of women voted for Kamala Harris, with only 44 percent voting for Trump in 2024.
“It pushes women out of the democratic process,” Ross said of the documentation requirement. “And it’s not a coincidence. It’s part of a strategy to make voting harder, to sow distrust in our elections.”
The legislation, Democrats say, would also unduly burden older people, military members, people of color and working-class Americans “who may not have the time or money to jump through bureaucratic hoops,” writes AP.
What this bill is doing is “capitalizing on fear,” said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who serves as Arizona’s top state election official, “fear built on a lie. And the lie is that a whole bunch of people who aren’t eligible are voting. That’s just not true.”
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Lies are the fuel that keeps the fire burning for the right wing. They are very well aware that they are floating a red herring, but it rings true for Trump’s favorite people, the uneducated. The irony, if by some chance that this bill would pass, is that in essence it would damage any Republican candidate more than anyone else.
I’m disappointed—but not surprised—that none of the quoted Democrats or even you, Lauren, mentioned ‘people with disabilities’ among the disenfranchised on purpose.
As a lot of disabled people are either (or both) women and people of colour, this also effectively offsets a lot of the possible benefit you describe.
This is how ableism works: its like glitter, it gets everywhere. But its important to pick it out whenever we can.
Most of all, by leaving them out of your list you add to the growing rhetoric in the US that disabled people don’t matter and don’t really count as citizens. It can happen both ways: by the silent rhetoric of exclusion and by the despicable eugenicist rhetoric coming from RFK etc.