The Brennan Center for Justice, a Washington-based think tank, just published a very scary report. Trump and the Republicans in Congress, particularly the House, have been savoring, chopping up, and joyously preparing the greatest attack on American freedom to vote since the 19th century. It is all a part of the Trumpian point of view that one should not chance losing by leaving it to chance or fate. ‘Seize the ballots, and seize the day,’ he regularly seems to say. ‘Don’t ask for permission, don’t even ask for forgiveness, just take what you want and leave it to others to squabble over,’ seems to be Trump’s motto. A great number of political incidents involving him and/or his minions seem to bear out that slogan.
This includes forcing the Kennedy Center name change and the destruction of the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom nobody asked for (temporarily stopped now via a federal judge’s order, but Trump seems to be bent on defying that legality, as he has done others).
Anyway, the gigantic issue now is the SAVE Act, which has already been passed narrowly by the House but is facing great difficulty—thankfully—in the Senate. Though there is some trickery now being attempted by long-term Republican senators to avoid the 60-vote threshold to get the Senate version passed, so far the good guys seem to still be winning.
So what makes this piece of legislation so bad? Well, it will single-handedly deprive millions of Americans of the right to vote by requiring such unctuousness as a directive that each state must regularly submit its voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security for safekeeping and that each voter must produce a restrictive photo ID each time in order to vote.
So far, every version of the SAVE Act would also require American citizens to show documents like a passport or birth certificate just to register to vote. According to the Brennan Institute, that would currently mean more than 21 million Americans would be rejected from the polls since they lack ready access to those documents.
Additionally, evidence shows that right now at least half of Americans don’t even have a passport, while millions more lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. That means, if passed in its present form, “The SAVE Act would disenfranchise literally millions of Americans of all ages and races, but would devastate younger voters and voters of color especially. Likewise, millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would have to prove or re-prove their right to vote, making marriage a detriment to regular voting.
If passed into law, any version of the SAVE Act proposals would throw chaos into the current American election administration. They would also place control of voters’ data and voting itself into the hands of federal officials, rather than the local and state governments as required by the Constitution.
Sure, there would be a massive legal battle over the SAVE Act, but a fight where he and the Republicans have a significant advantage—i.e., control over the data and records of voters—is nothing the Trump administration would shy away from. The real aim is to place citizen voting under direct federal control so that federal officials can virtually control voter outcomes.
That is the real aim of the SAVE Act, in whatever form it takes. We should not forget that, and we must elect the people who will kill that legislative intent. Don’t sleep on this!!!
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.