Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

By Mary Alice Miller
In yet another attack on the rights of citizens to exercise their right to vote the House of Representatives will consider H.R. 22, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, as early as next week. The SAVE Act states that its intent is to “ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote”, however, if implemented the effect would prevent millions of eligible American citizens from voting.

The Center for American Progress has stepped forward to sound the alarm.
“This name couldn’t be more misleading because the SAVE Act is actually a voter suppression bill, plain and simple,” said Ben Olinsky, Senior Vice President for Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress (CAP). “It would erect barriers to voting for all Americans and threatens to disenfranchise millions of citizens otherwise eligible to vote.”

The plain language of the bill requires “documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections” and “prohibits states from accepting and processing an application to register to vote in federal elections unless the applicant provides documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.”

The bill places the onus on states to “take affirmative steps on an ongoing basis to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote” and remove non-citizens from their official lists of eligible voters.” In addition, the bill establishes criminal penalties for “registering an applicant to vote in a federal election who fails to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.”
In practice, the SAVE Act would enact new hurdles on registering to vote and amending that registration, as well as outright blocking millions of married women and victims of natural disasters from voting.

The SAVE Act would require the vast majority of Americans to prove their citizenship by relying on either 1) a passport or 2) a birth certificate in combination with a government-issued photo ID. However, more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport, and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.

The bill’s in-person requirements would mean accessible voter registration systems that tens of millions of citizens, including 60 million rural Americans, rely on every election cycle would no longer be available. The SAVE Act would force some rural Americans to drive up to eight hours round trip and even cross state lines just to update their voter registration information.

In NYS, residents of Herkimer County would have to travel six hours roundtrip to an election office in order to register in person. And in NYC which has four of the top ten most populous counties in the country (New York, Kings, Bronx, and Queens), voters using public transportation would need to travel at least two hours to register or amend their registration.
The requirements for states to comply are an unfunded mandate. State election offices do not have the staffing and space needed to serve all citizens in person.

Worse, in cases of mass disaster flooding or wildfires, there would be no capacity at all, especially since the SAVE Act eliminates registration online or by mail.

The SAVE Act would override the National Voting Rights Act, a federal law that states election officials and states can only collect a minimal amount of information, like a driver’s license or social security number, to register someone to vote. Requiring passports and birth certificates goes far beyond what is currently required.

Proponents of the SAVE Act claim they want to ensure election integrity. But, at face value, it is a solution looking for a problem.
Currently, election fraud is minimal. People who shouldn’t vote generally do not vote because of the risk of imprisonment or deportation.

The bill seems to intend to impede voters’ rights by placing high barriers on those who have the right to vote and threatening election officials with imprisonment for accepting documentation that may have something as mundane as a spelling error.

As it stands, the SAVE Act has a chance to pass in the House along party lines but would face an uphill battle in the Senate, where Republicans have a slim majority and most bills require 60 votes to pass.

This week, Trump issued an executive order to make sweeping changes to the United States election system in an attempt to bypass Congress.
The executive order would require states to only accept in-person document submissions when registering to vote or changing an address or party affiliation. It calls on states to work with federal agencies to share voter lists and prosecute election crimes. The executive order also requires states to only count votes cast and received by election day.

The executive order threatens to pull federal funding from states that do not comply.
Trump has had a long history of questioning election integrity, even in elections that he has won.

This new executive order will likely end up in federal court, as have many of Trump’s previous executive orders that violate the Constitution. In this case, the Constitution explicitly gives the states authority to set the “times, places, and manner” of elections.

One byproduct of lawsuits challenging Trump’s overhaul of the nation’s election systems via executive order would be to reduce public confidence in how elections are conducted and the results, leading to reduced voter participation in elections where turnout is already low. A similar reduction in participation happened during Trump’s first term when he attempted to add a citizenship question to the decennial Census count.

The Center for American Progress recommends that all citizens contact their federal representatives to express the impediments and hardship the SAVE Act would impose.