Despite being repeatedly rebuffed in Congress, Trump is again escalating his assault on voting rights, demanding passage of voter suppression legislation which would make it extremely difficult for tens of millions of American citizens to register to vote.
Trump’s Renewed Push for Voter Suppression Legislation
About a week ago, Trump used presidential authority recently expanded by the current Supreme Court majority to fire members of a key federal elections committee. That independent committee, whose members had been appointed by previous presidents, had resisted Trump’s efforts to make voting more difficult through requiring voters to show documents (like a current passport) to which millions of citizens do not have ready access.
On July 16, Trump used a specially scheduled nationally televised address to repeat his discredited claims that the 2020 elections were manipulated to deny him a victory. Those false claims have been repeatedly rejected as baseless by courts at every level, including judges appointed by Trump himself, and his own Attorney General at the time. Despite that, he is trying to use those false claims to justify additional hurdles to voting. The so-called “SAVE America” act is now being proposed for attachment to yet another piece of unrelated legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives by partisan Trump allies.
“SAVE” Act would threaten privacy and block access to the ballot for millions
The national League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has written to members of Congress opposing that bill and any other legislation which contains the voter suppression contents of the “SAVE” bill. “The SAVE America Act attempts to exploit harmful anti-immigrant sentiments to undermine the freedom to vote. This bill would make registering to vote significantly harder for tens of millions of eligible citizens and would insert the Department of Homeland Security into state and local election systems, violating voters’ privacy,” wrote LCV Senior Director of Judiciary & Democracy Doug Lindner. “Existing legal penalties for non-citizen voting are severe and election administrators are already well-equipped to prevent what has been shown to be an extraordinarily rare occurrence. This bill purports to prevent non-citizen voting by requiring all those registering or updating their voter registration to present documentary proof of citizenship in person, such as a passport or birth certificate. Over one hundred forty million U.S. citizens do not have passports, many millions cannot readily access their birth certificates, and millions of Americans, particularly married women, do not have birth certificates showing their current legal names. Under this bill, driver’s licenses would not suffice even in states with strict voter ID requirements.”
