The GOP is genius at creating acronyms that imply the OPPOSITE of what their bills will actually do.
House Republicans, along with five Democratic ninnies, passed H.R.8281 – Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, voter-ID legislation that would require proof of citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate, to vote in federal elections. Supported by our former President and 34x felon Donald Trump, this duplicitous and elitist bill is actually a form of voter suppression against poorer American citizens and minorities, those whom the GOP suspects will vote for Democrats.
“More than 9% of eligible voters (21.3 MILLION PEOPLE!) have no proof of citizenship readily available. And at least 3.8 million don’t have these documents at all, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen.” Only about 48% of U.S. citizens have a passport, and driver’s license and tribal ID cards do not prove a person’s citizenship and so couldn’t be used to register under the SAVE Act.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in a federal election, because of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and because IMMIGRANTS AREN’T STUPID! (See more under “Deeper Dive,” below)
So why are they doing this? “They’re trying to lay the groundwork for the ability to call the outcome into question if they aren’t happy about the outcome later,” says [Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting right program at the Brennan Center for Justice]. “We’ve seen this playbook before and we’re seeing it play out again.”
And now Trump, (WHO IS NO LONGER AN ELECTED OFFICIAL!) has stepped in, forcing House Leader Mike Johnson to try to tag it on to a must-pass funding bills.
Act #1: Tell your senators to vote “NO” against the SAVE Act, and to instead demand the passage of legislation that ensures that voters’ voices are heard.
Minimal call or email script to your (2) senators:
I’m calling from [zip code]. I want Senator [______] to vote “NO” on the GOP’s racist and deliberately misleading SAVE Act (S.4292), whose real purpose is to prevent Americans from voting, and to immediately support and prioritize the following bills which would ensure that the voices and votes of all eligible voters are heard in our elections. Isn’t that what the GOP would want too?
- S.4 – John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act (See more about this act here.)
- S.2344 – Freedom to Vote Act
- S.51 – Washington, D.C. Admission Act
Contacts
Act #2: Tell your representative to vote “NO” to Trump and Mike Johnson’s plan to add the SAVE Act to any “must-pass” government funding bills.
(msnbe.com) “Donald Trump has Mike Johnson in another no-win situation – The speaker is attaching an unnecessary ‘election security’ bill to a must-pass attempt to keep the government open before the Election Day.”
Minimal call or email script to your (2) senators:
I’m calling from [zip code]. I want Representative [______] to vote against allowing the GOP’s racist and deliberately misleading SAVE Act from being added to any funding bills.
Contacts
Deeper Dive
How do election officials verify citizenship without documents?
(npr.org) “Federal law requires states to accept registration forms that call for applicants to swear under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens and review this warning: “If I have provided false information, I may be fined, imprisoned, or (if not a U.S. citizen) deported from or refused entry to the United States.” Most states also use applicants’ driver’s license or Social Security numbers to check people’s citizenship information in government agency databases.“
Who has the most trouble proving citizenship?
(npr.org) “U.S. citizens of color are more likely than white citizens, who do not identify as Latino, to say they lack citizenship documents (3% of people of color compared to 1% of white people) or can’t readily access them (11% of people of color vs. 8% of white people). Independents are more likely to report that they don’t have documents (4%) compared to Democrats (2%) and Republicans (1%). They are also more likely to report not having ready document access (13%) than Democrats (10%) and Republicans (7%).
The results fall in line with longstanding concerns among many election experts and voting rights advocates, who have warned that proposals — including the new Republican-backed bill in the U.S. House of Representatives — to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when signing up to vote in federal elections could risk keeping eligible voters from casting ballots.
“We’ve got a huge crisis on our hands when we think about the people who lack the documents required to prove their citizenship and identity. And we really need to think about the far-reaching implications for that when it comes to economic and social and voting access,” says Lauren Kunis, executive director of VoteRiders, a voting rights organization focused on voter ID issues that sponsored the survey alongside groups including the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school and the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement.”
Why showing proof of citizenship can be a hurdle
(npr.org) “Kunis, VoteRiders’ executive director, says her organization has helped eligible voters overcome a range of barriers to obtaining citizenship documents. They may be stored inside a bank’s safe deposit box or tucked away at a family member’s home in another town or state. Some people may need support navigating a “bureaucratic doom loop” when trying to replace faded certificates, Kunis adds.
And for more than 3.8 million adult citizens, or about 2% of eligible voters, there’s no document to find at all, according to the survey’s estimates. That includes birth certificates.
“Older Americans and Black Americans, particularly in the South, are more likely to have been born outside of a hospital setting, meaning they didn’t receive a birth certificate automatically,” Kunis points out.”
Our president:
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights:
“Congress has a pivotal constitutional responsibility to safeguard free and fair elections and to ensure all Americans have the freedom to vote. The SAVE Act represents a dangerous departure from fulfilling this vital duty. The bill’s requirement of documentary proof of American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections is wholly based on falsehoods and, even worse, seeks to promote fear-mongering and divisive rhetoric. Instead of proceeding with this legislation, Congress should take actions that will help voters and promote democracy such as passing legislation that will strengthen protections against discrimination in voting and expand access to the ballot for all communities.
The SAVE Act is both unnecessary and dangerous. Our electoral system already deploys processes to ensure that our elections are secure and that only eligible voters are participating in our democracy. Voters in every state are already required to affirm or verify their citizenship status when registering to vote. State election officials already have in place existing systems to verify an individual’s voter eligibility and ensure voter rolls are accurate.
Moreover, federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Every single state bans noncitizens from voting in state elections. These protections have proven very effective, given that there is simply no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in elections. Indeed, it defies logic that non-U.S. citizens would risk their immigration status, the potential of criminal prosecution, future opportunity for naturalization, and freedom for themselves and their families by unlawfully committing an affirmative act to vote in an election in which they are prohibited from participating. The penalties for registering or voting as a non-U.S. citizen include imprisonment or deportation. The risks for any non-U.S. citizen to vote in a federal election are serious and steep, and our laws already effectively prevent significant unlawful voter registration and voting.
Introduction and advancement of this bill is the most recent example of what has been a string of recent efforts to make voter registration and voting more difficult, particularly for voters of color. False claims of non-citizen voting have been disingenuously used to enact more onerous voter identification requirements, limitations on voter assistance in languages other than English, and attempts to spread misinformation about voting. This legislation seeks to intimidate members of immigrant communities and communities of color from exercising their lawful right to vote. It also would make it harder for voters of color and naturalized citizens to register to vote and would prevent their full participation in democracy. These are already communities who are unfairly targeted by anti-immigrant policies at the federal, state, and local level. Congress should be doing everything possible to encourage and promote the political participation of these citizens, rather than seeking to diminish it through threats and fear tactics.
Legislation like the SAVE Act is intended to elicit irrational fear of the growing number of citizens of color. Congress should instead act to ensure that every eligible U.S. citizen has the freedom to vote unimpeded by discriminatory rules rooted in fear and division. We urge you to instead focus on passing real pro-voter reforms to ensure that everyone can fully participate in our democracy.”
The League of Women Voters:
“…there is absolutely no evidence of widespread non-citizen voting in federal or state elections...
“…By requiring documentary proof of American citizenship to register to vote, the SAVE Act will create unnecessary barriers for all eligible Americans to participate in the registration and voting process. The legislation is a blatant attempt to erode voter confidence ahead of the November elections and undermine election integrity based on lies about who is voting. These claims are born out of an anti-immigrant agenda in direct opposition to this country’s values.
“The right to vote is the fundamental promise of democracy, and we must protect it at all costs. We need our elected officials to prioritize impactful legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act that would strengthen voting rights instead of bills that sow disinformation and fear. “
And despite GOP hysteria, data shows that noncitizens voting in federal elections is virtually nonexistent.” According to The Associated Press, states such as North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, California, and Texas reviewed their voter rolls between 2016 and 2022. These audits found that fewer than 50 noncitizens in each state had voted in recent elections, out of upwards of 23 million total votes per state.
The Oversight Project is a scam!
The Heritage Foundation, the dicks who, in their overwhelming hubris, thought it was a good idea to publish their plans for destroying democracy, Project 2025, online – also has created the Oversight Project. This “investigations” team, similar to the disgraced “Project Veritas,” is posting videos to prove to the credulous that non-citizens are voting in great numbers in our elections.
After a team was sent out to intimidate immigrants at their doorways, they concluded that they had “staggering” evidence that 14 percent of noncitizens in Georgia — which Heritage said extrapolated to more than 47,000 people — were registered to vote.” Every bit of this was proven to be wrong, but with the assistance of Elon Musk, X’s owner, who called it “extremely disturbing,” it quickly went viral. A spokesman for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, called the video “a stunt.”
(NYTimes) “In March 2022, Mr. Raffensperger announced the results of a statewide audit that determined that 1,634 noncitizens had tried to register to vote among all of Georgia’s registered voters at the time, and had been blocked from doing so by existing state verification procedures. He also noted that none of them had cast ballots…
The project says it is preparing to release investigations of other states, including what its executive director, Mike Howell, recently described in a livestream on X as “a pretty big thing” targeting voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles…
…“We view our role in this cause as breaking the bombshell news,” said [Mike Howell, executive director]. The recording of the livestream appears to have been deleted after The New York Times contacted Heritage for this article, and the Oversight Project has so far not posted any videos about alleged noncitizen voting in Virginia.
A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy group that focuses on voting and criminal justice issues, found that one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of votes in the 2016 election were cast by noncitizens. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has said that “noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.” The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis found just 23 documented cases of noncitizen voting across the country between 2003 and 2023…
…“So, my fellow Georgians asked me, ‘Are noncitizens voting in Georgia?’” Mr. Raffensperger said in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I can say, ‘No, they aren’t,’ because we’ve checked it.”
Resources
- (LWV) LWV Responds to House Vote on the SAVE Act
- (White House) STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY
- (Civilrights.org) Civil Rights Groups Letter in Opposition to SAVE Act
- (ACLU) How Donald Trump’s Election Lies and Other Anti-Voter Policies Will Continue to Impact Our Democracy
- (Guardian) Will Trump, a felon, be able to vote for himself in November?
- (NYTimes) Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters – The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”
INDIVISIBLE VENTURA 