WASHINGTON—A coalition of civil rights and religious groups launched a last-ditch effort to halt a dangerous right-wing Republican bill, the misnamed Save Act, which would strip voting rights from up to 70 million people, most of them women.
Estimates of how many women—union and non-union, whites, people of color, gay, straight, or anything else—would lose their rights to vote ranged from a minimum of 21 million up to 70 million.
That includes women without birth certificates, even if they’ve been voting for years, women who moved between elections, and, especially, women who married and their current ID they must carry to the polls under the Save Act does not match—down to the middle initial—the name they used when they first registered to vote.
As a result, the groups, including the Legal Defense and Education Fund—formerly the NAACP Legal Defense Fund— along with Common Cause, Unidos US, the League of Women Voters, the Center for American Progress and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, described the measure as the worst anti-voter legislation since the heyday of Jim Crow racism.
But it’s even worse than that, warned Tom Cox, associate director of the Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Enacting the Save (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act is part of the broader anti-democratic, pro-oligarchy agenda of the radical right, he explained.
“This will impact voters in every single state,” said Cox. “On the one hand, they’ll take away programs Americans rely on” he said of the ruling Republicans’ agenda, which endangers Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, school aid and more. “And on the other hand, they’ll”—the Republicans—”take away our ability to hold them accountable” by voting them out of office.
Really, the Stop Americans from Voting Act
“This should be called the ‘Stop Americans from Voting in Elections Act,” quipped Common Cause President Virginia Kase Solomón.
“And guess what? It’ll particularly harm Republican voters,” especially those in red states.
The SAVE Act, HR22, by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, was scheduled for a key vote on March 31 in the House Rules Committee, which sets up the length of debate on almost all legislation, including debate on amendments.
That’s because the innocuously named bill would require anyone changing voter registration or registering as a new voter to bring positive proof of citizenship—a driver’s license, a passport or a birth certificate—to local election board and later to the elections themselves.
And if the names on the voter’s current ID don’t exactly match the original voter registration she filled out, the Save Act says, the voter is barred. Anyone trying to help her vote would face jail terms, Roy’s legislation adds.
The Save Act would bar registering online. Voters couldn’t sign up with volunteers coming around with registration blanks. Voters couldn’t register by mail. They’d have to register in person, no matter how expensive or inconvenient—due to long driving distances—it would get.
Rep. Roy’s measure “would deny on-line registration in 42 states,” said Cox. What makes the situation even worse, he said, is state voter registration “databases have high rates of inaccuracy,” because so many people move between elections.
“And in North Carolina, 95% of those people identified as non-citizens were citizens,” he added. The Tar Heel state has some of the most stringent anti-voting laws in the U.S. Georgia, which criminalizes people who bring food and water to voters standing in long lines at polling places, isn’t far behind.
Once the GOP-dominated U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s key provisions, the GOP-run North Carolina legislature passed its voter suppression law “in 45 minutes,” the Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign, a Carolinian, said.
The folks who lack birth certificates are older people, mostly women and most of those women of color, who were born at home with midwives present. The folks who lack passports are Republicans, not Democrats, in red states. The people without drivers licenses are mostly people of color.
“Guess who has more passports, even in red states? Democrats!” said Solomón in the groups’ televised press conference in a building across the street from the Capitol.
And the ones whose names on original registrations don’t match their current IDs at the polls are usually married women who took their spouse’s last names—up to 70 million of them.
Urged to flood Congress
Her group and the others urged everyone, regardless of party, to flood Congress with phone calls and e-mails, trying to derail the legislation before the key vote in the House panel. As it turned out, that committee session ran far into the night on other legislation.
So Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., its new chair, who has a long-time reputation as a worker and union hater, planned to call her colleagues back at 8 a.m. on April 1.
Once Rules OKs HR22, the House’s ruling Republicans expect to bring it up for a full House vote during the rest of the week.
While the press conference speakers concentrated on stopping the Save Act, LDF’s Cox said callers and e-mailers to congressional offices should not forget a second message: Don’t kill voting rights, expand them.
Callers can do so, he urged, by demanding lawmakers pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late civil rights leader and icon, and later “conscience of the House,” Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. It would have restored the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s protections and power.
When ruling the House at the beginning of Democratic President Joe Biden’s term, Democrats introduced and passed that measure, giving it the highly symbolic number of HR4. A Republican Senate filibuster killed it.
Trump’s recent executive order would accomplish much the same things as the GOP bill by also disenfranchising millions of voters, including people of color, women, and various other groups. Donald Trump has made a number of comments that display his disdain for voters of color, women, workers, and various other groups. Now, with his executive order and the GOP bill he wants to be doubly sure they can’t vote.
That’s the unstated goal of the Republican president’s executive order, issued March 25, telling his Department of Homeland Security and his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to crack down on states that don’t follow his voting curb dictates.
Trump’s executive order virtually bans mail-in ballots, curbs absentee voting, and, like the bill, disenfranchises people whose IDs when they come to the polls don’t match their voter registrations.
That measure alone disenfranchise 23 million women, plus millions of people of color who lack driver’s licenses or birth certificates to prove they’re citizens when they show up at the polls on Election Day.
Mailed-in ballots arriving at election boards after Election Day would be automatically thrown out, even if they were postmarked far in advance.
Counting those ballots “is like allowing persons who arrive three days after Election Day, perhaps after a winner has been declared, to vote in person at a former voting precinct, which would be absurd,” Trump wrote.
Just to make sure the states obey, Trump wields two big sticks. He plans to pull federal dollars for assisting state elections officials in battling threats such as cyber fraud.
And he’s ordering states to turn over copies of their voter rolls—including data from IDs people use to register—to multibillionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s puppeteer, and his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” to do with as they wish. The order puts no limits on DOGE.
Benefits the corporate class
Trump’s order, though he did not say so, also benefits the corrupt and criminal corporate class. It represses the largest and most powerful critics of that oligarchy—including workers—and it aims to corral profits over all by subjugating all.
Trump’s order is also in line with his long-standing big lie about “election fraud” in 2020, particularly in Democratic-run central cities with majorities of people of color, notably Detroit, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Philadelphia.
He’s never given up on the big lie, even though he went 0-for-62 in court challenges to voting results. When those failed, he turned to violence: Inciting, aiding, and abetting the Trumpites’ Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol invasion, insurrection, and attempted coup d’etat.
Needless to say, Trump’s order angers the Letter Carriers, who deliver election mail. It also steamed several civil rights groups, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., and the state Democrats. And it’s not a stretch, given the track record of Trump’s first two months in office, to expect this order will be challenged in court, too.
Even before Trump’s order, red states, notably Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and the Deep South and Plains States, enacted onerous voting curbs. They ranged from eliminating vote-by-mail collection boxes to rigid registration rules to threatening to jail anyone who offers food and water to voters standing in long lines.
President of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), Brian Renfroe, said that Trump’s order “is stacked with blatant lies to undermine the nation’s free and fair election process by placing restrictions on voter access to the ballot box.”
“Our country is stronger when more people participate in the democratic process, no matter how they choose to cast their ballots: early, in person on Election Day, or through mail-in ballots,” he declared.
The Letter Carriers deliver pre-election materials, including absentee ballot applications and ballots, nationwide. They must also ensure that the cast mailed-in ballots get to state and local elections boards in time to meet their counting deadlines. That’s a lot of ballots, Renfroe said: 99.22 million last year and, in the depths of the coronavirus pandemic four years earlier, 135 million.
“While this executive order claims to be about ‘preserving’ and ‘protecting’ elections, NALC sees this for what it is: A clear attack on voting rights that slams the safety and security of voting by mail.”
Left unsaid, at least by Renfroe, Mail-in and absentee balloting helped drive up turnout by voters of color, the very voters Trump and his MAGA legions hate.
“NALC will not stand for any attempt to diminish Americans’ accessibility to free and fair elections, and we will fight like hell to protect this right for the millions of Americans who rely on us,” he concluded.
The Brennan Center for Justice, Public Citizen, the Legal Defense Fund—once the NAACP Legal Defense Fund—and the Illinoisans were even more critical. The center predicted, right after the issuing of the executive order, there’d be a court challenge, pushing the total challenges to all of Trump’s moves during his reign to 127 and counting.
Just another scheme
“Trump’s latest executive order is just another scheme to suppress the votes of millions of Americans, especially voters of color. Looks like another blatant attack on democracy and another authoritarian power grab,” Public Citizen tweeted.
Michael Waldman, the Brennan Center director, included the Republican congressional majority in the voting rights threat. He specifically referred to the Save Act (HR22), pushed by House “Freedom Caucus” extremist Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. It would disenfranchise millions of voters—especially women—without their knowledge. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced it there as S126.
“Today’s fight to vote does not involve police batons or snarling dogs” such as at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., 60 years ago, Waldman said. “It is embodied in laws and legislation, court rulings, firings of election security officials, and attacks on voting advocates.
“Those working to suppress the vote are currently trying to convince federal courts citizens are not allowed to seek redress under the Voting Rights Act when their freedom to vote is violated.”
“We need to call this what it is: Another illegal, extreme, and dangerous attempt to take power away from the American people and hand it over [to] the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, who wishes to decide which U.S. citizens can and can’t vote,” said Illinois Gov. Pritzker, a leading Trump critic.
Janai Nelson, executive director of the Legal Defense Fund—formerly the NAACP Legal Defense Fund—also sharply criticized Trump for “a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to erect arbitrary barriers to the ballot that risk disenfranchising millions of Americans. This is not about election integrity. It’s about making it more difficult for people to vote.
“The president does not have the power to regulate federal elections. That responsibility is explicitly delegated to Congress and the states. This order is an illegal and dangerous power grab, a direct attack on American democracy, and an affront to the rule of law.
“By requiring documents that many Americans do not have ready access to, such as a passport, this order imposes an undue burden on the fundamental right to register and vote. It will prevent eligible citizens from registering and casting a ballot and will be especially burdensome for Black voters. Only one-third of Black people have passports. The consequences will be grave: Fewer eligible people will be able to register to vote and our democracy will be eroded because of it.”
Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Ill., also called Trump’s order “an unconstitutional assault on the right to vote.” It would particularly hit minority communities, he predicted.
Trump “attempted to steal the 2020 election, incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, then issued blanket pardons for the January 6 rioters. He has zero credibility to talk about election integrity.”
Trump ordered the U.S. Attorney General Bondi, who was one of his lawyers during his Senate impeachment trials, to “take all necessary action” against states that “include absentee or mail-in ballots received after Election Day in the final tabulation of votes for the appointment of presidential electors and the election of” lawmakers.
Other aspects of Trump’s order would, according to the Brennan Center, appear to decertify all voting machines in the U.S. and require states to conform with new federal standards even though no such systems are on the market. Replacing all voting systems could cost billions of dollars, it warned.
Trump was acting like “an aspiring king hell-bent on disenfranchising millions of voters,” Pritzker said. Maybe even Trump recognizes that. In February, Trump’s White House website posted a mock Time magazine cover of him wearing a crown, with the Manhattan skyline in the background.
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