WASHINGTON—Is it possible to make an already terrible voter suppression bill—right-wing GOP President Donald Trump’s top legislative and political priority—even worse?
That’s what the Senate’s ruling Republicans have crafted in their latest version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE Act).
But once it’s there, a united phalanx of all 45 Democrats and both independents has enough votes to block it by threatening a filibuster. You need 60 votes to halt a filibuster, and there are only 53 Senate Republicans.
Save Act foes, including organized labor, civil rights, and civic groups, are marshalling messages, e-mails, and phone calls to Capitol Hill ahead of a vote that could occur any moment.
“Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud: The SAVE Act is designed to give Republicans an unfair advantage in elections for the next 50 years,” reported the 314 Action Fund, a political committee dedicated to electing more scientists to Congress. “If the SAVE Act is passed, you can kiss goodbye to having free and fair elections.”
“Congress should be making it easier—not harder—for working people to cast their ballots and participate in their government,” AFL-CIO Legislative Director Jody Calemine wrote to senators late in February.
“This bill does just the opposite. It undermines working people’s ability to vote. By requiring extreme documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote or update an existing registration, this bill will result in the disenfranchisement of citizens, especially working-class and lower-income Americans.”
“Twenty million women will lose the right to vote, 15 million more Americans who do not have a passport or physically undamaged original birth certificate will lose the right to vote, and everything from online voter registration to voting by mail will become illegal,” 314 Action predicted.
Even if foes succeed in stopping the SAVE Act, Trump and his backers—who want to ban workers, women, people of color, students, union members, and progressives from voting—have other tools they can and have wielded against the right to vote.
Those include banning mail-in balloting, taking over local election boards either by compliant MAGA state boards or by the federal government, taking over state boards themselves by the federal government, having state legislative bodies replace elected electors with ones chosen by the state legislature rather than the people, seizing ballots directly—as they did early this year in grabbing the 2020 ballots in majority-minority Fulton County, Ga. (Atlanta), limiting ballot drop boxes and who can drop the ballots in the boxes, and putting strict curbs on petition gathering. All of these moves are illegal and unconstitutional.
And some Republicans have floated the idea of sending in armed troops or armed and masked ICE agents to monitor polling places. Given both the 150-year-plus ban on using the military against civilians, plus the violent and vicious Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps against people, which amounts, at the very least, to intimidation that can drive down the number of voters.
Common Cause has joined the parade of protests against the SAVE Act and says it is hosting a rally at 10:45 a.m. on March 18 in front of the Senate wing of the Capitol.
“We’ve heard this song before. Donald Trump is dredging up conspiracy theories from the past and saying his voter suppression bill is the only way to solve the problems he’s invented out of thin air,” Common Cause e-mailed.
“He says it’s about the 2020 election, but you and I realize it’s REALLY about controlling the results of this year’s midterms before a single vote is cast – so he and his wealthy, powerful friends don’t ever need to face accountability from the voters.
“Our elected representatives in Congress need to tell him: Hell no.”
Save Act supporters also authored a companion bill to worsen the voter suppression even more, the Make Elections Great Again (Mega) Act, the Brennan Center for Law and Justice at New York University reports in a new analysis.
“The SAVE Act included a provision that required voters to show documents such as a passport or birth certificate at the polls every time they vote. “The bill has since been amended in the House to replace that with a directive that states regularly submit their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as a restrictive photo ID requirement for voting,” it reports.
The Mega Act would order states to “cleanse”—read “purge”—their voter rolls every 30 days, eliminating the “90-day quiet period that protects voters from being mistakenly thrown off the rolls right before Election Day,” the Brennan Center analysis says. That would affect voters of color the most, the center adds.
It also “would prohibit universal mail voting and require all mail voters to submit an application in order to receive a mail ballot. This would end the longstanding principal method of voting in eight states and Washington, D.C.,” the Brennan Center says.
And it would require not just a photo ID to register, or re-register, to vote, but also when actually voting, and with a current address. Given that nine million people change addresses yearly, even within states, that could knock even more people off the rolls.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says he opposes changing Senate rules to eliminate filibusters and says he’s told Trump the votes in his own Republican caucus aren’t there to do so.
Instead, he’s seeking workarounds to bring the SAVE Act to the Senate floor even before lawmakers must vote on ending any filibuster against it.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said: “The SAVE Act is a disaster for voting rights.” And this time, Schumer apparently is holding his caucus together, rather than suffering key defections or personally knuckling under to Trump.
“We don’t yet know what Thune will do, but we’re prepared for every possible scenario,” Schumer told reporters on March 15.
“My caucus really feels strongly that this would be a horror, one of the worst things that’s happened in the history of this country in terms of allowing people to vote.”
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