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Gee terwilligers, everything Donald Trump is doing is superduper unpopular! He has the lowest approval rating in his first month of any president since 1953, and the only modern president to never have received a Gallup approval rating higher than 50 percent. And that is not likely to improve! The price of eggs and inflation are not going down, he’s deported fewer people than he’s fired, and Elon Musk’s meddling is not popular. Even rural voters in red states are entering the find out phase. This will really hurt them in the midterms, you say! And they know it.
And that is why yeehaw Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, while not fighting for your kid’s freedom to set themselves on fire, has come up with the most vote-suppressing-est idea yet, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE Act. It passed the House last July, but Joe Biden was like, I am not signing that bag of dogshit. So now it would have to be passed by the House again, then by the Senate, where Mike Lee of Utah is all eager about it. A vote hasn’t been scheduled yet, but could be at any time.
What does this bullshit do? Well, it has the potential to disenfranchise more than a hundred million voters, first of all. It burdens would-be voters with time-consuming and costly bureaucratic paperwork. And in practice it would get rid of any online or mail-in voter registration, because it requires proof-of-citizenship documents to be presented in person. While it doesn’t directly decree that, say, married women who have changed their names can’t vote, it does disproportionately punish them, and trans people, and Native Americans with tribal IDs, and anyone who does not have the time, money, transportation and/or patience to devote to the bureaucratic fuckery of tracking down documents: poor people, disabled people, people with small children, and/or jobs that happen during the time that places like post offices and Social Security offices are open.
To provide documentary proof of citizenship under the SAVE Act, one must have a REAL ID, a passport, or “a valid government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State or Tribal government showing that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.” And because tribal IDs tend to not show the location of someone’s birth, only their tribal identity, native Americans need even more stuff.
While all states are now REAL ID compliant, drivers’ licenses take up to eight years to expire, so only about 56 percent of people currently have one. And only 51 percent of Americans have passports. More people may have those things a year and eight months from now, but that’s still tens of millions of people! Ironically, the states with people most likely to have a REAL ID or passport are blue. (Note REAL ID is not an acronym, it’s just spelled in ALL CAPS, for SOME REASON).
Getting a REAL ID costs money (up to $89), and is also HUGE PAIN and complete circlejerk, even if you are an organized type of person who saves your important documents in color-coded files. First, if you’ve changed your name for any reason, you must change your name with Social Security before applying. You have to have a passport, birth certificate, permanent resident card, or Consular Report of Birth Abroad or Certificate of Citizenship. BUT THEN ALSO you will need something else, too! An original Social Security card (no photocopies), or a W-2, 1099, pay stub with your Social Security number on it, or a Social Security benefits statement. (Guess which writer hasn’t seen their original social security card in like 20 years, and more than a decade of getting income from royalties? And had a name change? And had to spend literally days on that nonsense when her license expired?) To get a replacement Social Security card, you need a passport, or medical records … putting the “circle” in circlejerk! And then you must present all of these papers in person at the department of motor vehicles, which happen to almost always only be open during most people’s work hours. Got a job where you can’t take time off? Disabled? No car and don’t even have a DMV in your town? Can’t afford it? Well, fuck you! No ID for you!
And you’ve lost any of these documents, factor in time and money to replace them.
If you don’t have a REAL ID or a passport (which costs as much as $165, require an appointment to get, and a headshot), then with the SAVE Act things get even fuckier. You can use a non-REAL ID license, but then you will also need a birth certificate. And you can’t use a copy of a birth certificate any more, you must get a certified copy, which once again takes time and money to order. Need a copy of a Consular Report of Birth Abroad? You’ll need notarized forms, more copies of IDs, and plan to wait at least eight weeks to get it.
And let’s say the name on your birth certificate does not match the one on your passport or driver’s license, which is the case with 80 percent of married women, most trans people, and people whose parents cursed them names like Raefarty Lipshitz, Sue Cash or Zowie Bowie. The exact documentation they need to show that would be up to individual states, but “subject to any relevant guidance adopted by the Election Assistance Commission.” Mighty vague! So if a state tries to do anything to make it any easier, the EAC reserves the right to step in and say no.
If voting is a right, and IDs are required, everyone should be able to get an ID for free, right? Democrats thought so too. In 2023 Sean Casten and Cori Bush introduced the IDs for an Inclusive Democracy Act, legislation that would create a federal photo identification card that is free and optional for the American public. But it went nowhere. Just in case you thought that making voting harder was not the entire plan, here.
Voter suppression, it’s a (the only) winning strategy for Republicans. Journalist Greg Palast did the math, and makes a convincing argument that if all legal voters were allowed to vote and if all legal ballots were counted, Donald Trump would have lost the last election. According to US Elections Assistance Commission data, 4,776,706 voters were purged just for not returning a confirmation notice (page 200, there), and more than two million ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors.
Republicans are making passing the SAVE act a priority, so chances are good that it passes before the midterms. Possibly right before, so it can’t be challenged in court in time. (Bookmark this and see if I am right!) So get that Real ID and passport renewed if you hope to participate in democracy! Or if you need to flee the country sooner than that and you have the cash to do that, whichever.
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