Trump wants to ‘fight like hell’ to pass SAVE Act. Critics say it only saves ‘white supremacy’
TheGrio...
“It’s certainly not saving the Black community,” Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, tells theGrio.
President Donald Trump is continuing to use his presidential muscle to pressure Congress into passing his signature voter bill, The SAVE America Act, which critics say will lead to a dramatic drop in Black voter participation, as well as various voter groups in the country.
Seeing the SAVE Act as the Republican Party’s only chance to retain its majority power in Congress in this November’s midterm elections, Trump is now threatening not to sign a single piece of legislation until lawmakers pass the SAVE Act.
“It will guarantee the midterms. If you don’t get it, big trouble,” Trump told U.S. House Republicans on Monday. The president later told reporters at a news conference that Republicans would have to “fight like hell” to pass the bill requiring proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote.
“We don’t have a country if we’re going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest, like we’ve witnessed over the last period of time,” said Trump.
Voting rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers are throwing cold water on Trump’s and Republicans’ theory on the SAVE Act, which currently does not have enough votes in the U.S. Senate to pass.
“It ain’t saving anybody. The only thing it’s saving is white supremacy,” Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, told theGrio. “[It’s] saving fascism, like we can call it that, call it what it is, but it’s not saving the country. It is certainly not saving our elections. It’s certainly not saving the Black community.”
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require all American citizens registering to vote or updating their registration information to present documentary proof of citizenship in person. Government-issued driver’s licenses—including REAL IDs—as well as military or tribal IDs do not satisfy the bill’s requirements, according to the Center for American Progress. The SAVE Act would also end online voter registration, prohibit mailing registration applications, and eliminate voter registration drives.
If passed, experts anticipate a huge drop in voter participation, as nearly half of Americans (146 million) do not have a valid passport. The Brennan Center for Justice notes that approximately 3.8 million Americans lack these documents, such as birth certificates, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen. Black Americans disproportionately do not have a birth certificate as a result of being denied access to hospitals and never being given one, dating back to Jim Crow. The Bipartisan Policy Center also notes these changes would be costly and time-consuming, and could take months or years to achieve. Not to mention, the center points out that there are “better ways” to verify citizenship that place the responsibility on the government, not voters.
Trump insists that the SAVE America Act is about preserving election integrity, namely, ensuring that non-U.S. citizens do not vote in federal elections. But it is already illegal for undocumented residents to vote in federal elections.
Critics say the true intent of the legislation is not to make voting more accessible or more secure, but rather to exclude voters they believe will cast ballots for Democrats. Trump and several MAGA Republicans have repeatedly suggested that large numbers of undocumented people have been voting in federal elections, even pushing conspiracy theories without any evidence that many voted in the 2020 election in which Joe Biden defeated Trump by more than 7 million votes.
“This undocumented immigrant voting has zero evidence…zero history of this happening over 40 years. Billions, billions with a B, of votes, and like, maybe you can count on one hand the number of undocumented immigrants that were even registered, let alone voting,” said Albright. “Anytime somebody has gone through such lengths to stop something which all evidence shows does not exist, let’s you know that they are not actually trying to solve that problem. They actually are just trying to keep people from voting.”
The Black Voters Matter leader called out what he said was hypocrisy that the U.S. Department of State ordered many nonprofit public libraries to halt passport services, affecting about 1,400 locations nationwide.
But it’s not just Black voters who stand to be impacted by a law like the SAVE Act. Albright noted that it would also impact other marginalized groups, including women.
“If you’re married and you changed your name, then you’re not going to have a birth certificate that matches your current legal name,” said Albright, who noted that Republicans did not support an amendment to the bill that would cover married women. “They know what the impact is going to be, and they don’t want to fix it.”
The voting rights advocate said the SAVE Act, when combined with Trump’s threat to “nationalize” elections despite it going against the U.S. Constitution, as well as other actions like seizing election ballots from 2020 and threats to send law enforcement to polling locations, means the country is heading in a dangerous direction.
“If it were happening in any other country, we would be very clear what it is,” said Albright. “We are literally watching a march to fascism, and you still have people acting like that. This is just a matter of voter ID, election security, or policy differences, and it’s not what this is about at all.”