Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to withhold his signature from all bills until Congress passes a GOP-led voting bill that implements voter restrictions ahead of the November midterms.
“I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The bill, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, requires individuals to show citizenship documents to register to vote and strict forms of photo ID to cast a ballot. If passed, the legislation would also administer criminal penalties for election officials who register anyone lacking the required documents.
As my colleague Ari Berman wrote in February, the bill would potentially block tens of millions of Americans from voting. Nine percent of American citizens, or approximately 21 million people, don’t have ready access to citizenship documents. The bill may impact millions of US citizens in other ways: tens of millions of women who took their partner’s last name, for example, may not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name could find it more difficult to register.
For people who might not be in the US and don’t understand why this is a bad idea in the US and proportionately hurts poor people, proof of citizenship is usually a passport. A passport costs $130. You need supporting documents like your birth certificate, SSN, and a drivers license/state ID to get it. For your first passport you usually have to make an appointment to go somewhere authorized like a library, post office, or courthouse to apply, and then they send the application off and it can take weeks to months to get back, depending how backed up the processing agency is (and I’m sure there will be artificial delays during voting years if this passes). Also, they are passing laws limiting where you can go to apply, so now libraries and the post office are losing the ability to process passport applications, so people will have to go to the county courthouse, which could be a long drive from where they live, especially if you live in a rural area. For people who don’t drive, or only have one car that is shared with another working adult, or use public transportation that has a limited range (or just doesn’t exist in most of the US), or are disabled and can’t travel far, this can be a huge problem.
Also, all these places are only open during normal business hours, so you probably have to take time off work to go apply. Federal minimum wage is only $7.25/hr while the living wage is actually much higher (living wage for 1 adult living alone in a 1 bedroom apartment where I live was considered almost $23/hr in 2024), and if someone is making minimum wage or close to it they almost certainly aren’t getting paid time off, so now they have to come up with $130 for the fee and lose time off work.
Also not that it matters anymore but the Supreme Court already ruled it unconstitutional a long time ago as it’s a form of poll tax. Remember when Supreme Court decisions weren’t just “whatever Trump wants today” and actually were based on the constitution? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
It’s curious why they would want to implement this because although it affects poor people, it would probably also disproportionately affect poor Republicans.
Many voters in states like Mississippi/Arkansas do not have passports because they are both poor and have no intention to travel internationally so don’t bother with passports.
it would probably also disproportionately affect poor Republicans
If MAGA thought that it would be a disadvantage to their voter base, they would not be pushing for it.
I am not from the US, so I’m also mentally comparing with what happens in my country. Here, the place where you’re registered to vote has a list of all voter names and birth dates. You get there to vote, show a form of valid ID (driver’s license is a valid one), you can vote and you’re crossed off the list so you can’t vote twice. You don’t need to prove citizenship directly because if you don’t have the right to vote, you’re not on the list.
How does it work in the US? Citizenship aside, how do you prove that you are who you say you are and don’t e.g. wear a hat and fake moustache and vote 3 times? Honest question, I’m not judging, I’m genuinely trying to understand how things work today in the US.
That’s a very hard question to answer because each state runs elections differently. In my state we just get our ballot by mail and you send that in with your signature. If you don’t have an address there are polling places available, but it’s been so long I’m not certain how they check ID.
In my state you can apply to get your ballot by mail, but you have to do that for every election (which reminds me, I need to send my application in for the next election). If you don’t do that you can go in person to the voting location that is predetermined for you based on your address. They have a list of everyone who is registered as eligible to vote in person at that location. When you register to vote you get a voter ID card in the mail which is basically a little paper card with your name, county, and the location that you vote at. You just take your voter card with you to vote and they cross you off the list and give you your ballot to vote in person. If you already registered to vote by mail but you forgot to send your ballot in you can take your mail-in ballot to your in person location and they’ll tear it up and let you vote in person.
and if someone is making minimum wage or close to it they almost certainly aren’t getting paid time off, so now they have to come up with $130 for the fee and lose time off work.
A passport card is only $30 (plus the $10 or so dollars for the required photo), but everything else in your post is spot on.
I always forget you can get just the card without the passport.
Even better, you can have the card expire off-cycle from the book. Since both last 10 years, if you renew one at the 5 year mark, it means you’ll always have an active document that can get you to Canada or Mexico even while the other is in the renewal cycle.
I recently learned this after renewing both at the same time missing my opportunity. I’ll renew the card early in 5 years or so to get this off-cycle expiry benefit.
While I don’t think this should ever pass, I think a huge issue is we’re too close to the election to be changing how voting works. People could vote in the primaries and then not have the documents to vote in the actual election. Something like this would need to be phased in over time, just think about how long Real IDs took to implement.
Schumer’s gonna pass the SAVE act so he can pass Iran War funding, isn’t he?
Because more and more people hate his guts with the fury of a thousand women scorned.
And for good reason.
I’ve been trying to float the idea of voters showing up to the polls armed. Everyone who has a firearm, carry it to vote. Not in a threatening manner, no waving them around, just… Everyone who has one is armed.
Polling stations are often in schools, and in my state it’s illegal to be armed on school grounds.
100%. Just did early voting today and that was the sitch
Every time mail in ballots is brought up I mention that Florida has a successful mail in ballot system and they’ve been Republican for well over two decades.
Same with Utah
Salt Lake County’s voting process is straight up fire, Sherrie Swensen was amazing. One of the only things I miss about Utah.
… I’m tired
I’m okay with him not signing any bills.
Yeah govt doing absolutely nothing is pretty typical
The SAVE act as currently written has a religious exemption, boy do I have a church for you: The Church of Unconsented Likeness. Take the pledge today! https://substack.com/@tover153/p-188528157
Bitch I’ve been saying this would happen for a fucking decade
s/desperate/determined
I think they’re going to funnel all those (5k per month) white South African’s into ICE and send them to polling stations to intimidate
“Desperate?”
No. He rules us. He’s going to do it, and there’s no coming back. The way forward must pass through years of fascism.
Trump wants the U.S. to be on equal footing with all other first world countries. Gasp!
I am from a country in which you normally take your ID document with you and cast your vote in person. All the millions of us do it, and the afternoon of that day we have the total count of votes. It is a very straightforward process.
I am not supporting Trump, really, but why would the implementation of this be a negative thing?
How do you get your ID document? Does it cost a lot to get? Does any official look at perfectly valid ID and say “I don’t think that’s real, so you don’t get to vote”?
We have no national ID here, the closest thing to prove citizenship is a passport but people are not required to have one, and it is expensive. For most people, the only definitive proof of citizenship they have is their original birth certificate.
That is why here, in the US, when politicians push Voter ID laws it’s mainly to disenfranchise poor people.
I once hard (here) that people in USA is kind of against having an ID document.
It ended up anyway giving them one of the crappiest IDs in any country: SSNs
to answer your questions: it is super cheap (~5 US dollars), fast, has many security systems, it is quickly verifyable agains government databases, it has a photo, your signature, and, if valid, nobody will question it.
It looks like a mini version of the plastic card in mdern pastports (of the size of a credit card)
The police can stop you and without probable cause ask you for your ID (and car/driving documents if in a car), check it against the national database, and give it back to you. You have to show it (required by law) and it is your responsibility (if you are over 18) to keep it with you. The intention is to catch people with pending charges or arrest orders and stuff. If you are not hiding from the law, it is a simple, civilized interaction that would take you 2~5 mins.
You know, the kind of things that you would expect from a 3rd world country, less developed than USA.
SSN isn’t proof of anything except eligibility for Social Security benefits. Yes, the system is abused to cover for the lack of a national ID, but it isn’t an ID.
Well… an ID is whatever can be used to identify you. Whether it was or not initially envisioned for that. And the SSN does that, to some extend
Cool. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s not valid ID for the purposed “prove you’re a citizen” bill, so it’s mostly irrelevant to this discussion. It doesn’t even prove citizenship.
Being an ID and being proof of citizenship are two orthogonal ideas.
The SSN is the former, but not the latter.
The sentence “an ID to proof your citizenship” is misconstructed.
IDs and Proofs of something are both subclasses of “documents”. The correct phrase would be: “a document to prove citizenship”.
That document could (in principle) not identify you, but at the same time demonstrate that you are a citizen (for example, you could have a long cryptographic self-validated number that hashes to a “Yes”, or “Invalid”). But of course that’s not too practical.
Strange for an id to say its not a valid id. 🤔
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html
Not For Identification.
SSN are not an ID. Well they aren’t meant to be an ID. It’s just a number assigned to every citizen eligible for an account with the Social Security Administration. It just so happens that this is a convenient, unique number that every citizen has to use to get a job (employees pay into social security with each pay check) so it’s been used to identify people by their numbers.
Well they aren’t meant to be an ID.
Mine still has that expressly printed on the back, “NOT A VALID FORM OF IDENTIFICATION” or something like that.
Same
deleted by creator
9-digit number that’s unique to you.
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Did you read that article? Its all about fraud and how a scammer could get and use your ssn, not about getting issued duplicate ssn. Also talks about typos from corporate.
Edit typos
It is an ID. A crappy one, but ID, by definition!: it was created to identify people
It is strictly NOT an ID. It is an account number. Your bank account number is not an ID either. This is the same idea, except ID is what it is being used for.
An account number is a unique number that is associated to your account. That IS an ID.
You have that number → you can find the person.
That is an ID. Even if you call it banana shake and say “bro, trust me this is not an ID”. It is still an ID: a piece of information in a domain that uniquely maps to elements in a co-domain, being the later, the set of persons in this country with a SSN.
Under your logic, a rifle stops being a rifle if it has a sticker that says “not valid as a rifle”
Strange for an id to say its not a valid id. 🤔
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html
Not For Identification.
It is a unique number that is associated to your person in an injective manner in the country (specifically designed to identify your tax documents by the IRS).
Regardless of what is printed in the card, that, BY DEFINITION is an ID.
This is proof of citizenship. Not drivers license or proof of age. Passport, birth cert plus supporting, citizenship cert and supporting. Discrepancy between the latter two options resulting from change of name could disqualify voters.
“Nine percent of American citizens, or approximately 21 million people, don’t have ready access to citizenship documents.”
Then you have my country where you enroll to vote, which requires id, lasts forever and you only have to update your address. On the day the volunteer looks up my given name on a ledger for my area, asks for my address and phone number, then explains how to write my vote.
