The SAVE Act is the MAGA Plan to Revive Jim Crow
5 examples of how Republicans are forcing a choice between shutting down the government or shutting down voting rights for millions of people
by Qasim Rashid
The US Government is scheduled to shut down on October 1, unless a new funding bill is passed. And already the GOP led house has voted against its own funding bill.
But the funding bill failed not because of a funding dispute, but because what should be a simple continuing resolution (CR) is instead a trojan horse to shut down American democracy. Republicans want to pass something called the “SAVE Act,” which they needlessly attached to the CR. While they claim this is a bill to “protect election integrity,” in truth, this is a Donald Trump crafted fascist piece of legislation that will decimate voting rights in America. Rep Landsmen wrote an excellent short thread on this bill. I provide here a detailed overview because without voting rights, we do not have a functioning republic. Here are five of the most terrifying aspects of the Trump crafted SAVE Act. Let’s Address This
1. Proof of Citizenship Requirement
Republicans have long and falsely claimed non-citizens vote in our elections. There is no actual evidence of this. Accordingly, Republicans want the SAVE Act to impose a wholly unnecessary proof of citizenship for voter registration. This means that millions of Americans who currently use their driver’s licenses or state IDs to register wouldn’t be able to.
We’ve used these same documents for decades to vote, but under this bill, they’re suddenly not good enough. This change disproportionately impacts already marginalized groups and creates yet another barrier to the ballot box. Who pays for the additional documentation? What if someone cannot afford it, or get travel or time off work to go to a government office to procure it? The SAVE Act doesn’t care.
2. Targeting Women
Would it surprise you that the SAVE Act is also anti-women? Imagine you’re a married woman, and like many married women, you change your last name. If your driver’s license doesn’t match your birth certificate, you could be blocked from voting. Ditto if you get divorced and change your name back to your maiden name. The SAVE Act would force women who have changed their names to jump through extra hoops just to exercise their basic right to vote. This doesn’t protect our vote, it suffocates the democratic process.
3. Disrespecting Veterans and Indigenous Communities
Not content with attacking women, the SAVE Act also attacks other groups who cannot immediately prove citizenship. For example, Tribal IDs, Veteran IDs, and Military IDs will all become useless if they don’t explicitly prove citizenship. This is in addition to the systemic voter suppression already imposed upon Native Americans. In short, the very people we should be honoring, will instead be forced to jump through more hurdles for the right to vote.
4. Punishing Deployed Military Members
The SAVE Act continues to punish servicemembers by forcing those deployed abroad to come home just to register to vote in person. That’s right. Republicans want soldiers stationed overseas to abandon their posts just to jump through bureaucratic hoops to reregister to do what they’re already registered to do securely. Obviously, Republicans know that the hundreds of thousands of American troops stationed overseas will have no ability to return home just to update their voter registration, and thus will not be able to vote. This is once again de facto voter suppression.
5. A Solution in Search of a Problem
The SAVE Act criminalizes noncitizen voting, an act that is already criminal. Let’s be clear—noncitizen voting is already illegal. There are already strong protections in place to prevent it, and no evidence exists to indicate any form of breach. A Washington Post and AP study found over the last 50 years no examples of systemic voter fraud, and no examples of voter fraud that could have even remotely overturned any State or Federal election.
In fact, Donald Trump shut down his own commission to “find” voter or election fraud because they found no such evidence. Trump then set up a second commission to “find” voter fraud, but then also shut it down after it found no such fraud. So why is the GOP pushing this bill? Because it’s not about protecting elections—it’s about suppressing votes.
Conclusion
The Republican proposal is frightening as it is stark—let us suppress the voting rights of women, Black, Latino, and Indigenous Americans, Veterans, and active duty servicemembers, or we’ll shut down the government. Another reminder of that old saying: Republicans claim government doesn’t work, then get elected, and prove it. Republicans have made clear they care about power, not democracy. This is why Republicans on the state level have proposed or passed more than 100 voter suppression bills, specifically targeting Black and brown and low income voters.
This, after Republicans gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 in Shelby v. Holder, which has resulted in red states closing more than 10,000 polling location in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. The bottom line is this. If your idea of democracy is to decrease citizen access to the ballot box—it isn’t democracy you believe in, it’s dictatorship. The SAVE Act is the final fascist piece of legislation in the MAGA plan to revive Jim Crow voter suppression in 2024 and establish dictatorship. It is a Donald Trump crafted extension of Project 2025, and we cannot allow it to become law.