Calling it “unserious and unacceptable,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected on Monday a proposal from Speaker Mike Johnson that links continued government funding for six months with a measure to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
The response frames the spending battle to come over the next weeks as lawmakers work to reach consensus on a short-term spending bill that would prevent a partial government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Lawmakers hope to avoid a shutdown just weeks before voters go to the polls.
Johnson is punting the final decisions on full-year spending into next year when a new president and Congress take over. He’s doing so at the urging of members within his conference who believe that Republicans will be in a better position next year to secure the funding and policy priorities they want.
In case you’re asking in good faith… The downside is that non-citizens voting is simply not a problem. The number of cases is extremely low, there’s nothing to “fix” here. The biggest impact of this policy would be that actual American citizens who do not have, or lost, or forgot to bring their proof of citizenship will not be able to vote. It will predominantly affect poor and marginal populations. People that don’t have a passport, don’t have easy access to their birth certificate, or aren’t aware of the new regulation. Fewer people voting is 100% the goal with this policy.
We also have real world examples like Alabama passing a voter ID law and then almost immediately turning around and closing DMV offices in poor, black counties, making getting an ID even more difficult for at-risk communities:
Voter ID laws are very much about cloaking intentional disenfranchisement of legal citizens in a veil of preventing virtually non-existent voter fraud.
To get a non-drivers license ID in Wisconsin requires you to go to the DMV on the 5th Wednesday of the month.
Its really bizzare that a national ID is not implemented on federal level. Am learning lot of things from this thread.
