Johnson plans to pair a bill funding the government for six months with a Republican bill called the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” or “SAVE Act,” that would require new voters to submit “documentary proof of United States citizenship,” such as a passport or a birth certificate, in order to register to vote.
That doesn’t seem like an outrageous ask but then access to such documents should also be safeguarded, that is if the actual reason was just to prevent voter fraud/illegally voting
This usually places undue burden on women, poor and generally anybody not a white dude.
Say you are a woman, okay you’ve got your certified copy of your birth certificate $10-but wait the name doesn’t match because you got married.
Now you need a marriage certificate, thats another $10 and the trouble of contacting another municipal office.
Oh were you married twice? Thats tracking down another 2 municipal offices, another $10 marriage cert and now a certified judgement of divorce which will cost-ooh was your children’s custody agreement a part of that? $40. Did you not remember your divorce file number from 30 years ago? It’ll be an additional $5 per name per every 2 years searched.
I’ve seen women spend like $200 just on certified copies to get a realID driver’s license. Has a chilling effect on registering, to solve a problem of voter fraud that doesn’t really exist.
If the intention was to actually fight current or future voter fraud then they should really have an easy way of submitting that documentary proof. I don’t know what form that would take in the US and how expensive it would get, considering you’d want some stipulation that it shouldn’t have much cost to acquiring such documents, shouldn’t be too difficult and whatnot. Assuming you’d want to do that right. Not that I think that’s their genuine intention.
Where I live in Finland we don’t have voter registering. We do check IDs when you vote, that part just seems sensible, but there isn’t an actual ID requirement. You just need to be identified without a doubt, but the form isn’t set. In specific circumstances it could even be that the officials there know you and guarantee who you are. But if you don’t have a passport (rare not to have it here), you don’t have driver’s license or ID card, you can get a temporary ID for free from the police station just for voting. But then you need to be also somehow identified there, so sorta the same problem again, but at least you have more time there than in the voting place.
The intention is to make it hard to register to vote. Imagine if you are going through a hard time in your life and you forget to check your mail or forget to register, then you just can’t vote.
It’s hard for me to believe that there are a lot of illegal voters. If you illegally voted you will not be granted a citizenship so anyone with the intention to be a citizen will not vote illegally.
The solution is to auto-enroll citizens. The government can easily check my citizenship if they wanted to. They can send a ID letter stating take this to the voting booth if you don’t have an ID, but this bill is not going to get passed because the main intent is not to prevent fraud.
In the US, it isn’t about identification or fraud, its about hoops. The more hoops you have to jump through, the less likely “undesirables” (POC, poors, etc) are yo get it done. Like most things here, its a relic of Jim Crow and related policies. It flies so well even today because it all seems menial to somebody well off (you see it in these comments “Its only $10 what’s the problem”)
Here, the Department of Motor Vehicles tends to be your central point of anything ID related driver or not. My city’s used to be on the bus line, but they moved it to the county far from any public transit. So if you don’t drive, that $10 is now $10 + $20 taxi/uber there + $20 ride home and depending on what you’re doing/getting you may need to go back which is another $40. So really you’re looking at $50-100 to get whatever it is.
In my state at one time (I do think its changed here but assume its probably the same in other states) to get a birth certificate you had to go to the state capital (4 hour drive for me one way.) If you dont drive, sucks to suck. Pay someone to take you or hope you have greyhound where you live.
I could go on, but you get the point.
What issue is it trying to solve? To my knowledge electoral fraud is so extremely rare in general (article cites figures in the double digits since 2000) let alone non-citizen voting, what this is though is anti-voter legislation, part of their election denial bullshit
Having such safeguards in place to make sure it doesn’t become an issue does seem alright to me. But they seem to be doing this as a form of voter suppression.
That’s the game, if dems were as unscrupulous they could do this too:
Election Security is our #1 priority. That’s why we’re creating secure polling stations located throughout every major city in every state. Rural polling stations will be closed as they are not secure enough to guarantee the integrity of our elections. Rural Americans frequently go into cities for sporting events and concerts so there will be no issue of disenfranchisement when their local polling stations close.
Hasn’t been an issue ever, statistically. This is the GOP trying to suppress voting
2016 GE poll worker, inspector. I watched an elderly couple look at the polling results from the machines then write down a different result on their submission to the county. Their problem was that they also needed my signature. When I refused they signed for me. When I objected to the Secretary of State nothing happened.
There’s all sorts of voter fraud. But, it’s not being effected by the voters.
I would have to figure out how the NYC birth certificate system works and I live halfway across the country. It’s too close to the election to do that, and getting a passport can take months and hundreds of dollars.
