– Editorial – - Senate should reject SAVE Act
By Editorial Board
On its face, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or the SAVE Act, seems like it would be a good idea.
Voting is a fundamental right and obligation of citizenship. Every American school student learns that in their civics classes. Students also learn of the struggle to get and to keep those voting rights.
American history is littered with attempts to close the door to full citizenship to the masses and ensure the “right people” are the ones who are making the decisions. Property ownership requirements and poll taxes were in place to keep poor people from voting. Jim Crow era literacy tests — which could be exempted if your grandfather was an eligible voter — likewise worked to deny the right to vote to black populations in the south, in the decades following the Civil War.
Women did not gain the right to vote in national elections until 1920, when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified by enough states to become part of the Constitution.
It is somewhat fitting that in this modern information age, those who would seek to claw back the hard-won rights to vote, would do so based on information and documentation, and bury those seeking to exercise their rights, under onerous requirements to produce documents proving those rights.
Federal law prohibits anyone who is not a citizen from voting in a national election. This is in addition to numerous state laws that prohibit non-citizens from voting. When people register to vote, they confirm, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens. The law also requires states to regularly maintain their voter rolls and remove anyone who is ineligible.
According to Rep. Roy Chip of Texas, or his 110 co-sponsors, including Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, this is not enough; they want to require prospective voters to show documentary proof that they are U.S. citizens when people register to vote. This includes birth certificates, marriage licenses that show name changes for married women, court documents that show judicially approved name changes or a passport.
Getting a hold of original or certified copies of these documents is a challenge, with costly fees and required time away from work, since the government offices that keep these records are only open during the regular work day. Since the law requires this over abundance of documentation for changes in voter registration, because of people moving, it disproportionately puts a burden on low income people and younger people. On average, both of these demographic groups more frequently move, for education or work. Requiring people to spend days, gathering documents to assuage conspiracy-laden paranoia about the “wrong sorts of people” voting, is fundamentally wrong.
The SAVE Act has passed the House of Representatives, with 220 in favor and 208 opposed. While the vote was primarily along party lines, four Democrats joined with the Republicans to support it.
The bill now goes to the U.S. Senate, where its fate is uncertain, since that house is more evenly divided and Republicans lack the numbers needed to stop a filibuster. Call on U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin, to oppose or amend the SAVE Act, to eliminate unnecessary barriers that do nothing but rob citizens of their voting rights.
Democracy in America works best for everyone, when all citizens vote and all are part of the process, regardless of class, creed, sex, race or where their grandparents came from. Anything that creates a barrier for a citizen to vote, is an attack on the very foundations of this nation.
Members of the Courier Sentinel editorial board include publisher Carol O’Leary, general manager Kris O’Leary and Star News editor Brian Wilson.
