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.

  • certified_expert@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    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?

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      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.

      • certified_expert@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        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.

        • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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          15 hours ago

          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.

        • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          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.

          • certified_expert@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            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

            • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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              11 hours ago

              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.

              • certified_expert@lemmy.world
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                10 hours ago

                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.

            • Crazyslinkz@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              Strange for an id to say its not a valid id. 🤔

              https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html

              Not For Identification.

    • Throbbing_banjo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      15 hours ago

      Because the hoops they make you jump through to get one are fucking ridiculous.

      I’m a US citizen. I was a born here. I have a driver’s license and a US-issued passport. Both of these are current and I had to prove citizenship to get the passport.

      I’m still not able to legally vote in my state, though, because the law now requires that my driver’s license, which doesn’t expire for 4 years, have a Gold Star on it. No gold star, you can’t vote.

      I now have to make an appointment and drive to a licensing station in another city to get my Gold Star license in order to vote. I have to bring my still-valid passport, two pieces of mail, and a copy of my birth certificate. I can’t even vote in a primary if I don’t do that first.

      I was born here, I haven’t changed my name or moved, this is just the law now. They just really don’t want people to be able to vote.

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        No gold star, you can’t vote.

        Wait, they won’t take a passport? That’s nuts. I can see them requiring a DL in addition to the passport, because your passport doesn’t prove where you live, while a DL does. But not accepting the passport as proof of citizenship at all is bonkers.

        Which backwards state is this?

        • Throbbing_banjo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          14 hours ago

          Iowa.

          When I was a kid, our state essentially set the national standard for education and college readiness. While we were a deep purple state for a long time, the conservatives here were more of the balanced budget and family values variety.

          The last 30ish years of education defunding and media balkanization has had a colossal impact on the rural population here. Outside of the cities, I barely recognize it as my home state anymore. People are hateful, fearful, distrustful of outsiders, and paranoid. They wear hate like a badge of honor.

          I know this is happening in all of the rural states, but witnessing it firsthand has been pretty brutal.

    • Therefore@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      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.