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.
The SAVE act as currently written has a religious exemption, boy do I have a church for you: The Church of Unconsented Likeness. Take the pledge today! https://substack.com/@tover153/p-188528157
I need that full release.
“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
I’ve been trying to float the idea of voters showing up to the polls armed. Everyone who has a firearm, carry it to vote. Not in a threatening manner, no waving them around, just… Everyone who has one is armed.
Schumer’s gonna pass the SAVE act so he can pass Iran War funding, isn’t he?
For people who might not be in the US and don’t understand why this is a bad idea in the US and proportionately hurts poor people, proof of citizenship is usually a passport. A passport costs $130. You need supporting documents like your birth certificate, SSN, and a drivers license/state ID to get it. For your first passport you usually have to make an appointment to go somewhere authorized like a library, post office, or courthouse to apply, and then they send the application off and it can take weeks to months to get back, depending how backed up the processing agency is (and I’m sure there will be artificial delays during voting years if this passes). Also, they are passing laws limiting where you can go to apply, so now libraries and the post office are losing the ability to process passport applications, so people will have to go to the county courthouse, which could be a long drive from where they live, especially if you live in a rural area. For people who don’t drive, or only have one car that is shared with another working adult, or use public transportation that has a limited range (or just doesn’t exist in most of the US), or are disabled and can’t travel far, this can be a huge problem.
Also, all these places are only open during normal business hours, so you probably have to take time off work to go apply. Federal minimum wage is only $7.25/hr while the living wage is actually much higher (living wage for 1 adult living alone in a 1 bedroom apartment where I live was considered almost $23/hr in 2024), and if someone is making minimum wage or close to it they almost certainly aren’t getting paid time off, so now they have to come up with $130 for the fee and lose time off work.
Here’s the real problem: this law would require voters to identify themselves using a photo ID, and it has to be a specific kind of updated ID. Americans have been pushed over the last few years to convert their Driver’s License to a “Real ID,” which is a Divers License that has been verified with other documents, like a birth certificate or a passport.
If you are man, it is easy because presumably, you have had the same name since birth, so your Real ID Drivers License only requires your birth certificate.
But if you are a woman, and you are married, you probably changed your name to your husband’s, so you need a marriage certificate to prove your name change. If you have been married and divorced, you may have to prove THAT name change with a birth certificate AND a marriage certificate AND divorce papers from the first marriage, then a marriage certificate from your second marriage. It can get complicated.
Then there is my wife’s problem. As a man, I had no problem getting a Real ID, but my wife needed our marriage certificate. We were married in a Caribbean island over 30 years ago, and the marriage certificate has gone missing long ago. We have been requesting a replacement for over a decade, and have not been able to get one. It can’t be done online, it has to be by mail. It is not too expensive, only about $10, but it’s usually rejected for the wrong money. They always claim (when we hear any explanation at all) that we have sent the wrong form of payment, which they then keep. We’ve sent money orders, checks, cash, etc., and probably spent over $100, and still nothing.
So my wife can’t get a Real ID because the country we got married in won’t cooperate. I suspect our marriage license is lost, and they can’t supply a copy. In any case, until we can get this straightened out, my wife has no valid ID, and can’t vote under Trump’s new law, and if she can’t vote for this reason, there are many others on the same situation.
Could you get remarried at the courthouse? Or is that fraud?
Not all Real ID’s prove citizenship either. It varies state by state.
Also not that it matters anymore but the Supreme Court already ruled it unconstitutional a long time ago as it’s a form of poll tax. Remember when Supreme Court decisions weren’t just “whatever Trump wants today” and actually were based on the constitution? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
The current court regularly votes down Trump, tariffs are the most recent example.
The issue is the court is full of conservative assholes who care more about their feelings more than the law.
Don’t get me wrong this is still a Trump caused problem, he appointed most of the new conservatives, but they still don’t rubber stamp everything he does.
and if someone is making minimum wage or close to it they almost certainly aren’t getting paid time off, so now they have to come up with $130 for the fee and lose time off work.
A passport card is only $30 (plus the $10 or so dollars for the required photo), but everything else in your post is spot on.
I always forget you can get just the card without the passport.
Even better, you can have the card expire off-cycle from the book. Since both last 10 years, if you renew one at the 5 year mark, it means you’ll always have an active document that can get you to Canada or Mexico even while the other is in the renewal cycle.
I recently learned this after renewing both at the same time missing my opportunity. I’ll renew the card early in 5 years or so to get this off-cycle expiry benefit.
It’s curious why they would want to implement this because although it affects poor people, it would probably also disproportionately affect poor Republicans.
Many voters in states like Mississippi/Arkansas do not have passports because they are both poor and have no intention to travel internationally so don’t bother with passports.
it would probably also disproportionately affect poor Republicans
If MAGA thought that it would be a disadvantage to their voter base, they would not be pushing for it.
Because you won’t see it enforced in Mississippi or Arkansas, at least for white republicans. It will be selectively enforced to disenfranchise as needed.
I’ve heard poor voters are often swing voters, and possibly likely to swing against him
I am not from the US, so I’m also mentally comparing with what happens in my country. Here, the place where you’re registered to vote has a list of all voter names and birth dates. You get there to vote, show a form of valid ID (driver’s license is a valid one), you can vote and you’re crossed off the list so you can’t vote twice. You don’t need to prove citizenship directly because if you don’t have the right to vote, you’re not on the list.
How does it work in the US? Citizenship aside, how do you prove that you are who you say you are and don’t e.g. wear a hat and fake moustache and vote 3 times? Honest question, I’m not judging, I’m genuinely trying to understand how things work today in the US.
That’s a very hard question to answer because each state runs elections differently. In my state we just get our ballot by mail and you send that in with your signature. If you don’t have an address there are polling places available, but it’s been so long I’m not certain how they check ID.
In my state you can apply to get your ballot by mail, but you have to do that for every election (which reminds me, I need to send my application in for the next election). If you don’t do that you can go in person to the voting location that is predetermined for you based on your address. They have a list of everyone who is registered as eligible to vote in person at that location. When you register to vote you get a voter ID card in the mail which is basically a little paper card with your name, county, and the location that you vote at. You just take your voter card with you to vote and they cross you off the list and give you your ballot to vote in person. If you already registered to vote by mail but you forgot to send your ballot in you can take your mail-in ballot to your in person location and they’ll tear it up and let you vote in person.
For the most part - it works exactly like what you described. What kinds of ID are valid, and to some extent whether you are required to present one at all, depends on which state you live in.
The fake mustache double voter would have to know the details of another person who is already registered to vote (only some states allow same-day voter registration) and gambles on the other person not showing up to vote.
One big difference between the US and a lot of other democracies (when it comes to voting laws) is that the US doesn’t have any form of universal national identification documents - pretty much everything is issued on a state-by-state basis, and with very few exceptions those state level IDs don’t actually say anything about citizenship - noncitizen permanent residents are allowed to get driver’s licenses.
Thank you for your answer!
But is there a register, somewhere that @gloog@fedia.io is a person that was born in Your-city/Your-state and is a US national? So, even if you don’t need to show an ID to prove you are indeed gloog, can a gloog be in the registered voters list if they are not a US citizen?
I’m asking because I read from other posts that the process to get a passport or even a birth or marriage certificate seem to be relatively complex, while here you can basically download your marriage certificate online. But this relies on the fact that there are City and Nation-wide databases that have a record of a person with my name being born in X, a Y national, married with Z and father of W. So if I can prove my identity as andallthat, all these other things (including nationality) follow almost “for free”, or at least more easily.
So I was wondering if the key difference might not be proving Citizenship per se, but the fact that records are not centralized and it’s harder to go quickly from “I am this person” to “this person is a US National”?
There isn’t one centralized database with that information for everyone. Each state, and even inside one state each county, maintains their own records, so someone who is born in Florida, gets married in California, and then has a kid born in Oregon would need to contact each of those states for proof of those events if they lost the original copies for whatever reason. There is a national system that can (mostly) check against those state and local level records, but it also has limitations. Passports and birth certificates can be proof of citizenship, but don’t prove where you live at the time of the election even if you do have one on hand.
The voter registration process already gives the state enough information to determine whether an individual is eligible to vote in that state. For federal elections (which are still run by the states, just for federal level positions), that includes confirming that the person is a citizen, but each state is able to decide whether to allow noncitizen residents to vote on local government issues or not.
Bitch I’ve been saying this would happen for a fucking decade
woohoo. congess can’t pass anymore bullshit laws.
Because more and more people hate his guts with the fury of a thousand women scorned.
And for good reason.
Every time mail in ballots is brought up I mention that Florida has a successful mail in ballot system and they’ve been Republican for well over two decades.
Trump uses mail in voting in Florida.
they’ve been Republican for well over two decades.
That’s not entirely true. At least when it comes to presidential elections, Florida has been a swing state for the last two decades. They went for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
I was talking about governor. If there was anything wrong with mail in voting in florida, you could bet your ass it would have been illegal by now. But there’s nothing wrong with it so all the republicans in Florida leave it as it is.
Same with Utah
Salt Lake County’s voting process is straight up fire, Sherrie Swensen was amazing. One of the only things I miss about Utah.
… I’m tired
Oh, gee, he won’t sign anymore illegal, unconstitutional legislation? Oooh, don’t hurt me.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Well they aren’t meant to be an ID.
Mine still has that expressly printed on the back, “NOT A VALID FORM OF IDENTIFICATION” or something like that.
Same
It is an ID. A crappy one, but ID, by definition!: it was created to identify people
Strange for an id to say its not a valid id. 🤔
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html
Not For Identification.
It is a unique number that is associated to your person in an injective manner in the country (specifically designed to identify your tax documents by the IRS).
Regardless of what is printed in the card, that, BY DEFINITION is an ID.
It is strictly NOT an ID. It is an account number. Your bank account number is not an ID either. This is the same idea, except ID is what it is being used for.
An account number is a unique number that is associated to your account. That IS an ID.
You have that number → you can find the person.
That is an ID. Even if you call it banana shake and say “bro, trust me this is not an ID”. It is still an ID: a piece of information in a domain that uniquely maps to elements in a co-domain, being the later, the set of persons in this country with a SSN.
Under your logic, a rifle stops being a rifle if it has a sticker that says “not valid as a rifle”
deleted by creator
9-digit number that’s unique to you.
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Did you read that article? Its all about fraud and how a scammer could get and use your ssn, not about getting issued duplicate ssn. Also talks about typos from corporate.
Edit typos
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.
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
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.
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.
Strange for an id to say its not a valid id. 🤔
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html
Not For Identification.
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.
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?
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.
And, it might cost up to $97, just for the real id upgrade.
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.
