The Misnamed "Save America Act" Is Actually Anti-Democratic

 The following is part of a post by Jennifer Rubin at The Contrarian:

Rather than address the cratering economy, undertake their constitutional responsibilities to end a reckless and illegal war, hold Donald Trump accountable for his financial corruption and pedophile racket cover-up, and/or reform rogue, widely loathed immigration shock troops, Republicans at the behest of Trump (who also insisted on the re-redistricting scheme that has backfired spectacularly), are debating the inappropriately-named SAVE America Act. . . .

The SAVE America Act is based on the “groundless assertions that U.S. elections were rife with fraud,” and the equally groundless notion that millions of people who are not legally permitted to vote are casting ballots. Each time this has been investigated, Republicans have identified — at most — a handful of suspected cases (and those may be clerical errors). The “solution” in search of a problem is actually Republicans’ thinly disguised plot to sow massive confusion and disenfranchise as many voters as needed to keep them in power. That’s their election strategy to counteract the public’s overwhelming disapproval of their MAGA agenda. They aren’t “saving” anything except their own political careers. . . .

The SAVE America Act is not about fraud or even about photo ID, which many states already require. The SAVE America Act would require voters to show a passport or birth certificate as proof of citizenship to register or re-register to vote. Roughly 21 million Americans don’t have ready access to those documents. About half do not even have a passport. Millions of women (approximately 7 million women in California, 5 million in Texas, and 4.7 million in Florida, according to the Voter Participation Center) whose married names are not on their birth certificates or passports would face barriers to registering. Election officials who make good-faith clerical errors would face civil and even criminal penalties.

Those registration requirements would go into effect immediately, creating chaos and preventing millions from voting. And to boot, the SAVE America Act would require voters to show their passport or birth certificate in-person to register (or each time they re-register when they move or change other information) — thereby eliminating registering by mail or online and severely hampering automatic voter registration. It would also hamper voting by mail by imposing a new requirement to send in a photocopy of the voter’s ID (something only one state currently requires).

This massive disenfranchisement push mimics Jim Crow legislation (e.g., requiring a passport, which can cost $165, is akin to a poll tax; obtaining a birth certificate may involve travel to the county clerk in one’s place of birth and paying a fee). It is blatantly unconstitutional, a gambit by the most lawless and corrupt regime in history (whose identity is rooted in election denial) to take over elections from the states. . . .

In short, there is no “saving” in the SAVE America Act, if one accepts that America is a democracy in which voters hold power. It seeks to eliminate voters, eliminate threats to White supremacy, eliminate MAGA control, eliminate the constitutional directive that states control elections, eliminate privacy (when the unredacted voter rolls go to the feds), and, most of all, eliminate democracy. If only a fraction of the eligible electorate gets to vote, we do not have majority rule by the “people”; instead, we have anti-democratic white nationalists cherry-picking the electorate to stay in power. . . .

The “SAVE America Act” makes a mockery of language, giving the false image of conserving voting when it instead aims to blow up the entire democratic election process. Democrats should call the bill what it is: The Jim Crow Act.