Hi, I'm Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent here at Mother Jones.
I’ve been covering attacks on voting rights for more than a decade and have seen a lot of bad bills. But the bill passed today by House Republicans, known as the SAVE Act, might take the cake. Voting rights advocates told me it’s the most extreme voter suppression bill ever seriously considered by Congress. It could disenfranchise millions of voters and would severely limit how Americans can register to vote.
Under the alleged need to stop noncitizens from voting in federal elections, which is already illegal and exceedingly rare, it would require documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote. Nine percent of American citizens, roughly 21 million people, don’t have ready access to those documents. But that’s just the start of what it will do.
Sixty-nine million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name and could find it much harder to register to vote under the bill. And a requirement that voters provide citizenship documentation in person, at an election office, would end online registration, mail registration, and voter registration drives, forcing some voters to travel up to eight hours just to update their registration. Yikes.
"It’s a five-alarm fire for American voters and for election officials," Eliza Sweren-Becker, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s voting rights and elections program, told me. The good news for Democrats is that they should have the votes to block it when it reaches the Senate. I'll be here to cover whatever goes down. I hope you'll check out my piece on what happened today.
—Ari Berman
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