You may have heard that Republicans, egged on by Donald Trump, are again threatening to shut down the federal government.
What may have gotten lost in the headlines about cats, dogs and Taylor Swift: this time, Republicans are threatening a shutdown by trying to tie legislation that would require you to prove proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote to a measure to extend federal spending.
The idea there: to supposedly make it harder for non-citizen immigrants to vote.
The reality: whatever your citizenship status, if you don’t know havea birth certificate, Social Security card or passport at the ready, good luck.
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“If Democrats want to shut down the government over allowing illegals to vote, that’s on them,” Sixth District Congressman Ben Cline told WHSV last week. “That’s pretty ridiculous that they would do that. We think it’s a reasonable, fairly straightforward piece of legislation that would need to be on a continuing resolution to keep the government running, and also make sure that our elections are secure.”
Trump, in his style, demanded that congressional Republicans “in no way, shape or form go forward” with legislation funding the government without the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.
Arizona already has legislation like this SAVE Act in place in its state election law, which has made led to an increasing number of Blacks, Latinos and college students only being able to vote in federal elections, which are not impacted by the state law.
That would appear to be the real aim here – to keep groups that vote disproportionately for Democrats from being able to vote.
“Instead of meeting the security and disaster needs of the Nation, this bill includes unrelated cynical legislation that would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls,” the Biden administration said in a statement on the Republican SAVE Act this week.
To illustrate how silly this whole thing is, you wouldn’t be able to use your state driver’s license to be able to register to vote under this legislation, Fourth District Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan pointed out.
“Look, I took my oath of office on the Bible in which my father kept his poll tax receipt,” McClellan said. “I am not voting for a modern poll tax just so that they can say they’ve done something to keep noncitizen voters from doing something that is already illegal, punishable by up to five years in federal prison, and that there’s very little evidence is a widespread problem.”
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Chris Graham
