Fourteen Republicans joined House Democrats in voting down Speaker Mike Johnson’s effort to tie a continuing budget resolution to a voter-suppression bill.
The 220-202 vote on Wednesday night sends Johnson in search of a Plan B, with ex-president Donald Trump breathing down his neck, trying to get Johnson to just shut the government down, thinking that will somehow help his presidential campaign.
“We’ll draw up another play and we’ll come up with a solution,” Johnson said after the political failure. “I’m already talking to colleague about their many ideas. We have time to fix the situation and we’ll get right to it.”
The voter-suppression bill – given an Orwellian title, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act – would require you to present 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 have a birth certificate, Social Security card or passport at the ready, good luck.
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.
“The SAVE Act seeks to address mythical ‘non-citizen voting,’ which is already illegal and punishable by up to five years in prison, despite no evidence of widespread occurrences,” Virginia Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan said.
“Their bill would implement burdensome proof-of-citizenship requirements to register to vote with very few acceptable forms of identification,” McClellan said. “Drivers’ licenses and other state-issued IDs, including military and Tribal IDs, would not be acceptable forms of proof of citizenship. The only forms House Republicans deem appropriate are those that cost money, such as a passport.
“That is a modern-day poll tax on American citizens,” McClellan said.
Share
Chris Graham
