A regular feature to the Chagrin Gateway Democrats from Lyn Newman

What happened? The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (S.A.V.E.) Act, which passed the House and is currently stalled in the Senate, is a bill that mandates proof of citizenship to register to vote. Does not sound like a bad thing. We only want citizens to be voting right? The problem is how people are being asked to prove citizenship. Were you on the rolls before, but skipped an election and got “purged”, so now you have to re-register? You have to dig out your birth certificate. But if you are a married woman, your birth certificate may not have the same name as your driver’s license so you also need your marriage license. However, not all states may accept that as proof of who you are. It may be that only a passport will do. See a problem? In addition, providing state ID and passports are generally not an issue for people of means, who can afford a passport. People with cars are able to drive to the DMV to get their enhanced driver’s license and update their voter registration. But for the elderly person who may no longer drive, or the person of limited resources who never had a car, getting to where their birth certificate is stored and then to the DMV may be a significant challenge. Add in physical disabilities, and you have made it nearly impossible. This is the reason registration drives, and mail in registration were such a boon. But this new law will make those illegal.  

Why it matters? : You have to ask yourself, who is this meant to target? Are we really worried about non-citizens voting? Or are we worried about making it too easy for people to vote who might not vote a certain way? When we make it harder for people to register to vote, we are often disenfranchising the very people who would be supporting candidates that are for upholding the good government  issues like infrastructure, school funding, childcare and nutrition, and the social safety net of Medicare and Medicaid. Are the people who support those issues, the same ones who are trying to make it harder for people to register to vote, and to vote once they are registered? I think not.  

 What can we do about it?: We lost by such small margins. The problem may not be the Republicans, it may be the couch. Whether or not the S.A.V.E. act passes, we need to get more like-minded people registered to vote and to the polls. We need to help people see that nothing changes if we do not change it. We all need to ask ourselves, “What can I do? Do I know someone who isn’t registered to vote? If so, why?  Do they not have a state ID? Can I help them get to where their birth certificate is and then to a DMV so they can get a state ID and then get registered? And then plan to take them with me to vote. Can I do that? I bet I can.”   What if we all did that? How much larger would our turn out be?   

Lyn Newman can be found on Bluesky