Donald Trump and maga Republicans are forcing a vote to suppress election turnout- STOP the SAVE America Act!

 Trump is trying to rig the midterms. You can stop him. HOW❓

The SAVE America Act (the title of this bill is a ruse❗) will burden if not disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans leading up to the midterms. And Trump admitted that it’s all to keep Republicans in power. Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe newspaper by Kimberly Atkins Stohr.

It’s hard to overstate the danger of the voter-suppression legislation Donald Trump is trying to jam down GOP lawmakers’ throats.

The SAVE America Act will burden if not actually disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans leading up to the midterms by requiring proof of citizenship as well as ending voting by mail. 

It’s also probably as unconstitutional as it is antidemocratic. It would sow chaos in state and local elections offices that are already under-resourced due to drastic federal funding cuts.

And Trump admitted that it’s all to keep Republicans in power.

But there is good news: Americans can do something about it. And they already know how, because they’ve done it twice already.

Trump pressured House Republicans at their annual legislation retreat, which was held at his golf club in Doral, Fla., to pass the latest iteration of the law he’s been pushing since returning to office but with an added twist: He wants the legislation to also ban voting by mail for most people. Trump said lawmakers shouldn’t even act on any other bill until the voting measure is passed. “I’m not going to sign anything until this is approved,” he said.

This is no surprise. Trump has been peddling lies 🤥😡about rigged elections since even before his first election win in 2016. 

But, his fervor to declare the 2020, election, which he lost to Joe Biden, as fraudulent has only grown since Trump was elected again in 2024.

Trump conscripted the FBI to pursue the debunked claims about election fraud, leading federal agents to seize 2020, election ballots in Fulton County, Ga., and obtain 2020, voting records in Maricopa County, Ariz. This is despite the Constitution’s clear mandate that elections are to be carried out by state governments, not the feds.

Which is the first of many constitutional problems with Trump’s SAVE America Act. It requires states to turn over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security in order to verify the citizenship of voters, using a program that is flawed at best and likely to produce bad data. This would lead to voters not only being disenfranchised but also potentially facing federal charges of voter fraud. Even the threat of such a consequence would undoubtedly keep some voters from voting at all for fear of repercussions.

It would also require voters to present proof of citizenship and photo ID, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register or reregister to vote. That might present obstacles for women like me, whose married name differs from their birth certificate. This could also dramatically affect rural voters who may be forced to travel long distances to get such documents; according to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to such documents. And obtaining them can be time consuming and costly, amounting to an unconstitutional poll tax.

It would particularly burden voters of color. According to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, about half of Black Americans under 30 do not have ID with their current name and address.

According to the legal defense organization the Native American Rights Fund, many people in tribal communities would have to travel more than 100 miles by car or airplane to reach their designated election office to register or reregister under the law. 

And, only tribal IDs that include the holder’s place of birth would satisfy the new law, but most do not include place of birth, all but ensuring the disenfranchisement of countless Indigenous people. This likely violates both the equal protection and due process rights of affected Americans.

It would also impose onerous burdens on local and state election offices that are already struggling after the Trump administration slashed their funding, hampering their ability to keep elections secure and combat interference and dangerous misinformation about elections, according to the nonprofit Voting Rights Lab. 

Dropping new voter registration and other requirements on local election officials will only turn a dire situation into chaos as the midterms approach.

And for what❓ Trump’s claims of election fraud have been debunked in court and even shot down by election officials in red states. But Trump admitted that election security wasn’t at the bottom of his push. It’s meant to rig the game so the GOP can hold power.

Democrats are “doing everything possible” to block the legislation, Trump said, “because they know if we get this, they probably won’t win an election for 50 years … and maybe longer.”

But that is where the American people come in. Two previous iterations of the SAVE America Act passed the House but then died in the Senate, in part because of public blowback. Even after Trump’s threat to put all legislation on ice until the new version of his voter law is passed, Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed doubt that it had a filibuster-proof path in the upper chamber. He’s right, and not just because of Democratic opposition, but also because mail-in voting is popular even with Republican voters, and dismantling it right before an election will go badly for them.

That is where the American people can once again make their power known: by giving lawmakers from coast to coast an earful about how harmful this bill would be for democracy — and for lawmakers’ own political hides. The midterms are just around the corner, and there is no time to waste. Silence now is not an option.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Boston Globe.