Controversy continues to swirl around the Save Act. 92% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats support the legislation. Despite this almost all Democratic politicians refuse to even debate the merits of the Act. Any commentary from them is emotion-laden like “voter suppression”, “Jim Crow 2.0”, “misogynistic”, etc.
If one is going to have a rational debate about this, one must define the terms of the debate. Let’s take the term voter suppression. What is voter suppression? In the past, voter suppression meant having to pay a poll tax to vote. It meant literacy tests that were designed to disqualify specific racial groups. It meant intimidation, coercion or violence at polling places. It meant excluding specific races from voting.
How does the SAVE Act suppress people from voting? The fact is that it does not do that. What it does do is establish specific national rules for determining eligibility to REGISTER to vote.
Requiring documentation of eligibility when registering is not voter suppression. Was it driver suppression when one was required to provide proof of age to get driver’s license? Of course not. What was being done was verifying eligibility. That is what the SAVE Act is attempting to do with voter eligibility.
Why would the Democrats be opposed to this? Chuck Schumer was a big supporter of Real ID which has similar documentary requirements. What changed? Why has Schumer lost his mind over the SAVE Act?
It seems clear that the Democrats know that such documentary requirements will hinder their efforts at election fraud. In fact, passage of the Act would eliminate many forms of election and voter fraud. The Democrats’ ability to make votes appear would be severely impacted.
What else does the SAVE do? It mandates that voters present a valid, government-issued photo ID when casting a ballot. This is already a requirement in some states. However, the SAVE Act would nationalize such a requirement. The Act specifically prohibits the use of student IDs issued by colleges and universities when voting.
Some fools on the Left are claiming that blacks would not know where to go to get a photo ID. They seem to forget that most people have a driver’s license which is a government-issued photo ID. For those who don’t, most states will provide a State ID for free.
Voting is a constitutional right reserved for citizens. The SAVE Act does not prohibit lawful citizens from voting. The debate is not “should a person or group of people be allowed to vote?” The debate should be about the level of verification that is required to be eligible to register to vote.
Calling this voter suppression attaches a malicious intent that most people know is not there. It is time for the Left to abandon the lies and false narratives about this piece of legislation. But, knowing the Democrats, that is not going to happen anytime soon.