Sometimes, there really isn’t an English word as useful as a Yiddish one. That’s the case with the word “chutzpah,” which –as I’ve previously explained– is a word that encompasses “nerve” “gall” “insolence” and several others. (A standard example of chutzpah is the guy who kills his mother and father and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.)
And that brings me to the GOP’s recent effort to pass a poll tax–otherwise known as the SAVE Act.
I haven’t written anything about the SAVE Act because it wasn’t going to pass, despite our demented President’s threats to the Republican crazies and invertebrates in the Senate. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the mere fact that the GOP in the House narrowly passed it, and that leadership in the Senate was willing to bring this abomination to the floor makes it worth considering, because even an unsuccessful effort to pass a bill aimed at the heart of American democracy tells us something important about what the GOP has become.
The Act itself is an abomination. It rests on a transparent lie–the accusation that noncitizens are casting thousands of ballots. Study after study has confirmed that noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare, but MAGA partisans need some justification to explain support for a bill that would essentially nationalize our elections while massively suppressing the vote.
The Act would require voters to prove their citizenship. That may sound simple; it isn’t. It has been described as both a massive hurdle and a major poll tax. The Act would require all registered voters to go to a voting registrar in person to re-register, while providing that registar with proof of citizenship. In some 45 states, a Real ID will not do. Instead, voters would need a passport, passport card, or a certified birth certificate (not a copy). And of course, the Act would make it especially difficult for women, who disproportionately vote Democratic. The Act takes special aim at married women who have changed their names, requiring them to present a marriage certificate and other types of evidence in order to prove the legitimacy of their current name.
The New Republic has explained the enormity of the effect should the measure pass.
Half of Americans do not have passports; getting one costs at least $165, plus photos, and requires … a birth certificate or certificate of naturalization. A passport card, with the same requirements, costs $65 plus photos. Marco Rubio’s State Department has cut the passport office in half and removed the ability of people to submit applications for a passport to local libraries, meaning they would have to physically go to an official office, which for many would mean traveling hundreds of miles.
Many millions of Americans have no idea where their birth certificates are or have one that will not suffice under this bill; getting an official one, which is not always easy, can cost up to $100.
Rather obviously, the Act would hit poorer Americans the hardest–and minority voters are disproportionately poor. There’s a reason it has been dubbed a poll tax.
All that is horrifying enough, but the Act would do even more damage. All states would be required to turn over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security. The states would also be required to use a voter purge system created by DOGE, a system using data that has been shown to be both unreliable and biased, with an error rate estimated at 14 percent. Use of this program would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of legitimate voters.
Although the measure would also hit a lot of MAGA voters, the clear intent of the SAVE Act is the suppression of Democratic votes. (Trump, incapable of subtlety, has publicly confirmed that intent.)
The Twenty-Fourth Amendment–passed in 1964–outlawed poll taxes. In any other administration, any other Congress, a measure so obviously and flatly unconstitutional would never have been brought to a vote, but–as we know–the guardrails of American democracy have become degraded. The proponents of this effort at massive vote suppression evidently believe that the measure–if it passed–would have supporters among the corrupt majority Justices of the Supreme Court, and thus an outside chance of passing muster.
Which brings us to the unbelievable chutzpah of today’s Republican Party–a Party willing to offer an overt, public, “in your face” effort to rig elections and terminate American democracy for everyone to see.
No Senator who votes for this abomination should be returned to office. I think it was Maya Angelou who said ” When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
Calling GOP/MAGA republicanʻts UN-American is an understatement.
I’ve heard it was a secret way to prevent women from voting in the upcoming elections. For the record, here are the bitches from Indiana who voted for it:
Jim Baird (IN‑04), Jim Banks (IN‑03), Larry Bucshon (IN‑08), Erin Houchin (IN‑09), Rudy Yakym (IN‑02), Victoria Spartz (IN‑05), Greg Pence (IN‑06).
Why am I shocked that my “rep” Spartz voted yes, and at the same time wonders why her voters show up to her rallies and silence her with “boos” and “you’re a pedophile protector”?
And Erin Houchin is the one who worked with Beckwith to slide TPUSA’s Club America into every Indiana high school, paid for by Hoosier taxpayers. When Arkansas’s largest educational institution got a glimpse of the “anti-woke) documentation, they told Sarah Huckabee to shove her declaration right up her derriere. Beckwith is still hiding behind my APRA, saying it is “nonpartisan.”
I watched a local writer offer a resolution at a City Council meeting, agreeing that each signer should be “nice and agreeable” to the others. The council members all agreed after Republicans coaxed their reps to sign. Fukk that!!!
They are protecting pedophiles from being prosecuted for raping children. Let that sink in…
make the magats,prove the non citizen is voting. if they are living with such a mindset its real, then prove theres ballots that are from non citizens. this is my argument to the trumpers who make no sense anyway,that i deal with daily. but being led around by the ear shows the lazy in facts. they dont care about facts,as much as they dont care about anyone else but themselves. i was in conversation with a father and son. dad,Mex-American, son half white and last year of high school in NoDak. dad is from south texas,born into farm workers family.,son,born here. the dad and i started talking about facts,trump,the issues of present day. his son walked into,this conversation and was introduced and we talked about present stuff. when i asked his son why black people were second class by most of the locals standards here in NoDak, he said because they were lazy and inept to do a job. his dad was obviously not on that point at all. i asked why do you think black people are in the second class citizen status here in NoDak?(son) because they dont want to work.mmmm,dad was taking this in and was ready for my kickback. nope, Your wrong kid, its because the majority of white men decided a century and ahalf ago to keep them kicked to the curb,because they could. dad eyes widen. yea, i shoot from the hip. but he let me finished, just look how ice and maga treated people in Minneapolis recently. now,imagine how much better our economy would be if everyone was treated with respect and had a fair shake on main street. this is common conversation here in NoDak.dad thanked me for the conversation. like sex and living stuff, sometimes a kick in the balls may open a whole new world about whats right and wrong. hopefully dad finished that conversatiin at home, and not on local social media..
Republicans couldn’t/can’t govern a keg party inside a brewery. No wonder they don’t want to protect voting rights. They know they’re gonna lose this year and have no other offerings to attract voters.
What a mess. I don’t know about how chutzpah applies to these morons, because they don’t seem to have the wits to understand its meaning.
Just for kicks, the SAVE Act, veers away from elections and bans gender affirming surgeries for minors. With this nod to the facisti, the GOP sealed the deal for the MAGATS. Initially the bill said it was okay with parental consent. The same people who don’t think the state has the right to mandate vaccines for minors, think it’s perfectly fine to outlaw surgeries for kids whose parents have agreed that their children need the surgery .
As far as women are concerned, MAGAT women will vote as their husbands tell them to, so if they can’t vote, it’s looked at as no big deal on their end. They have been subsumed by the manosphere. Let’s give a shout out to Lisa Murkowski for understanding the impact this bill will have in her home state, where everything is remote, and speaking out against it.
BTW This is just a hunch on my part, but I would guess that the percentage of voter fraud in The Villages in Florida is higher than the percentage of non-citizen voting over the past ten years.
VOTE!
Trump voted BY MAIL in the recent Florida House election (the one that ended up with him being represented by a Democrat! A WOMAN, at that!)
Democrats need to pound the message that if it’s good enough for trump, it’s good enough for anybody.