Proof that the secular community must speak out loudly against voter suppression was provided yesterday when President Trump told Republicans to pass his SAVE Act “for Jesus.”
Speaking in Memphis at a “Make America Safe Again” event, Trump told Republicans not to take their two-week “Easter recess” starting at the end of this week, but instead to stay in Washington, D.C., to pass his voter suppression law.
“Don’t worry about Easter — going home,” he exhorted. “In fact, make this one for Jesus, OK? Make this one for Jesus, that’s what I tell them. It would be a damn good thing.”
Voting rights are a secular issue — literally. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has even had to sue to challenge religious tests associated with voting. As Trump’s remarks show, voter suppression is part and parcel of Christian nationalist extremism.
What is wrong with the SAVE Act?
By way of background, laws requiring registered voters to produce identification are relatively new (not to be confused with requirements to prove who you are when you first register to vote). Republicans have led the battle to require voter IDs, invoking the lie of voter fraud. They have passed voter ID laws not to stop fraud, but to suppress the vote. Generally speaking, younger people, students, low-income individuals and voters of color are less likely to have driver’s licenses, own cars or be able to travel to busy DMV offices with often-terrible hours in far-off locations. Generally speaking, all of these voting blocs are less apt to vote Republican.
Driver’s licenses and state identification cards all cost money. Isn’t forcing someone to pay to vote a form of poll tax? At least 36 states now require some form of voter ID, many asking for photo ID such as driver’s licenses and another 14 having some other ID requirements.
But what Trump wants to do now with his SAVE Act, the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, should make everybody get out and protest on No Kings Day this Saturday. It would be an assault against our democracy, every citizen and our most fundamental civil right: that of voting.
To vote in a federal election, citizens would be required not only to show photo IDs, but also proof of American citizenship in the form of a passport, a Real ID, a valid military or tribal ID or a U.S. birth certificate. (And guess what? You need a certified copy of your birth certificate to obtain a Real ID.) Certified birth certificates typically cost $20 or more and require jumping through hoops to order. Half of Americans do not own a passport. A new passport costs $165 (and you need five documents to get it). That is a true poll tax.
Many experts have also pointed out that the SAVE Act might be used to disenfranchise women who marry and take their husbands’ names, because their birth certificates no longer match their current names. These women might need to produce acceptable marriage certificates and birth certificates!
The SAVE Act would require voters to register in person and only at an election site. It would doubtless upend universal voting, which has been embraced by eight states and Washington, D.C. (Unfortunately, yesterday’s oral arguments on a challenge of a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots postmarked on Election Day to be counted if received within five business days would appear to signal that law and those in 18 other states and territories are doomed.)
Most chilling of all, the federal legislation would mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, requiring states to provide this sensitive data to the Office of Homeland Security. As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer explains, it would give “the Department of Homeland Security power to choose who can vote.” He reminds us that the former DHS head, Kristi Noem, once said the agency is working to make sure “we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.” The Brennan Center for Justice also charges that this would burden election officials and end the 90-day period that protects voters from being thrown off the rolls right before Election Day. Purged citizens would receive no notification. Citizens who move frequently (typically younger or low-income) presumably would have to reregister repeatedly.
“All of this, in a literal sense, recapitulates the electoral mechanisms of Jim Crow, whose hurdles, obstacles and restrictions relied on both blunt force and bureaucratic discretion to exclude Black Americans (and a large number of white ones as well) from the pool of voters,” points out FFRF’s Clarence Darrow Award honoree Jamelle Bouie in a recent New York Times column. As Bouie writes, the SAVE Act would not only violate the 24th Amendment barring poll taxes, but also the 12th, 14th, 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments.
Any patriotic public official of integrity should encourage voting rather than suppress it. The Senate Democrats have vowed to filibuster the SAVE Act. They must stop it — not on behalf of Jesus, but for the American citizens they represent, the secular Constitution they’ve promised to uphold and to save our very democracy.
FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues.