Re next week's vote on the SAVE Act, rewatch this scene from The Breakfast Club. It's funny because no one gets a fake ID so they can vote. And - no matter what some racist, demagogic Republican tells you - voting is not why immigrants come to America.
1. Here is the bill they are bringing to the floor next week. It requires that you must have proof of citizenship in order to vote. docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/…
2. This is the legislative equivalent of requiring that you prove you graduated from 4th grade before you can apply to graduate school - in the sense that it doesn't solve a real problem but would hurt folks who can't access those records.
3. Are there post-doc researchers somewhere who failed to pass 4th grade? Probably. But if you think that's more than 0.0001% of our graduate student population, then it's a bigger problem than the number of people pulling a Brian Johnson.
4. Source: brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
5. So if non-citizen voting isn't a problem, what's the point of this bill? Easy: to make it harder for people to vote who don't have easy access to their proof of citizenship.
6. That cohort is quite large and - non-coincidentally - tends not prioritize billionaire tax cuts, pedophile protection or the rest of the modern GOP's agenda, which poses a threat to the advocates of those causes who's access to power depends on winning elections.
7. People who are unhoused / estranged from their family and can't track down their birth certificate. People who never had cause to travel outside the US and don't have / can't afford a passport. And perhaps most significantly...
8. ... the ~80% of married women who changed their last name and no longer have a birth certificate that matches their name on the voting rolls.
9. Some will argue that NOT ALL people who are young / homeless / never left the US / married women / etc will be disenfranchised by this bill, nor will all vote democratic. But that's like saying that not everyone who couldn't pay a poll tax in 1880s Alabama was Black.
10. You don't need to swing every vote to flip an election. You just need to swing enough. And a measure that disproportionately disenfranchises those who won't vote for you makes it easier for you to win.
11. We all know that the arguments made to justify poll taxes - revenue for public works, ensuring "responsible" voters was all BS. It was just to disenfranchise people. The justifications - and purpose - of the SAVE Act are no different.
12. Bottom line: when you have unpopular ideas in a democracy, you have three choices (a) try to persuade people on the merits (b) change your position or (c) voter suppression. The SAVE Act is unambiguously, and solely designed for option (c). /fin
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