By Karen Rubin, editor@news-photos-features.com, news-photos-features.com
Trump isn’t bothering to wait for the MAGA Republican Congress to suppress voting by passing the SAVE Act. He just signed an Executive Order overhauling election rules that could disenfranchise millions.
With the stroke of his sharpie, he is requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. And birth certificates don’t count. He is saying that the proof has to be a passport or a driver’s license that confirms proof of citizenship – except half of Americans, and disproportionate number of Blacks and other constituents, do not have passports, which are difficult and expensive to obtain (the equivalent of a poll tax), especially with the Elon Musk DOGE cuts to federal workers, and voting should not depend upon having a driver’s license, especially when not all have Real I.D., the highest certification of citizenship.
The executive order directs the Election Assistance Commission to change the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to register to vote. The order also attempts to force states to enact documentary proof of citizenship requirements and to stop counting absentee and mail-in ballots received after Election Day in accordance with state law by threatening to withhold federal funding.
Trump wants to void absentee and mail-in ballots received after election day, even though they are postmarked correctly but may be delayed in the mail (thanks Postalmaster General Louis Dejoy!), or come from overseas, or are military ballots. No matter what state election law is.
The American Civil Liberties Union condemned Trump's executive order as “a significant overreach of executive power and poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote.”
“President Trump's executive order attempting to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration and restrict the acceptance of mail-in ballots received after Election Day, among other measures, is a blatant overreach that threatens to disenfranchise tens of millions of eligible voters,” stated Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. This measure will no doubt disproportionately impact historically-excluded communities, including voters of color, naturalized citizens, people with disabilities, and the elderly, by pushing unnecessary barriers to the fundamental right to vote. We deserve better than elected officials weaponizing xenophobia and the myth of voter fraud to jeopardize our rights. We will do everything in our power to stop this unconstitutional attack on the right to vote to ensure that every eligible American can participate in our democracy. We will see President Trump in court.”
“Trump’s executive order is unlawful,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) said in a statement. “It would prevent eligible Americans from exercising their sacred right to vote. The Trump administration is weaponizing the federal government and trying to make it harder for voters to fight back at the ballot box.”
Like the vast majority of what the dictator wannabe Trump is doing (negating birthright citizenship by fiat), this is an unconstitutional power grab – Democrats couldn’t even get the voting protections of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act instituted with Republican opponents arguing the Constitution puts states in charge of administering elections (making Trump’s power grab all the more hypocritical, but consistent).
Indeed, states have abused this power by suppressing votes – necessitating the 1965 Voting Rights Act which the Imperial Supremes on the Supreme Court have been disemboweling ever since, basically giving their blessing to partisan gerrymandering meant to accomplish the same suppression of rights by race and class. Gerrymandering is one of the most insidious tools of disenfranchisement.
The federal role in voting should be to set the minimum standards to assure maximum, equal access to exercise the most cherished right of a democracy and a free people: the vote.
Clearly, voter turnout rates hovering around 56 percent even for presidential elections, is not just because of apathy and taking for granted this hard-won right, but a measure of the impact of voter suppression.
Here’s my list: there need to be standardized requirements for access to polls and voting machines (days, hours, logistics in terms of distance and numbers per population); early voting; voter ID requirement that are fair (including enabling women whose names changed with marriage or divorce to easily establish their identity); rules for voter registration and rights for voters who are purged (including barring purges within six weeks of an election); absentee/mail-in voting (allow voter opportunity to “cure” or fix mistake, ability to track their absentee ballot) with confirmation of mailing and receipt and right to be counted if postmarked by election day but received after; felony prosecution for election fraud, for interfering with ballot, voter registration or access to polls including spreading misinformation or intimidation; require paper ballot back-up and mandatory audits to insure voting machines or count not hacked or altered.
Campaign Finance Reform: Pass the DISCLOSE Act requiring campaign donors to be identified. Overturn Citizens United which violates the foundational principle of equal protection.
There should be provisions in place to accommodate an emergency – climate (Superstorm Sandy striking New York and New Jersey days before the 2012 election, Hurricane Helene hitting North Carolina just days before the 2024 election); health (COVID-19 pandemic); civil unrest.
More challenging reforms include ending the tyranny of the Electoral College system – an archaic relic that preserved the political power of the slave-holding, small and rural states over the industrialized, unionized, urbanized states. That would require a Constitutional Amendment but there are changes that states could make, like joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which states agree to allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Another idea might be to allocate the electoral votes proportionately to the state’s popular vote, instead of winner-take-all (but only if all states followed that pattern).
The Senate has become undemocratically imbalanced - Wyoming and South Dakota citizens have more political power — in passing legislation, confirming Supreme Court justices and choosing Electors to pick the president — than any individual from California or New York, so that Senate Republicans, representing about 40 percent of the population controlled 53 percent of the seats and the majority. To immediately counter this and be fair to the citizens of the District of Columbia, with greater population than Wyoming and Vermont, DC should become a state. The January 6 insurrrection was a clear demonstration why the district needs to be a state with the ability to control its own security (and police budget) and not have to beg for the Department of Defense to come to its defense.
Instead of Canada or Greenland, Puerto Rico should finally be allowed to vote for its own statehood (3.2 million citizens who are unable to vote for President and lack representation so could be dismissed after hurricanes, earthquakes; in his first term, rather than send aid, Trump mused about selling Puerto Rico to China or trading it for Greenland), but Puerto Ricans can relocate to Florida or New York and vote.
When voting rights legislation, H.R.1, was introduced in 2021, then-Congressman John Lewis, a hero of civil rights and voting rights, declared, “The vote is the most powerful non-violent instrument of transformation we have in our democracy... and at the foundation of our system, it must be strengthened and preserved."
Since then, and since his death, the Trump MAGA Republicans have been systematic and ruthless at chipping away at the right to vote. Now Trump is wielding a chainsaw.
See also:
To Cement One-Party Control, MAGA Republicans Pushing Through SAVE Act
2021 Offers Best Chance Since 1965 to Achieve Meaningful Voting Rights Reform
Trump Anti-Voting Order Draws Furious Pushback
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