Not a Real Problem
Let’s be real about the “Safe Act” that President Trump is trying to force through the US Senate. The premise of the “Act” is that the American voting system is “unsafe”. The prime example Trump uses is his “loss” to Joe Biden in 2020. Of course, over sixty court cases, recounts and investigations in Georgia and Arizona, all show that Biden actually won. But Trump can’t stomach that possibility, so somehow the 2020 election must be rigged.
To set the record straight: the main evidence of voter frauds (duplicate voting and or ineligible voters) is kept by the Heritage Foundation. That’s the same group that wrote “Project 2025” for Trump. The bias there has always been in Trump’s favor. But the Heritage data shows the following: since 1982 they document 1,620 cases of voter fraud. That’s an average of 37 cases a year, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. To simplify: voter fraud is so rare that it doesn’t impact the outcome of elections. It’s not a problem.
Great Replacement
Of course, that doesn’t fit with the “Great Replacement” theory of far-right America. They posit the following view: Democrats want “open borders” so more people of color will come into the United States. Those folks, they think, will more likely vote for Democratic candidates. The theorists fear that will give Democrats unassailable majorities to control the government.
Now the disconnect is that even if undocumented migrants are in the United States, they can’t vote. And the last thing they are going to try to do is vote, as that exposes them as undocumented and puts them in jeopardy of removal. So that part of the “Great Replacement” theory falls apart. But there is a more insidious underpinning to their idea. Many of the immigrants that come to the United States, legally or illegally, might want to become citizens. And, if they gain US citizenship, then they would be able to vote, just as waves of migrants have earned that right in the past.
But the “Great Replacement” folks don’t want them to become citizens either. That’s because many of them are advocates of a “White America”. And they are up against a demographic reality. Within the next two decades, whites in America will become the largest “minority”, but not the majority anymore. So keeping people of color from gaining citizenship is a ploy to keep the white people that the Great Replacement folks claim to represent in power.
Jim Crow
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, white people in America tried to maintain power through the “Jim Crow” laws. Many of those were aimed at keeping black people, US citizens, from voting. The idea was that as long as the “vote” remained among the “chosen” white people, then the existing power structure could continue. The people of color were denied the vote by law. They used “grandfather clauses” (if your grandfather couldn’t vote, you can’t vote) or literacy tests (not required of white voters) or a fee to vote (a poll tax).
And, of course, those people who tried to enforce voting rights were threatened, attacked, and killed. In many places, law enforcement was on the side of the racists.
It’s simple: if you can’t win a free election with all eligible voters participating, then reduce those that can participate. And that’s what the “Safe Act” would do. It would take perfectly legal voters, and deny them the right to vote.
Safe Act
The Safe Act isn’t just a photo-ID law, requiring voters to present state ID at the polls. (Though even that law, a regulation here in Ohio with the strictest voter laws in the country, does deny the vote to otherwise eligible voters). In many states, the “Safe Act” paperwork would require that voters get a “national ID”, like a passport. Currently, 50% of Americans do not have that document (USA Today) which costs $165. If that is required, it creates a “cost to vote”, otherwise known as a poll tax, which is banned by the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution.
In addition, for a large number of legal American citizens, a tremendous amount of documentation would be required. The basic legal document for citizenship is a birth certificate. But 21.3 million Americans don’t have access to their birth certificates (NPR). Those citizens have used other forms to prove citizenship for voting registration. Under the “Safe Act” they would have to locate original documents. In addition, if their name has changed since birth (adoption, marriage, legal change) they would have to have certified copies of those documents as well.
Authoritarian Rule
It’s not about making voting safe, it’s about reducing the number of voters. In the Jim Crow days, there were poor white folks who were also unable to vote. But the powers were fine with that, as long as the vast number of people of color were denied too. Now, a large number of Trump supporters might not be able to vote. But Safe Act folks today are fine with that as well.
The “Safe Act” isn’t making elections safer. That’s not a real problem. It is a scheme to keep opponents of the current administration from winning electoral majorities. Just like the Jim Crow Era, it’s a way of cheating Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence thesis: “That…governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The Safe Act makes sure those just powers will be chosen by those governing, not the governed. That’s not a democracy (or even a Republic – for those still hanging on the difference).
It’s a government of the few: authoritarian rule.
