US President Donald Trump, on Friday, February 13, threatened to try to bypass Congress and force new voting laws ahead of the November midterm elections, where his Republican Party fears losing control of the legislature. Trump said he would soon issue an executive order attempting to impose the rules if Congress does not pass a law requiring photo identification to vote and other nationwide reforms.
Any attempt would likely be met by a legal challenge that could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. “There will be Voter ID for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order,” he wrote.
While many jurisdictions across the United States require photo ID to cast ballots, not all do, with Trump and many Republicans arguing without evidence that those areas have permitted significant voter fraud.
The Trump-backed “SAVE America” election reform act passed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives this week. However, it is expected to fail in the Senate, where the Republican majority is too slim to pass the law without Democratic support.
In addition to requiring a photo ID to cast a ballot, the bill would also require proof of citizenship to register to vote. There is no evidence of meaningful fraud in US elections and critics say that the bill’s measures would instead push millions of people away from casting ballots, because they don’t have a passport or a paper copy of their birth certificate.
again. this is a way to legitamize congress having involvement in elections when its up to the states. If he gets away with it great for him. If not it looks like congress doing it is legitamate because him doing it illegally was stopped but states control their voting not the national governement. They have to be constitutional so the courts have some sway but not the legislative or the executive.
Didn’t he try this last year in March, they took him to court, he lost, and his administration didn’t even bother to appeal it because they knew he was going to lose? Is this his dementia brain not remembering things?
Maybe the court is more sympathetic (AKA being blackmailed harder by Epstein’s ghost)
Not only does the federal government have no authority over elections, the executive especially has no purview there.
That would be completely antithetical to the nature of democratic elections.
But these fascists don’t like democracy.
I was just reading a story this morning, that the GOP is now looking to scuttle the SAVE act as functionally it’d require passports in most all states except a few.
Why are they trying to scuttle it? They finally saw the data that most people who own passports are actually left leaning in nature. Throughout the south, majority of republicans don’t have passports.
This law could inadvertently flip all of the Red strongholds in attempt to get swing states. Gotta love it.
problem here is their states will just vaguely follow it and their courts will say thats fine but blue states saying fuck you would be ruled against. I mean hopefully the courts throw out the congressional over reach and keep states rights but we really don’t want the law passed. All the republican laws are there to serve their ends and only will be required to be followed by the executive to the extent it does. enforcement wise. judicial wise.
Especially when the original intent was likely to disenfranchise women. Whoops.
That would be hilarious.
THE PRESIDENT IS NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE LAWS! THAT IS NOT HOW THIS WORKS!
God, the US is so beyond fucked.
I already know exactly how this is gonna happen… He’s floating it now, he’ll DO it in August, a Federal judge will stop it, the Supreme Court will let it stand pending appeal, and then they won’t take up the case until December, by which point it won’t MATTER what they rule.
Executive orders apply to federal agencies. Election boards are not subject to executive orders. He can go get bent.
He cannot “order new laws”. He doesn’t have that authority.
Unless we are in a fascist regime.
Guess what
Unless we are in a fascist regime.
We are.
We saw during the Insurrection that he had several strategies going at once. When he finally called off the attack, we thought it was over, but he knew Plan B - the False Electors Plot - was still in play. This will be the same, they will have multiple strategies.
They are working on a Martial Law plan for before the election, they are working on a Voter ID plan, and possibly armed ICE Apes at polling places for during the election, and I’ve heard about them seizing ballots and voting machines from Democratic districts and doing a MAGA vote count, for after the election.
And they’re probably working on other ideas, too.
Proof of citizenship is already required to vote. That’s what you’re doing when you register to vote. Then, a secondary validation of a sample of ballots is typically completed to ensure that there isn’t fraud.
Obviously, they’re just trying anything and everything to not lose the midterms, and their voters go rabid over just the mention of voter fraud. I’m just rambling to the void because this new wave of fraud allegations is so fucking stupid and see through.
These news stories are treating this like a real legal issue, but Trump’s EOs have as much jurisdiction on voting procedures as they have in deciding what I’m going to have for dinner. It doesn’t need a legal challenge because it doesn’t apply to anyone actually who decides what IDs are required.
It should be reported, but as authoritarian ravings completely inconsistent with our voting systems rather than a looming legal clash where we need the Supreme Court to decide what’s right.
The coverage is fine but the phrasing of these articles is downright subversive. Every single headline should be “Trump pretends he can cancel midterms” or “Trump hallucinates authority to change state voting laws”
Things like “…threatens to order new laws” or “…floats canceling election” or “…nationalize voting security” only serve to muddy the conversation. These things are explicitly not within his power and never will be possible (barring a farce amendment push, which can’t happen before November). He cannot do them even if he pretends to do them.
The only thing that could happen is blatantly unconstitutional election interference (probably by force). Add that as a tagline to every article. Then when people show up to ICE goons monitoring their polling place their first thought won’t be “hmmm, must be [Trump’s new law/a canceled election/national voting security]”. They’ll properly think “why tf is this guy here?..”.
Part of the point is to get that incorrect idea into the minds of the population. It’s seeding other ‘Jan 6’ events in states that correctly ignore Trump’s nonsense.
They have exactly the amount that people give them though.
Not really. If Trump issues an executive order and an executive employee says “I won’t do that”, they can be fired whether or not the EO is ultimately determined to be legal. If a non-executive employee starts demanding birth certificates in order to vote, you can call the police and another less insane poll worker can give you your ballot without any personal risk, just the same as without an EO.
The new law
Can anyone explain to someone who’s not from there why is it a bad thing to require photo ID?
In my country, you don’t have to register to vote. You need to register your residence (aka: where you live) and that gives you access to all the services of the area and also let’s you vote assigning you an electoral area where you cast your ballot.
Still, when you are voting, you need to go there with your ID (which has always a photo) and it’s checked before voting. Why in the US that’s a problem so big? Why are they fearing this could be used to manipulate the elections?
Our voting laws are a hodgepodge of Federal and State laws. The current Federal voter registration form (which States are obligated to accept) asks you to simply affirm (under penalty of perjury) that you are a citizen. Conservatives point to this as “proof” that the voter rolls must be filled with non-citizens, probably because they are so comfortable with lying.
In fact, some Conservative states impose their own documentation requirements, and if someone comes with that Federal form they accept it, but only let them vote in elections with Federal positions on the ballot (President, Senator, Representative). If there are Federal and non-Federal positions on the same ballot, they hand that citizen a different ballot, with fewer choices, only because they didn’t fill out the right form when registering in the first place.
But a non-citizen would be nuts to sign that form, because if they are found out then they could be prosecuted for a crime, and likely deported. And for what? The chance to offer a tiny bit of influence in our politics? Most people here illegally are looking to keep off of the governments radar, not to hand them a form that says “please arrest me!”
Furthermore, Trump’s ramblings are triggering some people because of his emphasis on names matching exactly. Yes, they prove citizenship, but many voting age citizens have changed their name in adulthood. Many women look at Trump’s rants as a direct attack on the right of married women to vote, because their original citizenship documents have a different name on them. And, sure enough, there is a push for Household Voting in some Conservative circles these days.
TL;DR: Requiring ID (vs. simply asking for a sworn affirmation) causes more problems than it solves, and people are concerned about this administration using it to push the country backwards.
In the US, issuance of a photo ID is neither guaranteed nor free for all citizens. There is no simple registry for citizens within the US (unless you count the Social Security number which is incredibly flawed). While things such as driver’s licenses and passports serve as defacto identification, they are not universally held by everyone (fees are required for both, not everyone owns a vehicle, not everyone travels internationally). This also applies to home addresses and other proxies for voter identification, since they are generally insufficient in restrictive states.
Additionally, things such as voter roll purges and additional burdens placed on the participant (such as removing mail-in opportunities, since election day is not a holiday) tend to have the effect of excluding voters from participation, especially in lower-income communities who are unable to afford to take time off or go through the additional hurdles.
Throw on top of that the surveillance state apparatus and general distrust from the public regarding further extending our personal lives to the federal government since (and perhaps before) the 2001 Patriot Act, and you can see why a lot of people are not a fan of this push. The Real ID fiasco in the 2010s is a good example of outspoken pushback throughout implementation.
sidenote: a lot of the requirements for registration are put in place by GOP leaders to fuck over democratic party voter bases. An automatic registration system would be awesome, but no red tie would fuckin’ vote for it because it would doom their ability to have selective representation in their districts.
For those in poverty and without cars, trying to get somewhere to get an ID made can take a large amount of time and non-zero amount of money (even if just in trying to get to a DMV/BMV/DPS office) that they may not otherwise have.
Exactly.
One of the big issues is that IDs aren’t free. So those that don’t have IDs are generally low income. So you essentially disenfranchise poor voters. It’s basically seen as a poll tax.
As to the proof of citizenship, many more do not have proof of citizenship, much less carry it on them.
I don’t know if this is still a thing in certain places but they used to physically take your driver’s license if you got a speeding ticket and then give it back to you when you paid the ticket.
its voter suppression, the fact that you need an extra layer of ID to even vote. besides the gop doing this in red states are doing it in good faith, it requires fees and time to get the id. which most people wont likely have time to get. plus they can also shuttle or saddle DMVs with nonsense. Also proof of citizenship can be arbitrarily denied by a dmv or other worker simply if they dont believe its an actual copy. Also they are unlikely to saddle red districts with this kind of problem.
in blue states its pretty much just registering to vote like place of residency or citizenship, no extra proof needed
