Dear John,

Republicans know, the more diverse the electorate is, the more Democrats get elected. As a result, they make every effort to prevent Americans whom they define as “other” from voting.

Now, just in time for the 2024 election, House Speaker Mike Johnson is pulling out all the stops to push for the GOP’s latest attempt to disenfranchise the young, the poor, women, and people of color: their ironically titled Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.

This bill is pretending to address a problem that doesn’t exist by requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Let’s be clear: Non-citizens can’t and don’t vote in federal elections. This is already illegal. All this bill does is create a needless additional obstacle for U.S. citizens attempting to cast their ballots.

Republicans are so desperate to pass the SAVE Act that, under Speaker Johnson, they have tied its passage to the must-pass continuing resolution to fund the government. That’s right, the GOP is once again threatening to shut down the government, only this time, it’s to push through their major voter suppression bill, right before a presidential election.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard the GOP making bogus demands for people of color to produce identifying documentation. For years, Donald Trump peddled his “birther” lies, claiming to doubt President Obama’s eligibility to be president, even years after Obama produced his birth certificate.

Tell Congress: Stop the “SAVE Act” now! Protect the right to vote for all Americans, regardless of age, gender, income, housing, or ZIP code, now!

The fact is, for a variety of reasons, citizenship is not always easy to prove.

This bill targets women. Due to the traditional practice of taking a husband’s name, and sometimes even keeping the name even after divorce, millions of women have no access to a birth certificate or other document in their legal name.

This bill targets naturalized citizens, who are most likely to experience bureaucratic or other errors in the recording or updating of immigration data. Under the SAVE Act, these citizens, whose devotion to democracy brought them to the U.S. in the first place, would find themselves unable to vote.

This bill also targets the young, the poor, the homeless, and anyone without a driver’s license. The likelihood of having access to the necessary documents, including photo ID, and being able to produce them, increases as one climbs the socioeconomic scale. As a result, this bill would cause the removal of millions of eligible citizens from the voter rolls.

This bill addresses an imaginary problem. We have never experienced the widespread voter fraud that Trump and his team have falsely alleged. That’s why Trump’s team lost more than 60 lawsuits attempting to challenge the 2020 election.

In fact, their claims are so outrageous -- and dangerous -- that when Rudy Giuliani accused a mother-daughter pair of election workers in Georgia of conspiracy, he was found guilty of defamation, fined $150 million, and disbarred in the State of New York.

Trump’s GOP continues to do its best to suppress our votes -- a position that is both profoundly undemocratic, and mega-MAGA. Tell Congress to stop it, protect the vote, and reject the SAVE Act now!

Thank you for helping to keep millions of eligible voters on the rolls.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action