ELECTIONS: WHAT THE HELL?? Last month the Trump administration dismantled the US agency that monitored cyber security threats and worked with states and election offices to protect elections. There was broad bi-partisan support for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and it worked well. Dismantling CISA destroyed defenses against election disruptions.
This week, the US House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill that requires people registering to vote to present proof of citizenship. Non-citizen voting is already illegal with severe penalties. Lawsuits, state audits, and research show it’s exceptionally rare. Non-citizen voting has never threatened our elections, but the narrative of non-citizens voting is a seductively simple fiction the GOP has pushed for years.
Cyber attacks are real; the threat of non-citizen voting is not. Yet the US discarded real election protection in favor of fake protection for a non-existent threat.
States have procedures to keep non-citizens off the voter rolls. They have asked the federal government to update and modernize federal databases that would help with this. Nothing doing. Instead of helping the states do this work better, the House passed a bill that’s an extraordinary attack on voter rights. Tens of millions of people don’t have a passport, birth certificate, or other citizenship document, and getting these documents is a long, costly process. (Ask anyone who had to get documents to get a Real ID.) Requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote will disenfranchise millions.
Urge your senators and all Republican senators NOT to pass the House’s legislation. (Senator directory link below. Google “Senate committees” to contact members of committees that seem relevant. As committee members, senators represent all of us, not just their constituents. Address them as committee members.)
3 links:
Read about what CISA did and will do no more:
https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-election-security-review-lacks-transparency/
Read about what states do to safeguard against non-citizens voting:
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/legislative-approaches-to-ensuring-only-citizens-vote?utm_source=National+Conference+of+State+Legislatures&utm_campaign=8b97f2597e-The-Canvass-Feb-3&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-83f6dd8190-384317457
Senate directory:
https://www.senate.gov/senators/index.htm