Donald Trump’s campaign strategist for his 2016 election win says: “I believe we will have a national emergency declared by late August,” ahead of the Congressional midterm elections due on November 3. “You will have enough evidence by mid-August to show that we have a massive problem” of election fraud, he tells me in an interview. Trump’s televised address to the nation on Thursday last week was the beginning of the process, he says.

The president declassified documents, which he claimed show “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure” revealed by the 2020 election.

These had been hidden, even from him, by a “deep state” conspiracy of US intelligence services, he posited.

Trump demanded that the Congress pass a bill called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act. The bill stipulates that all voters produce a passport or birth certificate to be eligible to vote. Democrats denounce it as an effort at mass disenfranchisement. The Brennan Centre for Justice at New York University estimates that it could block 21 million Americans from the ballot box.

Under the US Constitution, it’s the states, not the federal government, that run elections. The SAVE Act would force state governments to hand voter roll information to Washington.

Trump sent his Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, out the following morning to issue a threat to state officials: they could face prison time unless they followed the administration’s orders to remove non-citizens from rolls.

  • cristigyk@piefed.social
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    1 month ago

    For me as a European it’s weird why there is such push back against voter ID. could someone explain what the deal is? in my country you can’t vote without an ID with a photo and I think it’s normal that you need to prove who you are when you vote.

    • lavander@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      Not US but the answer is simple.

      IDs are a taboo in the US (otherwise the government would interfere with your privacy or something).

      So they have

      • Passports (too bad that a small percentage of population has)
      • Birth certificates (yeah, super secure /s, in practice just a way to bar people that changed their name/surname)
      • Driving licenses/liquor id: these are the closest to IDs but technically they are not ID. The proposed changes are exactly for stopping accepting driving licenses
      • SSN: don’t even make me started
    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      1 month ago

      This is one of those things where you need to understand the intricacies of how our elections work. You don’t and no one here will have the time or patience to explain it to people that don’t need to know. Voter ID is against our constitution.

      It would be nice if foreigners understood they can’t possibly learn why this is in a social media comment and to not make ignorant assumptions just because “well it works in my tiny little country”.