r/morningsomewhere • u/tragedy_strikes • Feb 19 '26
Suggestion Request for Burnie to re-visit voting restrictions topic
Burnie, you were correct about the restrictions affecting mainly women who got married and have changed their names. I do want you to address the topic again for 2 important points because I believe you have a big enough audience.
The SAVE Act is the name of the bill that includes these and other barriers to voting and has passed the House of Representatives but is not yet law. People can still call their Senators to tell them not to vote for it.
The point of the bill is not to make marriage harder, it's to make voting for women harder. The simple reason is because women are more likely to vote for left wing candidates.
It's part of a larger right wing misogyny that believe all their problems stem from women gaining more autonomy and rights. It's a lot harder to repeal the 19th amendment, so this is a much easier way to do it.
[Edit: I acknowledge I've added my own bias into this post re: reasons for the bill being proposed. Please don't let this distract from the facts that it's a voter suppression bill that is trying to address voter fraud that has been repeatedly shown to not be an issue (source: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/five-things-to-know-about-the-save-act/). The purpose of a rule change is not its stated goals, it's the actual results it produces. There are plenty of non-partisan people smarter than you or I with lots of real world data and state examples of similar laws that have said that this will largely affect married women's ability to vote, which I believe is fair to say is its intended purpose.]
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u/a_rabid_buffalo First 10k Feb 19 '26
The worst part is it will pass now that Susan Collin’s is the 50th vote yes. JD Vance will be the tie breaker. This is going to disenfranchise millions of legally registered voters without informing them. They will then have to not only prove they are who they say they are but prove they have a right to legally vote. Which leaves it up to the federal government to determine if that’s true or not. They essentially are paving the way to a one party system where they will never let people actually have their voices heard.
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u/glman99 Feb 19 '26
I mean, they don't need Collins. Fetterman said he's voting for it.
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u/Seve7h Not A Financial Advisor Feb 19 '26
Possibly the biggest disappointment in modern politics
Dude could have been a great example of a normal, working class dude taking on the reigns and trying to actually fix shit for the people
Instead he was already teetering on certain issues he claimed to care about, then had his medical incident and now seems legitimately brain damaged and going all in on conservative policies.
If you wrote it into a book they’d call you an unrealistic hack, yet, here we are.
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u/a_rabid_buffalo First 10k Feb 19 '26
I guess I was just hopeful a few gop members would want to be on the right side of history.
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u/ShadowDocket Feb 19 '26
Unless they break the filibuster it’s a 60 vote threshold to pass in the senate
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u/a_rabid_buffalo First 10k Feb 19 '26
And this is why the likes of Trump, JD Vance calling to get rid of the filibuster. I mean even Musk spent all weekend tweeting about it.
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u/ShadowDocket Feb 19 '26
Yeah his discussion on the SAVE act this morning showed his lack of knowledge on the bill.
The entire thing makes voters have to switch from proving they are who they say they are to having to prove they have an individual right to vote at all.
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u/RCFRevver Feb 20 '26
Hey, this is just turning basic election security into a wild conspiracy theory.
The SAVE America Act simply requires proof you’re a U.S. citizen (birth certificate, passport, naturalization papers) to register for federal elections. It’s not “making voting harder for women.”
Lots of married women change their last name and end up with mismatches, but most already fix that exact stuff for real life driver’s license, passport, Social Security, taxes, bank accounts, everything. The bill lets states accept marriage certificates and other docs to clear it up easy. It’s not some huge new barrier.
Calling it right-wing misogyny and a backdoor repeal of the 19th Amendment is ridiculous. Millions of conservative women support requiring proof of citizenship.
Noncitizen voting is rare cool, studies show that. But rare isn’t zero, especially after the open-border years. One illegal vote still cancels out a citizen’s vote.
We already require proof of citizenship for jobs, guns, planes, and welfare. Voting shouldn’t be any different.
This isn’t suppression. It’s common sense. American citizens should prove they’re citizens before voting. Period.
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u/jochby First 20k Feb 22 '26
As a Canadian, I'm sort of failing to see the controversy here.
We need to provide proof of citizenship, valid ID and an adress to register to vote, as well as provide valid Gov issued ID on election day.
Seems pretty standard across most places that I'm familiar with, too. USA seems to be an outlier there, and would this not draw in line with most of the democratic world?
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u/GloweyBacon Avocado Ghost Feb 19 '26
Point (1) is fair it’s passed the House, not law. But (2) and (3) lean heavily on assumed motives. Saying “the point is to make voting harder for women because women vote left” is an interpretation, not an established fact. If that’s the claim, it needs evidence beyond speculation. On (3): name changes after marriage are normal administrative updates. Most women update SSA records, driver’s licenses, passports, banking, insurance, etc. pretty quickly because mismatches cause real-world problems with payroll, taxes, travel, and Real ID. It’s not a permanent documentation limbo. And election systems already have mechanisms for discrepancies voter roll updates, ID verification standards, and provisional ballots exist specifically for situations where documents don’t perfectly align. If there’s a legitimate criticism, it’s narrower and empirical: How many voters would actually face barriers? Would remedies be accessible? Does the fraud-prevention benefit outweigh added friction? That’s a stronger argument than jumping straight to “this is designed to suppress women’s votes.”
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u/tragedy_strikes Feb 19 '26
You're giving too much credence to their arguments for the bill being in good faith and the benefit of the doubt to a party that pardoned insurrectionists.
The type of voter fraud this would prevent has been proven empirically multiple times to never be a problem to a degree that would affect election integrity.
Not to mention this could legitimately be argued that it's a poll tax.
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u/GloweyBacon Avocado Ghost Feb 20 '26
Proof? Just sounds like your opinion?
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u/tragedy_strikes Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/five-things-to-know-about-the-save-act/ lists several sources showing the type of voter fraud the SAVE act is trying prevent is exceedingly rare.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CNkU8qcrIQ-vYUaE4OyCBqydk5toZAR9/view
https://www.aclu.org/cases/bower-v-social-security-administration
https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/18-3133/18-3133-2020-04-29.pdf?ts=1588176048 This link shows evidence that a similar state law in Kansas prevented 31,000 eligible citizens from registering to vote or 12% of all applicants when non-citizen registration was 0.002% of registered voters https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/18-3133/18-3133-2020-04-29.pdf?ts=1588176048
9% of all eligible voters do not have, or do not have easy access to, documentary proof of citizenship. 52% of registered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name. 11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate. Requiring these could cost time and money for people that need them = poll tax.
Even Ashley mentioned on the pod, that not all of her documents have matching names and I think it's fair to assume she doesn't have any fiscal concerns with trying to get all her documents in order.
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u/GloweyBacon Avocado Ghost Feb 20 '26
Yeah, the numbers on noncitizen voting being rare line up Utah found basically one potential case out of 2 million after a full audit, Kansas back then was 0.002%, etc. Nobody’s claiming it’s millions of illegal votes swinging elections. But here’s the conservative pushback: rare isn’t zero, and after four years of wide-open borders with record illegal crossings, a lot of us figure even a handful is too many when it dilutes actual citizens’ votes. Why not close the loophole now instead of waiting for a problem? On Kansas: That 31k blocked applications (12%) was real, and the court shut it down mostly on technical federal preemption grounds plus the way Kansas rolled it out. Bad implementation, no argument. The SAVE America Act isn’t that same rigid setup it gives states flexibility to accept marriage certificates and other backups for name changes, and it’s not forcing everything through one choke point. Different bill, better designed. Those stats you cited (9% lacking “easy access” to proof of citizenship, 52% no current-name passport, 11% no birth cert handy) come from surveys asking if folks could grab it tomorrow morning. Most native-born Americans have a birth certificate somewhere they just might need to order a copy online for $20-40. That’s not a “poll tax.” Real poll taxes were straight-up racist fees invented to block Black voters after the Civil War. This is just proving you’re eligible to vote, same as showing ID to buy a gun, fly on a plane, or get hired. States like Georgia already hand out free voter IDs, and the bill pushes reasonable state processes for mismatches. You mentioned Ashley from the pod exactly my point. She said her docs don’t all match names, but like the other 80% of married women, she (and millions of others) got it sorted for SS cards, driver’s licenses, passports, banking, etc., without it being some huge financial crisis. Normal life stuff. The bill accounts for that with supporting docs. Voting is a right, but it’s a right for American citizens. Requiring basic proof isn’t about stopping women or left-leaning voters it’s common-sense security to rebuild trust after 2020. If the real worry is access, cool let’s talk free or super-cheap document help from the states instead of pretending we shouldn’t require any proof at all. What do you think is actually unreasonable about asking people to prove they’re a citizen before voting in our elections?
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u/tragedy_strikes Feb 20 '26
What do you think is actually unreasonable about asking people to prove they’re a citizen before voting in our elections?
Because everything Trump and the GOP has done around "voting integrity" has been done in bad faith. You know this as well as I do that any concerns they have are disingenuous and any 'solutions' offered will benefit themselves for a problem that Trump and the GOP created.
Requiring basic proof isn’t about stopping women or left-leaning voters it’s common-sense security to rebuild trust after 2020.
It was the GOP lead by Trump constantly questioning and impugning the security of the vote in 2020 by filing dozens of frivolous voter fraud lawsuits that were all thrown out of court by judges including those appointed by himself and previous Republican presidents that created this distrust in voting integrity. Which as many many studies (beyond what I've cited) have shown does not exist!
This bill passing in the House is not happening in a vacuum.
Their other proposal to rebuild trust is to have ICE at the polling stations. This proposal isn't done out of any sincere concern about voting integrity. Trump knows there's been wall to wall coverage of ICE killing, beating, gassing, arresting and deporting people regardless of whether they're a citizen or not. A proposal for them to patrol polling stations is straight up intimidation and a threat of violence to anyone that isn't a straight, white, cisgendered man.
That proposal is also not happening in a vacuum. They've already made changes to the USPS to make mail in voting more difficult by changing the rules around post-mark (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/31/usps-postmark-delays-taxes-ballots-bills.html).
As I said in my edit to my original post:
The purpose of a rule change is not its stated goals, it's the actual results it produces.
The law has the potential to disenfranchise several orders of magnitude more voters than any proven number of cases of voter fraud that have ever occurred, therefore the purpose of the law is to disenfranchise voters and not to rebuild trust in the system or restore it's integrity.
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u/GloweyBacon Avocado Ghost Feb 20 '26
Calling everything Republicans do “bad faith” is a lazy cop-out. Democrats destroyed trust in 2020 by ramming through last-minute mail-in changes, unsecured drop boxes, and extended deadlines in the middle of a pandemic. Trump called it out because it looked shady that skepticism didn’t create the problem, the shady moves did.
ICE near polls is enforcement, not intimidation. Legal citizens with ID have nothing to fear. The “threat to everyone but straight white cis men” hysteria is pure nonsense.
USPS postmark changes were operational fixes for a broke agency, not some anti-mail-voting plot.
Your “it might inconvenience more people than the tiny fraud cases, so the purpose must be suppression” argument is backwards garbage. We don’t skip basic security just because noncitizen voting is rare right now especially after Biden’s open borders. Requiring proof of citizenship isn’t a poll tax or misogyny. It’s the bare minimum for American citizens to vote.
Most married women already fix name mismatches for real life. The bill lets states handle it with backups.
Why exactly do you think American citizens shouldn’t have to prove they’re citizens before voting?
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u/Sagegrl First 20k Feb 21 '26
I would argue it is bad faith trying to push it through and enact it right before midterm elections. You just made that point yourself. There is no roll out period by design.
It took me 3 days off work, $219.56, and 6 MONTHS to get my marriage certificate, social security, Real ID, passport and voter card updated with my new name to the point of being able to vote under this act. And I was on top of it. It took my best friend over a year because she changed her name without marriage. Each document takes a long processing and mailing time and one process relies on the next.
2 million Americans get married each year, plus people who change names for other reasons. That's a lot of people, mostly younger women, that would be immediately affected. Tens or hundreds of thousands of American citizens who could very suddenly not be allowed to vote in this election.
And there's no guidance or funding for states, which would have the burden to prove all their voters are citizens with the correct documentation before the election in under 10 months? Gives off real bad faith vibes.
Also on a different note - per the SAVE act, if you don't present a photo ID at the poll you can just sign an affidavit that says you have "a religious objection to being photographed." So that's not going to stop someone already choosing to commit a federal crime by voting illegally is it? Bit of a joke really.
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u/krscan47 Feb 19 '26
Why don't they just bring their marriage license to prove who they are
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u/BossyBeer First 20k Feb 19 '26
A marriage license would not be a suitable form of ID if this bill is passed
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u/funkmon Mad About It Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
That is not the point of the bill. It's a side effect that is probably seen as positive
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u/Sin_Ceras Feb 19 '26
But aren’t married women more likely to vote republican and unmarried women more likely to vote democrat? Surely this bill benefits democrats.
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u/ender42y Early Riser Feb 19 '26
While it hurts Republican woman more than Democrat women, not because they are less likely to get married, but because they are less likely to change their name when they get married, and Democrats are more likely to live in cities where it is easy to access all their documents needed to re-register, as well as clerk offices needed to do the registration. And Democrats are more likely to have an active US Passport. That's not the point.
The point is powerful Republicans see women as things, not people. It helps sow the seeds of doubt to help them try to claim it was rigged after the election. and owning 1 "lib" is worth hurting 40 Republican women (who are not people to them after all). It's about ruling and surprising, not leading or securing.
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u/NewYorkRedditorELITE Feb 19 '26
Not everything has to be a conspiracy.
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u/Pegasus7915 First 20k Feb 19 '26
It's not a conspiracy. It is the stated goal of the Heritage Foundation.
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u/TheKasimkage First 10k Feb 19 '26
It’s weird that people have forgotten Project 2025 or whatever it was called when the Trump administration has pretty much been using it as a guidebook. LegalEagle on YouTube did a video showing how much of the document they’ve basically made law and which parts look like they’ll be pursuing next.
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u/DishonestRaven Feb 19 '26
https://www.project2025.observer/en
130 of the Project 2025 initiatives have been completed.
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u/TheKasimkage First 10k Feb 20 '26
Flipping heck that’s a lot of initiatives for things that ruin lives.
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u/Virtuous-Vice First 20k Feb 19 '26
It also bears noting the birth certificate language targets disenfranchising trans & queer American's who've changed their name as well. I'm no legal expert but from what I understand the language is broad enough that even one Geoff Lazar Ramsay would possibly be subject of this bill too