Trump Hereby Orders Millions Of Voters Not Be Allowed To Vote
Wielding that kingly Sharpie scepter again.
Another day, another round of That Man dictator-ordering some crazy shit, and daring the courts to stop him! America’s most powerful sentient hair weave posted six orders last night, including “modernizing” the government’s payments to be all electronic and “protecting America’s bank account”; declassifying materials related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation; going after the law firm of Jenner & Block and Andrew Weissmann; pardoning Devon Archer, a fraudster who testified against Hunter Biden; and oh, just a little executive order that would disenfranchise millions of voters and let DOGE/Big Balls and Homeland Security comb through state voter lists. To combat that rampant VOTE FRAUD IMMIGRANTS BAMBOO-BALLOT HARVESTING that does not exist, of course.
Trump has no power to federally mandate any of this, so consider it a wish-list fever dream. States have the power to decide the “time, place and manner” of elections, and Congress can make laws to set requirements. Still, what a list! There’s some solid evidence that voter suppression won the last election. It works! So Trump and Republicans are doubling down on it.
First off, requirements to prove citizenship, similar to the SAVE Act, which has been introduced but not yet voted on in the House. You will need a copy of your passport, AND a REAL ID (note REAL ID is not an acronym, it’s just spelled in ALL CAPS, for SOME REASON), or an official military identification card that indicates you are a citizen (do any of them do that?). A little less than half of Americans currently have a passport, and 56 percent of driver’s licenses in circulation are REAL IDs as of last year. So, millions of people would get disenfranchised right there. And the order says nothing about tribal ID cards, guess they don’t count.
And how do you get a passport? Why, at the post office, the very place that Trump is trying to wreck/privatize. Passports also cost money, about $165, plus the cost of a photo. So, a poll tax. And getting a passport takes time: You must appear in person, during the time most people with jobs are at work, and then to get one takes up to six weeks unless you want to pay for a rush job. Oh, and you have to have an appointment at the post office. Go online and see how long that might take! For me, the site has been “searching for the nearest location” for the entire time it took to write this article. Try it yourself, see if you have better luck! And if you are housebound because of a disability, or no car or way to get to the post office, tough shit.
The order would also disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of transgender people whose birth certificates may not match the information listed on voter registration rolls.
And don’t forget your married women!
And the royal proclamation directs Homeland Security AND “the DOGE Administrator” to go “review each State’s publicly available voter registration list and available records concerning voter list maintenance activities” and compare them to immigration databases. So congratulations, Amy Gleason, you now have 161 million records to compare with 47.8 million other records. Glad you got in that vacation! Maybe you would just like to let Big Balls make an AI bot to do it.
Ah, the irony of giving alleged illegal immigrant Elon Musk the power to decide who can vote, with no oversight whatsoever.
Aside from the privacy concerns of DOGE poking around everywhere, these databases have been proven problematic, not accounting for people who have since become citizens. We saw this issue when similar disenfranchisement fuckery was pulled in Virginia and Alabama.
Oh, and Trump wants to rescind all previous certifications of voting equipment based on prior standards and re-certify voting systems under the new standards, which do not allow any tabulation using bar codes. Which modern tabulation machines all use. So every machine would have to be thrown out and replaced. Within 180 days. Who’s going to pay for that?
And, there will be no mail-in ballots accepted after Election Day, regardless of when they were mailed. How convenient that he wants to destroy the post office too. And it would force states to update their own voter registration logs. And funds would be cut to states that do not comply with his demands.
Remember when he was like, “We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote”?
Yep. But there will still be voting. It will just be Russian-style, where the state will decide if it wants to oops throw out your ballot, or not.
What happens if this gets combined with birthright citizenship, do you have to show your parents’ birth certificates too?
Anyway, the ACLU says “This is an extreme abuse of power — we'll see him in court.” (Boy does he keep them busy!) And yes it is! Again, none of this carries any legal weight. But renew that passport and get that REAL ID anyway, if you can.
[Washington Post archive link]
Repost from Tabs because every vote matters!
BIG NEWS from conservativeland... And I voted in this one!
https://www.politicspa.com/stunner-in-lancaster-as-malone-defeats-parsons-for-36th-senate-seat/141051/
This is the first time this seat has gone Democrat since it was moved from Philadelphia in the 70's!
He won by less than 500 votes. I was filling out my mail in ballot thinking "what's the use, I'm stuck in deep red Lancaster". We fucking did it!
I can admit to being wrong. This isn't so much wanting Soviet style elections, which requires high voter turnout and a predetermined outcome (the ruling party wins with 99% of the vote). It's a first step to doing away with elections altogether.