RED ALERT: THE SAVE ACT
How Project 2025 Trumpers Plan To Strip Women of Their Votes
Fact: Women are 60% of college graduates
Fact: Women control 85% of consumer spending
Fact: In 5 years, women will control 60% of the world’s assets
Fact: Women are waking up to their power.
Fact: Once they do, Project 2025 Trumpers will cease to exist. They can do nothing to stop this inevitably, except for one thing.
But, you might rightly point out, nearly 70% of white women voted for Trump! So, how can I be so sure of their destruction?
Because white people’s - and white women’s - vice grip on the electoral process is coming to an end.
Let’s review some statistics.
In the last election, Vice President Harris won votes from:
72% of Asian-American women
61% of Hispanic women
92% of Black women
She also won a greater percentage of male voters in each category than her share of white male voters.
These percentages are incalculably more significant, given that all these populations are growing. Rapidly.
According to the Pew Research Center, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the U.S. electorate.
The latest census found that Latino Americans accounted for 51.1% of the country’s population growth between 2010 and 2020.
And America’s Black population has increased by 33% since 2000.
Meanwhile, America’s white population is shrinking. Most demographers predict that by 2045, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in the United States for the first time. That’s just 20 years away; in the meantime, the white electorate will continue to shrink.
As I said, the writing’s on the wall for Project 2025 Trumpers. This is not our last stand. This is their last stand. And for as much havoc as they are wrecking, our defenses are already proving up to the task - and we’re just getting started.
It will take time, unbelievably hard work, and sacrifice. And there will be so much needless, inhumane, sadistically caused pain for so many. But I believe with every fiber of my being that the writing is on the wall: They are toast.
Except for that, the one thing I mentioned that keeps me up at night is the mass disenfranchisement of women.
But, you might correctly object, to do that, they’d have to repeal the 19th Amendment. Such a herculean feat is beyond even their reach - let alone grasp - at the moment. Repealing the 19th Amendment requires a two-thirds majority vote by both Congress and the Senate to start the process, and then they would need three-quarters of all state legislatures to approve the repeal. That would never happen, you might say.
And you’re right. It wouldn’t. And they know it.
In response to this impossibility, the Project 2025 Trumpers created a nefarious workaround, mendaciously titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
Though this bill sounds innocuous enough, in actuality, it turns Orwellian Double-Speak up to 11.
According to the Center for American Progress, SAVE would “require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation—in person—when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information.”
Ok. So what? I have a driver’s license, you might say.
Nope. Not good enough.
But it’s a REAL ID, you say.
Still, not good enough.
The SAVE Act would require the vast majority of Americans to rely on a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship must present a passport or birth certificate matching your legal name. Over 140 million Americans don’t have a passport. Sure, they could get one if they know how and have the $150 bucks, not to mention the time to get one.
But it gets even more insidious: Nearly 70 million Americans, most of them women, do not have - and cannot get - a birth certificate that matches their legal name. Why? Because they changed their name when they got married.
Including me. Including my mother. Including almost all of my friend group of moms.
If the Project 2025 Trumpers are successful in passing the SAVE Act, it would immediately disenfranchise an enormous swath of women - regardless of race. But given the overall growing gender gap, especially when age is factored in, the Project 2025 Trumpers do not care. Suddenly, they have a choke hold on the electorate that will be nearly impossible to break.
Congress has already passed this bill once and has just reintroduced it.
Once more, a hopeful objection might pipe up, noting that SAVE needs to pass the Senate to become law, and given the filibuster, which the “Republicans” have vowed to protect, it would never clear this hurdle.
Elected Republicans are liars. They are spineless simps who roll over on the Constitution of the United States of America for the promise of a shrimp cocktail at Convicted Felon’s 2029 house arrest location down in Florida.
I have no doubt that when the time comes - when the orange man behind the desk or the white supremacist behind the counter commands it - the vast majority of Senate Republicans will prostrate themselves as they have been so accustomed to doing and terminate the filibuster.
So what is to be done?
We can and should adopt the tried and true methods of contacting our Congress members and Senators. The ACLU has excellent resources.
But to stop this - what I believe to be the greatest threat to women’s political power - and our democracy - we must build a groundswell. We have to talk to the women and allies around us and sound the alarm about how this dangerous and irresponsible legislation will directly impact them.
We need to take a page from the Suffragists’ book for this.
Throughout their campaign, the Suffragists built their base of power not from the top down through lobbying but from the bottom up through community engagement. This was especially true in campaigns in the Western States, where rural populations were largely cut off from news and information by a lack of transportation infrastructure.
In response, Suffragists focused on recruiting local representatives in each precinct who could talk to potential voters about the importance and benefit of granting women access to the ballot.
While highways, cable news, and the internet create the illusion of universal interconnectivity, in reality, social media has made information deserts in rural, suburban, and urban landscapes alike - not dissimilar from those the Suffragists were tasked with crossing.
It’s up to us to cross these divides in our communities. As a resource, I’ve put together a few ice breakers, talking points, and questions that could help broach the subject with friends, acquaintances, family, and community members and get the conversation rolling about how the SAVE Act tangibly endangers our right to vote.
Our goal: Get our Representatives on record opposing new voter registration rules that make it harder for women to vote by requiring a birth certificate or passport.
I hope you find this helpful, and if you have ideas, tips, or tricks to add, please put them in the comments below.
Issue: Name Change As Impediment To Personal Voting
Ice Breaker: I changed my name when I got married. How about you?
Talking Point: So many women do. But I’m worried that I won’t be able to vote in the next election. Why? Because Congress just passed the SAVE Act that’ll make me re-register to vote with a birth certificate that matches my legal name if it passes the Senate. And my birth certificate doesn’t match since I changed my name. Now I have to get a (new) passport and shell out like $200 just to vote!
Extra points: I don’t have the money. / I don’t have the time. / I don’t know how to do this. / It’s weird how this won’t affect men in the same way.
Issue: Name Change As Impediment To Older Women’s Voting
Ice Breaker: How’s your mom doing? Mine’s really worried that she won’t be able to vote in the next election.
Talking Point: Her name doesn’t match her birth certificate, and now that she’d remarried, she’s changed her name again. I mean, that didn’t used to matter, but now Congress just passed the SAVE Act, which will make me re-register to vote with a birth certificate that matches my legal name if it passes the Senate. And her name doesn’t match. And God knows she won’t get a passport.
Extra Points: She doesn’t have the money. / She doesn’t have the time. / She doesn’t know how to doesn’t know how to do it and I just don’t have the time to help her. / It’s weird how this won’t affect men in the same way.
Issue: Obtaining Personal Documents
Ice Breaker: Hey, do you know how I can get my birth certificate? I guess I might need it to vote next time. Yeah, Congress just passed something called the SAVE Act, and I guess we might need a birth certificate to vote now. I think that costs a lot of money, right? Is there a website? Or a phone number? How long does it even take?
Talking Point: Why do we even have to do this? I have a driver’s license. That used to be more than enough. I don’t think it should be harder for me to vote.
Extra Points: Why are they even doing this when there’s almost no voter fraud right now? / Why would they make it harder for citizens like me to vote?
Their Potential Questions + Your Answers:
Q: What about a driver’s license?
A: No. It has to be a birth certificate or passport
Q: What about illegal voters?
A: I hear you. But I don’t see why keeping them away from the polls should mean that I can’t vote! Besides, there are already a lot of things in place keeping non-citizens from voting, and there are like two examples of folks like that trying to vote, and all of them were caught.
Q: What can I do?
A: Call our congressperson and tell them not to support this the next time it comes up.
A: Make them commit to opposing any legislation that would make it harder for me to vote
Resources
Find Your Congressperson
League of Women Voters Action Resource
Question: should I call my female house rep and ask her why she voted to pass this?
Jay, what makes it discriminatory is the cost and the effort to obtain the proof. Poor people have many obstacles to being able to prove citizenship. It could be that records can be requested online, but one would have to have access to internet. Poor people disproportionately do not. This leaves going in person to request the records, that unless you live within walking distance, you'll need transportation. Often the location for these offices are not convenient to where people go. Like shopping districts, or city centers, or near schools or libraries....
These sorts of requirements were found to disproportionately prohibitive to the poor as a way to suppress their right to vote. These types of laws were used in the south to keep people of color from being able to vote. During the civil rights era, the supreme Court ruled it prohibitive forcing states to remove the requirement. They also added additional monitoring on states that had done this to ensure that voting wasn't being suppressed. Recently, the supreme court has removed many of the requirements and all of the monitoring from those states.
If they really wanted everyone to have this sort of ID so they could vote, they would make the id free, and they would set up popup tents in poor neighborhoods so it would be accessible. The truth is, they don't, they want to suppress voting so they can be in control.