WASHINGTON, DC - This week, at the insistence of President Trump, Senate Republicans are seeking to jam through the ultra-partisan voting suppression legislation misleadingly called the "SAVE America Act." This bill will give the Trump Administration unprecedented power to interfere in state-run election systems, directly clashing with 250 years of constitutional law and American values.

Put simply, this bill is a continuation of Donald Trump's assault on U.S. election systems that began after he lost the 2020 election. At that time, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr refuted Trump's claim that there was widespread fraud and his key lieutenants and advisers - including Vice President Mike Pence - refused to go along with Trump's efforts to subvert the election. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) similarly disputed the president's unfounded claims of election fraud. Moreover, Fox News paid a $787.5 million defamation settlement related to Trump's lies about the 2020 election.

If the SAVE Act becomes law, President Trump will have powerful new tools to allow the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to control elections and decide which American citizens will be allowed to even register to vote.

U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), who last year fought to increase funding for election security grants to states by 200%, strongly opposes this radical voter suppression bill and notes the law already clearly states that it is illegal and a punishable crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. Rhode Island is among the majority of 38 states that already have voter ID laws.

Reed says this bill is designed to try and save one thing only: President Trump's current Republican majority.

"This cynical, partisan bill is designed to preserve Donald Trump's rubberstamp GOP Congress. States do a great job in running elections, which is why voter fraud is almost non-existent. But President Trump, through the Department of Justice, is trying to intimidate states like Rhode Island that already have voter ID laws in place into turning over the private and personal information of every voter," said Reed. "This bill will help him build this big government database and impose massive new paperwork requirements for U.S. citizens wishing to vote. As experts have warned, it would disenfranchise millions of American voters and change election rules and requirements even as elections are already underway. This would cause chaos and place onerous burdens on individuals and state budgets alike."

The League of Women Voters has warned that the so-called SAVE America Act could block millions of eligible Americans, particularly women, from registering to vote, and would create the heaviest burden on older voters who could have to make multiple trips to bureaucratic offices to find all the different paperwork they would need, with those who have moved over the years, gotten married, and divorced having the hardest time trying to prove they are eligible to vote.

Millions of eligible voters would be affected by the bill's new paperwork requirements and would be required to show proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, in person at an elections office to register or re-register to vote. Almost half of Americans do not have a U.S. passport. And voting experts report that over 20 million U.S. citizens of voting age do not have proof of their citizenship readily available. Not to mention the fact that people would have to take extra time and go stand in line to register, and then wait in even longer lines on election day.

The bill would also force states to give sensitive voter registration data to the federal government, which most states, including Rhode Island, have refused to do - a move that several federal courts have upheld - noting the federal government has no legal authority to demand this data, and when the founders wrote the Constitution, they explicitly put control of elections for federal officials in the hands of the states.

Further, the bill provides no funding and no phase-in period and would create a massive and costly new compliance burden on voters and unfunded mandates on already strained state electoral systems.

In states like Georgia, Louisiana, and Utah, where Republican officials have all conducted extensive voter roll audits, they reached the same conclusion: 'non-citizens illegally registering or voting is not a systemic problem.'

Moreover, Reed notes that the Trump Administration's budget and actions prove the so-called SAVE America Act's real goal is the opposite of election integrity: The Trump Administration has already frozen election security support for states and cut funding for the cybersecurity network local officials rely on to share threat intelligence.

"The SAVE Act is a partisan power grab. It is a voter suppression ploy designed to try and give the Trump Administration unprecedented control of the machinery of voting nationwide. If passed, this bill would nationalize the electoral process - adding new costs, paperwork, and bureaucratic burdens to the voting process. It would also suddenly deliver every state's voter rolls - including things like e mails and party affiliation of every voter nationwide - to the Trump Administration. Due to a lack of guardrails, this information could end up in the hands of party operatives and be used to target tailored political messaging or intimidate or mislead lawful voters," said Reed. "It would also become the top target for hackers and make it harder for the local electoral workforce to do its job."

Kansas already tried to implement a state-level version of the SAVE Act 15 years ago and it was an abject failure that should serve as a cautionary tale for Congress and other states following this path. Reports show that the Kansas's documentary proof of citizenship law, known as the 'SAFE Act,' did not work in Kansas and came at the cost of disenfranchising over 30,000 Kansans, which was 12% of everyone seeking to register in the state for the first time, who were unfairly prevented from voting and saw their registrations suspended or deemed invalid because of the state's law. The law was enacted to address an illusory problem. Only 3 noncitizens tried to register to vote in Kansas each year from 1999 through 2012. The law was eventually overturned by the courts and taxpayers had to fund costly lawsuits.

Reed points out that the SAVE Act fails to heed the lessons of the disastrous and disenfranchising Kansas law by proposing a costly and ineffective so-called 'solution' to a non-existent problem.

"Election administration should be fair, impartial, and by the book. That is the exact opposite of what the so-called SAVE America Act would do. President Trump's reckless attempt to jam this bill through Congress would needlessly exclude millions of eligible American voters in all fifty states - especially women and minority voters. It would throw the entire electoral process into chaos, creating a technological and organizational mess, and necessitate costly legal challenges. But for Trump, chaos - not sound policy - is the point. This is a naked power grab and it must be stopped," concluded Reed, who noted that President Trump's extremely unpopular record this term includes dragging the nation into a war of choice; ripping health coverage from millions; increasing prices through unpopular tariffs; and tanking the economy.

"Donald Trump is the Election-Denier-In-Chief. When he loses, he lies and claims elections are rigged and stolen. But when he wins, he claims the results are legitimate. Now he can clearly see his presidency and party are poised to take an electoral beating at the ballot box this fall. So he seems to be going all in on gerrymandering and trying to nationalize elections," stated Reed. "Voters can see right through it. There is no groundswell of support for this bill. It's another misleading, extremist proposal that wreaks of anti-democratic despotism and desperation."

As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers: No 59: "With so effectual a weapon in their hands as the exclusive power of regulating elections for the national government, a combination of a few such men, in a few of the most considerable States, where the temptation will always be the strongest, might accomplish the destruction of the Union, by seizing the opportunity of some casual dissatisfaction among the people to discontinue the choice."

In other words, Hamilton worried that putting elections into the hands of the federal government was a bad idea and someone could come along and corruptly abuse the system, which is a key reason the founders trusted this power to the states.

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