MASKED AS PROGRESS: The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday (10/4) to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a major voter suppression measure that, if it became law, could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters and badly undermine U.S. democracy. 

– The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation—in person—when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. 

Specifically, the legislation would require the vast majority of Americans to rely on a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship. While this may sound easy for many Americans, the reality is that more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.

In addition to setting voter registration back to the preinternet era, the SAVE Act threatens the constitutional rights of American citizens, as tens of millions of citizens do not possess the documentation required under the bill.

According to statements and data released by the U.S. Department of State, approximately only half of American citizens possess a passport. This means that half of all American citizens would not be able to provide one of the primary acceptable forms of documentation that would be required to register to vote under the SAVE Act.

Nationwide, approximately 146 million American citizens do not possess a passport. To put that number into perspective, 153 million Americans cast a ballot in the 2024 presidential general election.

While the vast majority of Americans have a birth certificate, tens of millions of married women could not present their birth certificate as proof of citizenship under the SAVE Act, as it does not display their current legal name.

A survey from the Pew Research Center found that 79 percent of American women married to men have taken their spouse’s name. When women who have hyphenated their surname are also accounted for, 84 percent of American women have changed their surname.

Nationwide, approximately 69 million women could not use their birth certificate to prove their identity or citizenship status under the SAVE Act. – Americanprogress.org –

SUFFRAGETTES: – The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women’s suffrage in the United States, at both the state and national levels, and was part of the worldwide movement towards women’s suffrage and part of the wider women’s rights movement. 

The first women’s suffrage amendment was introduced in Congress in 1878. However, a suffrage amendment did not pass the House of Representatives until May 21, 1919, which was quickly followed by the Senate, on June 4, 1919. It was then submitted to the states for ratification, achieving the requisite 36 ratifications to secure adoption, and thereby went into effect, on August 18, 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment’s adoption was certified on August 26, 1920. -Wiki –

IN DOGE WE TRUST: – Misha Pride, then the mayor of South Portland, Maine, was greeting voters early on Election Day when police cars suddenly swarmed outside the city’s community center with lights flashing.

“Possible shooting,” the city manager texted Pride. Officers locked down the center.

Authorities quickly determined the call to police was a hoax, one of hundreds of threats and cyberattacks last November aimed at disrupting the presidential election – some pushed by partisan zealots, others perpetrated by foreign state actors including Russia and China. Voting at the community center was delayed by only ten minutes. The attacks in Maine, and elsewhere across the US, had minimal impact because of strong preparation and quick work by an information-sharing and analysis network of hundreds of federal, state and local election, cybersecurity and law-enforcement officials.

But now key parts of this network, much of it built over the past eight years, are being systematically dismantled by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, a CNN investigation has found – leaving election offices across the country scrambling to protect against future threats.

In early February, Musk’s team laid off 130 staffers at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, including 10 regional security specialists who worked with local and state election officials. The Trump administration is also advancing plans to strip civil service protections from 80% of the remaining CISA workforce, potentially allowing them to be fired for political reasons. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi that month disbanded a key FBI task force charged with investigating foreign efforts to influence elections. She also left in the wind the fate of another FBI task force that investigated threats against election workers and polling places.

Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, meanwhile, on March 6 canceled the funding for national information sharing efforts that helped state and local election officials detect and ward off coordinated hacking attacks and other threats.

Those moves come as Trump has appointed to key positions officials who embrace his false claims of widespread voting fraud, including Bondi, Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel, among others – and as Trump has cashiered the head of the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command, Gen. Timothy Haugh, who was involved in countering Russian interference in past elections. – CNN –

Apr 11, 2025 3:17:05 pm