THE LAST RIVER MILE

The United States Congress currently is considering The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (“S.A.V.E.”) Act. In summary, this proposed legislation creates processes and steps designed to assure that only United States citizens vote in elections. (For the record, it is already a legal mandate that only US citizens can vote.) Proponents claim that widespread undocumented voting requires this legal step. In fact, non-citizen voting is negligible nation-wide.

If passed, the SAVE Act will require extended documentary proof of citizenship. This will involve various combinations of current passports, original birth certificates, naturalization paperwork, etc. This will create additional and in some cases impossible work for many citizens. For example, currently 52% of Americans do not have passports and 11% have no access to original birth certificates. Getting the needed paperwork to prove citizenship will be extensive and expensive for a good number of Americans.

That being the case, for which citizens will this be most difficult? Obviously, the lower a person is on the income scale, the harder it will be. And who make up a high percentage of economically challenged citizens? People of color.

And that brings us to the real motivation behind the SAVE Act. This proposed legislation stands in a long and unfortunate line of voter suppression efforts in our country, which has included such efforts as outright threat and intimidation, literacy requirements, shortening early voting and limiting write-in access (making it harder for the working poor), and efforts to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act. For people in power, it’s too often the case that they last thing they want is for powerless people on the margins of society to have equal voting rights.

I have noted before God’s favor toward those who are denied favor by the cultures in which they live. A wise pastor recently observed, “God is partial to the people the world overlooks.” So, do the math.

To say that protection from non-citizen voting is needed and is worth voter suppression efforts is what my late father would have called the practice of the Big Lie. Saying it often enough, getting enough people to buy into it, and even to legislate it doesn’t make it any less of a lie.

I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.