President Trump, his supporters and Republicans in Congress are threatening worrisome changes to the nation’s voting rules and procedures, voting rights advocates and attorneys say.
And while none of those changes are in place so far, those advocates say now more than ever that it is important for people to exercise their right and vote in this year’s midterm elections.
The most immediate threats are from the SAVE America Act, which passed the House last month and would require people to prove their citizenship with a passport or birth certificate when registering to vote for a federal election and show identification when voting, as well as the lawsuit the U.S. Department of Justice filed last week seeking the state’s full, unredacted voter database.
While President Trump and his allies have floated a number of other radical changes, such as declaring a national emergency that would allow him to end to no-excuse mail-in voting and machine balloting across the country, none of those have been proposed officially. A White House spokesperson said the declaration of an emergency was mere speculation.