Republican Rep. Tim Burchett (TN) with an assist from former Trump spokesliar Kayleigh McEnany lie to the viewers on Fox not “news” about the requirements for proof of citizenship in their vote-suppressing SAVE Act.
We’ve already discussed what this bill does when a version passed in the House last April, and as Ellen explained then:
The House of Representatives passed the Orwellian “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” (SAVE Act) on Thursday. It purports to protect our democracy from the non-existent problem of non-citizen voting. What the bill really does, by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, is create what Mother Jones’ Ari Berman calls a “five-alarm fire” for legit American voters and for election officials:
Nine percent of American citizens, roughly 21 million people, don’t have ready access to citizenship documents, according to a study by the Brennan Center and other voting rights groups. Sixty percent of them voted in the 2020 election. Close to 4 million don’t have these documents at all because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen.
But the number of affected voters is much larger than just those who don’t possess or have easy access to citizenship documents. According to the Pew Research Center, 79 percent of American women married to men have taken their spouse’s last name; that equates to about 69 million women who do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name and could find it much harder to register to vote under the bill.
…
The bill would create criminal penalties for election officials who register any noncitizens, even if they did so by mistake, while also forcing them to handle the burden of helping all the voters who have to show new citizenship documentation at election offices. It would also mandate frequent purging of voter rolls based on citizenship records, which frequently ensnares lawful voters based on faulty data, and allows voters to be removed from the rolls right before an election, in violation of the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day “quiet period.” And the bill would go into effect immediately, with no funding attached.
“It’s a completely unfunded mandate that would place an enormous burden on state and local election officials at the same time as it also places them in jeopardy of civil and criminal penalties,” [Eliza Sweren-Becker, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s voting rights and elections program] says. “So it is really an election administration nightmare.”
The bill also gives false credence to some of MAGA’s propaganda that elections can’t be trusted, that immigrants are endangering the country and that “there is a deliberate effort underway to flood the country with immigrants who will vote Democratic,” as Philip Bump put it in a Washington Post column last year. He accurately called it the white supremacists’ “’great replacement’ theory, now in legislation form.”
And here’s more from CAP on the voter ID requirements:
The legislation states that “a form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the Real ID Act of 2005 that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States” can be used to prove citizenship. However, the Real ID Act of 2005 does not include a federal requirement for Real IDs to indicate citizenship status, and no state’s Real ID indicates citizenship status on the card. Legally residing noncitizens can also get a Real ID. As it stands, this is an unworkable provision of the legislation, unless the standard for Real IDs is federally changed. Similarly, as tribal and military IDs do not indicate citizenship status, they need to be shown in conjunction with other documentation that does, meaning that alone, they do not satisfy the bill’s requirements.
That didn’t stop McEnany and Burchett from spewing this vile nonsense this Saturday, pretending that the bill’s requirements are the same as someone needs to go buy beer.
MCENANY: You know, I understand and respect that you don’t want to share your private conversations, but I do want to ask you about broadly characterizing. I know you went in, you met with the president about something different. It’s the SAVE Act.
Anna Paulina Luna, your colleague, wanted to hold up this government funding because of the SAVE Act, which I understand it is very, very important. Voter ID, wildly popular. And the Senate, unless they get 60 votes, unless they blow up the filibuster, they’re not going to be able to pass it.
You went in, you communicated with the president. Where do you think we go from here? Do you think this gets passed?
BURCHETT: Well, I honestly think the president realizes — he’s a businessman, and he can count. And we have a few Senate holdouts. And I think honestly, you know, this might come as a shock, but I don’t think Leader Thune has been characterized in the right light there. I think he’s trying to thread that needle.
I think he sees it and he knows it. With 85 percent of the population thinking that somebody does need to show a dadgum ID to vote. They need to prove that they’re an American citizen.
You know, I’m not a beer drinker, but dadgum it, in Tennessee, you have to show an ID to buy a six pack of beer, or in some over-the-counter medications, and yet they’re throwing out Jim Crow, Schumer is.
You know, to me, it’s racism that Schumer thinks that a minority population cannot produce, that American citizens, can’t produce an ID. To me, that just shows the ignorance of the left, and where this country is headed.
And we gotta have some politicians with some guts Kayleigh, And currently right now, I don’t see a lot of them. In the White House, in the vice presidency, I do. There’s a few of us.
But thank goodness for Representative Luna. She is a fighter. I was just going in a supportive role. I really got a little vocal in there with the president on it, and his support of it as well, because he wants it.
He said, Tim, it needs to be the Save America Act, not the… and it does because it will save America.
People don’t realize that you can just walk in and vote and we’re going to steal this. They’ll steal it from us and they’re going to take it without a shot, Kayleigh.
And it scares me for the future of our country, for the world my daughter is going to grow up, that we do not have a representative form of democracy. But I’ll tell you what else.
If 12 percent of the population continues to be the only ones that voting… that vote, we’re going go down this path. If 40 percent of evangelical Christians — and I try to be one, I try to save a few souls every now and then — and I’m a Christian.
If we don’t get to the polls, if when 30 percent of gun owners don’t go to the polls, this is what happens in our country. Kayleigh, we got to put so many dadgum points on the board, they can’t steal it from us. And this is what’s got to occur.
People got to get involved. They got to hold Washington accountable, and currently right now they’re not. Because if we have one more dadgum hearing, I’m going to lose my mind.
MCENANY: Well, we are keeping up the drum beat on Saturday in America. We have been on this for four weeks. We’ve seen 36 co-sponsors go to 50. We’ve seen Senator Rick Scott come on this program, talk about the standing filibuster, using it to get this through. So we are on it. I know you are too, Congressman Burchett. Thank you for your time.
They’re going to disenfranchise a bunch of their own voters if this passes as well, but apparently they’re hoping it affects more Democrats than Republicans. They can’t win unless they cheat, and they know it, but that won’t stop them from constantly trying to project what they’re doing onto Democrats.
