PROGRESSIVE VIEWS
Our political leadership is trying to confuse the elections process and throw up more roadblocks to a citizen’s right to vote.
Our political leaders have spent years trying to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter and that the election system is corrupt; they’ve enacted unnecessary steps to make it harder to vote. All so you’ll give up and not cast your ballot.
They’re engineering it to make it seem like voting doesn’t matter.
But it does. Efforts to further restrict voting start at the top. The president recently signed an executive order, which our governor supports, to “crack down” on mail-in voting. The executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a national voter list, among other requirements.
In an April 1 editorial, the San Antonio Express-News stated, “The idea of the federal government maintaining a national citizenship list is weird and creepy. Merely by issuing this order, he has likely sown seeds of suspicion about the midterm elections before any votes have been cast.”
The U.S. Congress is at work on voter suppression as well. The misleadingly named SAVE Act, and related bills, would require all Americans to prove their citizenship with documentation that millions of voters don’t have and will find it difficult to obtain. It would completely upend the way America registers to vote. This bill has passed the House and is under consideration in the Senate.
The SAVE Act will be able to purge voter rolls monthly, increasing the likelihood of being wrongfully purged from voter rolls. The bill includes measures that would mistakenly flag lawfully registered U.S. citizen voters as ineligible and allow states to purge their voter rolls without notifying voters before removing them.
This would mean already-registered Americans wouldn’t know they were removed from the rolls until they showed up to vote and learned they were no longer registered.
This has happened before. In a 2024 voter purge in Virginia, based on outdated citizenship information, 1,600 purged voters were U.S. citizens, according to an AP story.
The nonpartisan League of Women Voters opposes these bills. Their statement said, “It is already illegal for noncitizens to register and vote in federal or state elections. Requiring documentary proof of American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections is unnecessary and seeks to divide us.
“ It simply creates another barrier to voting. Many communities of eligible voters would be unnecessarily burdened by the requirements of the SAVE Act,” they added.
Texas already makes it hard enough to vote. A 2022 study found Texas ranked 46th in the country for voting access. Additional federal hoops won’t help voting access in the slightest and will do little to nothing to enhance election security.
There’s plenty you can do to fight these efforts. First, make sure your voter registration is current and accurate — visit:http:// www. votetexas. gove/ www.votetexas.gov to check. We recommend that you check your voter registration at least 30 days prior to every election, to make sure nothing has changed and that your record has not been purged.
Vote in every election, all the way down the ballot.
Urge your family and friends to vote. In 2022, less than 21% of eligible voters voted for Republicans. Over 43% didn’t vote at all (with an additional 19.2% unregistered).
Texas isn’t a “red state,” it’s a “non-voting state.”
Squawk when you see injustice. Call or email your legislators or better yet, show up at their office. Show up at organized protests — the March 21 “No Kings!” protest in Boerne drew a record crowd of more than 800.
Write a letter to the editor. Submit written testimony to the State Legislature or testify in person.
Raising your voice does make a difference. Last month, when ICE arrested several mariachi kids, the action provoked widespread outrage from citizens and politicians alike that the teens were released from immigration detention.
Outrage and calls/ emails to the U.S. Senate have stalled the SAVE Act and, so far, prevented its passage.
For details on the Kendall County Democratic Party, subscribe to our newsletter on our website, call our office at 830331-1243, or visit www. kcdems.us.
Laura Bray is the former Chair of the Kendall County Democratic Party
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