John McGuire, disenfranchising his own voters
The SAVE Act will make it harder to vote for tens of thousands of people in VA-05.
Here’s John McGuire on the SAVE Act, the election bill that narrowly passed the House and Republicans are now trying to cram through the Senate: “When you talk about Democrat leaders, that are elected, there’s opposition. But for the people on the street, when I go around the district and talk with anyone who may be Democrat, Republican, independent, they’re like, yeah, it’s a no-brainer.”
I feel certain that the number of people who have run into John McGuire on the street and struck up a conversation about the SAVE Act is about as big as the number of elections that have been decided by the votes of non-citizens.
But I’ll bet that even if McGuire has had those on-the-street chats, he hasn’t explained what the bill would do, because it makes both registering to vote and voting itself an onerous task for tens of thousands of people in the 5th district.
If McGuire were honest, he’d tell them:
You’ll have to register in person with a government election official—no completing it online or through the mail, or in a voter registration drive. You’re going to the county courthouse, or you’re not getting registered.
You’ll have to prove you’re a citizen. To do that, you’ll need a passport, or a birth certificate plus a government-issued photo ID with exactly the same name that’s on your birth certificate. Student IDs—like those issued by Liberty University and UVA—don’t count. Even government employees’ IDs don’t count, except for members of the military.
If the names on your ID and your birth certificate don’t match (if, say, you changed your name when you got married), you’ll need yet another document, like a certified marriage license, that links your birth name to the one on your ID.
If you move houses, you’ll need to re-register, which means going through this rigamarole again.
If you show up to vote and you’re not already listed on the rolls as a citizen, you’ll have to cast a provisional ballot and then within a few days go to an election office with all your documents if you want your ballot to count.
Election officials who let someone register without showing the proper documentation will be subject to criminal prosecution as well as private lawsuits. Take that, all you underpaid government bureaucrats who are trying to rig our elections!
As far as I can tell, if Virginia draws new congressional districts, we won’t have to re-register. We’ll just updated cards in the mail that reflect the change.
Under the even harsher and odiously named Make Elections Great Again act:
Universal mail-in voting, like Washington and Oregon do, would be outlawed.
States would have to share their voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security for verification.
If you live in a state that refuses to do that, you’d have to prove you’re a citizen and show photo ID every time you vote, regardless of how long you’ve been registered.
How the SAVE Act would affect VA-05
Assuming national trends hold true here, about 56,000 people of voting age in the 5th district don’t have easy access to a birth certificate or passport. That number might be even higher, given the large concentration of college students in the district—more than 60,000, about a third of whom are from out of state. And there are around 180,000 married women in the district, many of whom have photo IDs that don’t match their birth certificates.
Roughly 100,000 households in VA-05 earn less than $50K a year; they’re three times less likely to have a passport than higher earners are. It costs $17 to get a copy of your birth certificate in person, and more if you want it mailed in 2 to 4 weeks. $53 if you need it faster than that. Shades of Jim Crow poll taxes.
That’s not to mention the burden for people in rural areas. A would-be voter in Bachelors Hall, for example, will have to register in Chatham, an hour’s drive round-trip.
Knowing all this, Congressman McGuire, would you still say it’s a no-brainer?
There’s zero evidence that voting by non-citizens is anything more than a rounding error in elections. But even Republicans are starting to drop the pretense that this is anything other than an attempt to stave off defeat in November and an excuse to intimidate Democratic voters by stationing armed federal agents outside polling places. As Trump put it: “If we don't pass the SAVE Act, we'll lose the midterms and lose the country forever.”
Here’s hoping.
—Boot
Maybe the only way he can get re-elected is by picking his voters. Based on his miniscule accomplishments and the *waves at everything* why would they re-elect a smarmy pedo protector?