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.
While voting rights advocates said Trump does not have the power to take such steps, lawyers also question whether the SAVE America Act, should the Senate pass it, would stand up to judicial scrutiny. While Congress has the power to change voting rules for federal elections, the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to vote and advocates say some groups would challenge in court what they consider would be an undue burden on registering to vote.
Passing the SAVE America Act, which would take effect immediately, as the midterms season is underway would cause chaos and could keep some voters from going to the polls, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program.
“I do think that’s the point of all this,” Morales-Doyle said. “I think the goal of that ultimately is to put us in a place to put the results in question and undermine the public’s faith in elections and question the democratic process That might end up deterring people from participating.”
If enacted, the bill would make a number of significant changes in New Jersey. People would need to produce a birth certificate, passport or other proof of citizenship when registering to vote and when changing a registration after moving to a new address, for instance. A registered voter’s signature is used as identification to vote now in the state, but the bill would require people to show a driver’s license or other approved form of ID in order to vote. It’s likely that all new registrations or updates would have to be done in person at the county elections office, and not online or at a motor vehicles office, which are the most common methods used today.
The bill also would require states to provide their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security to be run through its citizenship verification tool, which voting rights lawyers say is faulty.
New Jersey’s congressional delegation voted along party on the SAVE America Act, with Republicans supporting it and Democrats in opposition.
Last week, the Department of Justice sued New Jersey and four other states seeking to force them to turn over their voter databases, including social security and driver’s license numbers. It was the justice department’s most recent attempt to get this information from states. In a press release, the DOJ said it needs this information to ensure proper maintenance of voter rolls and election security. The state has vowed to fight the request, calling it an overreach. Federal judges so far have dismissed similar DOJ suits seeking voter rolls from California, Oregon and Michigan.
Liza Weisberg, a supervising attorney with ACLU of New Jersey, said the sum total of the changes the SAVE America Act would put in place and the potential for federally-dictated voter roll purges would wind up impacting local and state elections, as well as federal ones.
“It would, in practice, upend state voter registration processes and block millions of eligible voters from participating in the political process,” she said. “All in all, it’s a dangerous and unlawful assault on democracy.”
Nuzhat Chowdhury, director of the Democracy and Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, called the proposed changes “unprecedented and escalating attacks on our democracy.” She called on the Legislature to pass both the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act and a law permitting same day voter registration as a way to give New Jerseyans the greatest protections.
That bill would create a preclearance process when some communities might seek to change their electoral process, require polling assistance in other languages and set up a state voting rights office to oversee the implementation and enforcement of voting rules. It passed an Assembly committee last month. Republicans say it’s not necessary and county election officials also oppose the bill.
In the meantime, Chowdhury and other civil rights groups say people should ignore the misinformation, make sure they are registered and make a plan to vote in person or by mail.
“Your vote will be protected,” Chowdhury said. “Right now, none of these threats have been enacted. Don’t give in to the baseless fearmongering — you can and should vote as you always do. Remember, your vote matters. If it didn’t, certain people wouldn’t work so hard to try to take it away.”
Meanwhile, the state attorney general’s office continues its defense against a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee seeking documents related to voter roll maintenance. Last month, the state filed a motion seeking to dismiss the suit, saying the state Division of Elections provided information federal law required it to give but the RNC’s request went beyond that.
Last week, a state Superior Court judge dismissed a similar lawsuit, saying state elections officials did not have the documents sought.
