Congressional Republicans pushed through a bill on Thursday that could hinder voting rights across the nation, according to a Democracy Docket analysis.
“For over a century and a half, the U.S. government has largely acted as a force to protect and expand voting rights — often in opposition to efforts by state or local officials to limit them. Until now, neither house of Congress had ever passed legislation to significantly restrict access to the ballot,” the analysis stated.
“There’s never been an attack on voting rights out of Congress like this,” Alexander Keyssar, a professor of History and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a leading historian of voting rights, told Democracy Docket. “It’s always been the federal government trying to keep states in check on voting rights, for the most part.”
Advocates for voting-rights and democratic leaders believed the SAVE Act — that would require photo identification to vote, among other things — could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.
“When you’re potentially disenfranchising tens of millions of people, you’re obviously talking about people of all parties and all walks of life in every part of the country,” Sean Wilentz told the Docket. The professor of American History at Princeton University added, “If this becomes law, it will be a new low for Congress.”
Voting rights access has been a top issue on the Republican side of the aisle because they believe it can lead to voter fraud.
The SAVE Act would likely be shot down in the Supreme Court because states have the right to oversee voting, experts said.
“Where once the federal government operated — albeit often imperfectly — as a defender of access to the ballot and an ally of marginalized groups at risk of disenfranchisement, today it plays the opposite role,” the writers stated.
“It’s the most extraordinary attack on voting rights in American history,” Wilentz said. “This is an attempt to destroy American democracy as we know it.”