SAVE Us From the SAVE Act

The Witness Chronicles, 3/18/26

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

This is another Trump scheme that will backfire on him

In my last post I mused about a likely effect of the SAVE America Act if it is passed, which looks extremely unlikely, in part because those supporting it have ignored reality. Nothing new there.

The Act would, if passed, require proof of American citizenship, in the form of a birth certificate+REAL ID or a passport, to vote. The birth certificate must be an official stamped document from a county recorder. When I got mine years ago it was forty dollars but it has undoubtedly gone up. The passport must be current, not expired. They cost $160. As many as 50% of Americans do not have either and I suspect that number is much higher.

To make things worse, if you are a married woman who took your husband’s last name, your documents may not have been updated, which costs more, and your maiden name will not be accepted. If you look at the entire Act it is obvious it was written to virtually eliminate women in general from voting.

This law was created for one purpose, to discourage people from voting, especially Democrats, minorities, and women. The ostensible reason is to stop voting by illegal aliens. There are two flaws to that fear. First, it doesn’t exist. The actual incidences in twenty years of elections, nearly one billion votes cast, are somewhere around twenty. Statistically zero.

When you think about it, if you are illegal why would you risk getting caught committing a felony just to add one vote? It defies logic. But there are a few other things that defy logic.

Bear in mind that the law as written must be applied equally regardless of party affiliation. Anything else would be instantly thrown out by the courts. So the law would apply to Trump voters too and their demographics probably indicate that more of them would be unlikely to have those documents. So the law could cut into the Republican Party’s voter base.

There is another more subtle effect of the dialog being used to push this bill. Trump’s rhetoric centers on the unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud that will result in a corrupt midterm election. He is a broken record on voter fraud despite there being little to no evidence that it takes place, basically zero, again.

This message would likely backfire with his voters in another way he did not anticipate. Turnout for midterms is historically low. Without Trump on the ballot there is an enthusiasm problem on the right. Poll analyst Amy Walters of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walters, a DC insider report that collects polling results, speculated that if Trump voters think the election is corrupt they won’t bother to vote.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the logic here but somehow it seems to have slipped by the President, a not uncommon situation. His malignant narcissism does not allow him to change his mind even when confronted with a reality that doesn’t fit his own. That would require him admitting he was wrong, which he cannot do.

This logic also tells us something about the cult of Trump he surrounds himself with. They can follow logic like anyone else but they know they cannot make these cases to the President or face losing his favor and facing his retribution.

The law appears to be going nowhere despite his constant demands that the Congress eliminate the filibuster to pass it with a one vote majority instead of a majority of 60%. That will not happen because Republican congress members can read the writing on the wall and know they are increasingly likely to lose both majorities in November. Canceling the filibuster would give enormous power to the new Democratic Congress.

They can’t risk that.

I want to say that it is a relief to write about a positive situation in DC. I ingest a lot of news, digest it and write my take on what I think is going on. I am not a journalist, I am an observer with an opinion, so I encourage my readers to think for themselves, unlike the cult of Trump where such free thinking is verboten.

Human beings have an odd thing we often do. When told not to do something we do it. It’s a particularly American thing. After all, our country started with something called a Revolution, the American Revolution. This year marks the 250th anniversary of that uprising against tyranny, a revolution that literally changed the world. Naturally the Trump regime wants to celebrate this amazing accomplishment with totalitarian monuments and military parades designed to stroke his ego.

My attitude is to let him. They just reveal a shallow man with no reverence for a system that made his life possible. He just wants empty pomp and circumstance, gold plating our history. But he has reached a point in his time in office where the American people are realizing he thinks we are stooges, rubes to be bilked out of whatever he can get. But his arrogance is blinding him to reality.

The only way he can retain any power is to corrupt the election. His war is not working. Those files that might reveal terrible things about him and many powerful men are not going away. The economy sucks and everything he does seems designed to make it worse, if you are not extremely wealthy. Etc.,etc.

I have a sense of things turning against him and that he shares that sense. You can see it in his inconsistency, veering from stating one absolute, we won, to a vague next step, but maybe this keeps going. He is winging it and not pulling it off. The SAVE Act is dead on arrival and even if they find some way to pass it, it’s likely to hurt Republicans as much or more as it hits Dems.

It’s not a get out of jail free card. Trump sees lame duck status ahead and a legacy of being the worst President in history, something he seems to actually care about, despite his actions. I have news for you, Don, we are going to erase your name from all your places, and erase your legacy and tell the truth to the future.

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