Your Papers Please!

Maybe one day in the future you will hear that when you vote. The Republicans have introduced a bill to require proof of citizenship when you vote.

You might as the majority of the people here in the U.S. think no big problem. But if you happen to be a minority it becomes a problem.

1 in 10 eligible U.S. voters say they can’t easily show proof of their citizenship
NPR
By Hansi Lo Wang
June 11, 2024



Top Republicans are lining up behind a proposal to require proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration in federal elections. But for millions of U.S. citizens, it’s not easy to prove their citizenship with a document.

About 1 in 10 adult citizens, or 21.3 million eligible voters, say they either do not have or could not quickly find in order to show the next day their U.S. birth certificate, passport, naturalization certificate or certificate of citizenship, according to results released Tuesday from a national survey.

The new findings, shared first with NPR, also show disparities by race, ethnicity and political affiliation.

As a trans woman I’ve read a number of articles about trans people being challenged when they vote, and it is in the back of my mind when I go and vote. Especially now with MAGA Republicans as election checkers.

The results fall in line with longstanding concerns among many election experts and voting rights advocates, who have warned that proposals — including the new Republican-backed bill in the U.S. House of Representatives — to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when signing up to vote in federal elections could risk keeping eligible voters from casting ballots.

But hey that is exactly what the Republicans want because most of those voters are Democrats.

“We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it's not been something that is easily provable. We don't have that number,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, at a press conference about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.

Translated from Republican Doublespeak meaning “We can't prove it but our voters believe it.”

Ever wonder why the Republicans gerrymander districts, restrict voting hours, try to ban or make it harder to get absentee ballots, and now voter IDs? They are so insecure that they might lose that they are rigging the system. Lying about voter fraud making the voters feel inscure. They are using PSYOP that was developed during WWII.

“I think that the broader story that we see here is the idea that what for many Americans doesn't seem like that big of an issue — demonstrating that you're a citizen — for some Americans is actually enough of a hurdle to make voting just inaccessible,” Fraga [Bernard Fraga, an associate professor of political science at Emory University] says.

[…]

Kunis, VoteRiders’ executive director, says her organization has helped eligible voters overcome a range of barriers to obtaining citizenship documents. They may be stored inside a bank’s safe deposit box or tucked away at a family member’s home in another town or state. Some people may need support navigating a “bureaucratic doom loop” when trying to replace faded certificates, Kunis adds.

And for more than 3.8 million adult citizens, or about 2% of eligible voters, there’s no document to find at all, according to the survey’s estimates. That includes birth certificates.

“Older Americans and Black Americans, particularly in the South, are more likely to have been born outside of a hospital setting, meaning they didn't receive a birth certificate automatically,” Kunis points out.

And how does that demographics tend to vote? Democratic.

And this is the whole target of the voter suppression, the minority voter, lower income, and us. Us, because in many states we cannot change our birth certificates! There are also a few states may require in-person pickup for certain circumstances which makes harder for people working multiply jobs in order to survive.

Here in Connecticut what a huge incident of voter fraud. But you know what? The system caught it! They had a special election and the person who did it is doing time.