1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

It is time to take a step back and stop creating policy and legislation based on conspiracy theories. DJT’s MAGA movement would like you to believe that US elections (particularly the ones MAGA loses) are regularly hijacked by massive voter fraud including illegal voting by non-citizens. Enter the SAVE act! First of all, I don’t think very many people would argue that showing ID at the polls is a bad idea. In fact, in my roughly 15 years of voting eligibility, I have never been able to cast a ballot without first showing my ID. Furthermore, research and audits by parties spanning the partisan spectrum have not uncovered any evidence of significant voter fraud of any kind. Not a single MAGA lawsuit alleging election interference or fraud has held up in court. No MAGA politician or pundit has been able to cite any specific verified instance of such fraud. In fact, the occurrence of non-citizen voting, as verified by well-respected conservative think tanks, is so minuscule as to be non-existent. In other words, I could claim that the city of Portland is being run by a cabal of vampires from a secret lair beneath the city’s largest cemetery, and I would have just as much credibility as the MAGA election fraud claims… This means that the SAVE act is unnecessary in the first place (and likely just another distraction from the Epstein files and the fact that MAGA is continuing to destroy this country from within). More importantly, in addition to not solving any actual problems, this law would disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters on both sides of the aisle. Passports are expensive and time-consuming to obtain, so as others have pointed out before me, this amounts to a modern poll tax, which is in fact illegal. Also, the name matching requirements in the bill seem particularly hypocritical given the Republican stance on traditional marriage. On the one hand you tell women to respect their husbands by taking their last name, yet with the other hand you plan to take away their right to vote for the same reason unless they jump through a half dozen administrative hoops. And I could go on… The problem is that, like so many other partisan quick fixes, this legislation, while maybe saving a few Republican seats in the upcoming mid-term elections, will have profound implications across the partisan spectrum for years to come. If Republicans are so worried about their chances in the upcoming mid-terms, maybe they should focus instead on actually keeping their promises from last election… I hope you will reflect on the true nature of this bill and ultimately choose to reject it. Voting rights are at the core of our democracy, and taking that right away from millions of legitimate citizens is never the right answer!