Jim Crow Redux: The “SAVE America” Act Is a Poll Tax, Plain and Simple

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and MAGA Republicans in and out of Congress are putting on a full court press to get Senate Majority Leader John Thune to blow up the Senate’s filibuster rule to jam through their SAVE America Act, which they regularly talk about as a “Voter ID bill,” one to stop the voter fraud they claim, with straight faces, is rampant when even Trump’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, can find only trace elements of non-citizens voting or others committing voter fraud.

It is all lies, perpetrated to force a nationalization of elections and massive voter suppression, pushed now in the face of plummeting support for Trump and his party in the country and among voters. The core of the bill, requiring voters to prove their citizenship, is both a massive hurdle and a major poll tax. Under the bill, all registered voters would be required to go to a voting registrar in person to re-register, providing proof of citizenship. For those in 45 states, a Real ID will not suffice; voters would need a passport, passport card, or certified birth certificate (not a copy). For married women who had changed their names, many more hoops including a marriage certificate and other proof of the legitimacy of their name.

Half of Americans do not have passports; getting one costs at least $165, plus photos, and requires … a birth certificate or certificate of naturalization. A passport card, with the same requirements, costs $65 plus photos. Marco Rubio’s State Department has cut the Passport Office in half and removed the ability of people to submit applications for a passport to local libraries, meaning physically going to an official office, which for many would mean traveling hundreds of miles.

Many millions of Americans have no idea where their birth certificates are or have one that will not suffice under this bill; getting an official one, which is not always easy, can cost up to $80 or $100.

A core element of the Jim Crow laws in Southern states to block Blacks from voting was a poll tax, used from the 1890s to the 1960s. It was outlawed for federal elections by the 24th Amendment in 1964, and by the Supreme Court for state and local elections two years later. The SAVE America act is a modern poll tax, plain and simple, and is flatly unconstitutional.

That is bad enough. But the current version of the bill is far worse. It requires all states to turn over all voter rolls, containing sensitive information, to the Department of Homeland Security—something even deep-red Idaho, when asked to volunteer the data, refused. And states would be required to use a voter purge system created by DOGE, relying on Social Security System data, that has been shown to be unreliable and biased. This is the same DOGE, by the way, that made off with the most sensitive Social Security information for hundreds of millions and tried to share it with a private company. With an error rate estimated at 14 percent or more, this program would require states to disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters.

If Republicans really just wanted voter ID, there is a simple way to get there. Have a bipartisan bill requiring a photo ID to vote—while allowing the use of state-issued student IDs, and giving Americans who lack an ID a free passport card. But that is not what Republicans want—the voter ID part is a Trojan Horse, taking a popular idea as a subterfuge to pass an unprecedented national power grab of elections from the states that have run them for well over 200 years, in order to cement Republicans in power, no matter how unpopular they are.

For John Thune, knowing the long-term consequences of breaking his solemn promise to preserve the filibuster, and knowing that a large share of his Republican colleagues have privately told him to hold the line, the strategy of bringing the bill up and trying to get everybody talking about it is not going to prevail. Musk and a good share of the right, egged on by radicals like Mike Lee, will put relentless pressure on those senators they see as unwilling to blow up the rules, and Trump will likely go after them relentlessly as well on Truth Social, attacking them by name. Someone may well post their home addresses, and we know that will be followed by threats of violence or death against them and their families. This is what a cult does.

Of course, that might still not be enough. And if not, we know the fallback strategy: include this voter suppression measure in the next reconciliation bill. That would be a direct violation of the law and the rules, since the SAVE America act has nothing to do with the budget, unless you consider the unconstitutional poll tax as a revenue measure. No doubt the parliamentarian would reject this, but in a variation of the so-called nuclear option, there could be an appeal of the ruling of the chair, which only takes a simple majority to prevail. And even though it would be a violation, the odds that the courts would intervene are slim to none.

So those who believe in free and fair elections, and who understand the devastating applications of implementing this bill without amendments, need to mobilize and be prepared to mitigate the impact. That starts with lawsuits against the requirement for states to share their voter data with DHS. It means a challenge to the requirement to provide a passport or birth certificate, or for married women who changed their names to find and pay for their marriage certificates as an unconstitutional poll tax.

If that fails, blue states at least should guarantee voters that they will provide official birth certificates at no charge. It means Democrats need to use the communications tools at their disposal, along with every ability to block other actions in the Senate, to point out how anti-democratic, unconstitutional, and autocratic this horrific measure is. And we need every group that believes in free and fair elections to do everything they can to help voters overcome these horrible obstacles.