Politics

Voting rights and pro-democracy advocates are in a precarious position. If they speak loudly and frankly about Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s plans to suppress, manipulate, or outright “steal” the upcoming midterm election, they risk depressing the very people who must be counted on to show up and vote. They risk making people feel like their votes will not matter because “the fix is already in.” They get called a “doomer” by Pollyanna Democrats on social media, and “hysterical” by Republicans. And since the single best solution to the threat of voter suppression is overwhelming turnout, depression and doom, even in the name of truth, ends up helping Trump’s forces.

But: to ignore the threat posed by Trump, to pretend like everything is going to be okay, to assume that upstanding members of the courts will rise to prevent the theft of the election is to stick your head in the sand. Trump and the Republicans have no intention of letting the upcoming midterms (in which Republicans are predicted to lose control of the House) proceed fairly. They’re attacking the election through legislative, law-enforcement, and political means.

The most obvious threat is the legislation Republicans keep introducing. Republicans in the House have already passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act). The bill radically reshapes the voter registration process by essentially repealing the Motor Voter Act. Instead of allowing people to register with a driver’s license, the SAVE Act requires them to show additional identification, like a passport or a birth certificate, in order to register. The Economic Times estimates that at least 21 million eligible voters may not be able to provide this extra information. The people most likely to struggle with the new requirements are the usual suspects—people of color, young people, and poor people—but there’s an additional group that could easily be prevented from voting should this bill become a law: married women who have changed their name. Those women likely do not have a birth certificate with their new marital name, and if they also don’t have an updated passport with their married name, they could be denied their right to vote.