https://newrepublic.com/article/186160/republican-war-women-extends-voting-rights
How the #Republican War on #Women Extends to #Voting #Rights
Most women vote #Democratic. And most still change their name when they marry. And that’s where the GOP sees an Achilles’ heel.
...Not only will illegal voting get you years in prison, but it’s one of the most easily discovered crimes. Sean Morales-Doyle, a lawyer for the Brennan Center, laid it out: “This is a crime where not only are the consequences really high and the payoff really low—you’re not getting millions of dollars, it’s not robbing a bank, you [just] get to cast one ballot. But what also makes this somewhat unique is that committing this crime actually entails the creation of a government record of your crime.”
So why is this the hill Republicans are willing to die on? Why would Johnson, Trump, and Vance (and so many other Republicans) put so much effort into a lie that will, if acted on, create chaos for American voters?
...
The SAVE Act is a proposed federal law, so, first off, it would put a future president (say, Trump) in charge of enforcing it, taking that power away from the states. Millions of voter registrations in any states the president decides are problematic could be removed until those voters “cure” their registrations, and state authorities would have no say in it.
And what will the law require citizens who want to vote do? Lacking a passport or other proof of citizenship with their married names, they must produce both a birth certificate (with the seal of the state where it was issued; no copies allowed) and a current form of identification—both with the exact same name on them. That could instantly disqualify about 90 percent of all married women without passports or other proof that matches their birth certificates or proof of a legal name change.
For women in that situation, they can still register to vote if they can prove that they went to court to change their name when they got married, but most women just start using their new married name without ever going through all those formalities (although a few states recognize marriage as a legal name change).
As a result, as the National Organization for Women details in a report on how Republican voter suppression efforts harm women:
Voter ID laws have a disproportionately negative effect on women. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, one third of all women have citizenship documents that do not identically match their current names primarily because of name changes at marriage. Roughly 90 percent of women who marry adopt their husband’s last name.
That means that roughly 90 percent of married female voters have a different name on their ID than the one on their birth certificate. An estimated 34 percent of women could be turned away from the polls unless they have precisely the right documents."...
