Washington (AP) – The house has exceeded one of the Republicans’ signature problems For the year Thursday, approving legislation to demand proof of American citizenship when registering to vote for the federal elections, one of the main priorities related to the elections of President Donald Trump.
Almost all of the Democrats aligned themselves against the bill and warned that this was likely to deprive millions of Americans who do not have access to the appropriate documents.
Trump has long pointed out the desire to change the way the elections are managed in the United States and last month A radical executive decree which included a demand for citizenship among Other changes related to the elections.
The Republicans argued that the legislation, known as Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, is necessary to guarantee that only citizens vote in the American elections and cited Trump’s order place.
US representative Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Chamber Committee, who takes care of electoral legislation, said Thursday’s debate that the bill is intended to “restore the confidence of the Americans in our elections” and prevent non-citizens from voting.
This marks the Republicans second attempt passing The act of safeguard. He adopted the Chamber last year but failed in the Senate in the midst of the democratic opposition.
It is unlikely to get better this year. While the Republicans gained control of the Senate last fall, they have a narrow majority which does not become again from the 60 votes they would need to overcome an obstacle.
Republicans hammered on the issue During last year presidential electionEven if voting by non-citizens is rareis already illegal and can lead to crime accusations and expulsion.
The act of safeguard All candidates should use the registration form for federal voters provide documentary evidence of citizenship in person in their local electoral office. Among the acceptable documents are a valid American passport and a photo identity card issued by the government presented alongside a certified birth certificate.
Democrats and voting rights groups warn that legislation could lead to a generalized privilege of voters if it were to become law. The Brennan Center for Justice and other groups estimated in a 2023 report according to which 9% of American citizens of the voting age, or 21.3 million people, have no proof that their citizenship is easily available. Almost half of Americans have no American passport.
In Kansas, a requirement for proof of citizenship that succeeded in 2011 found itself block voter inscriptions of more than 31,000 American citizens in the state that were otherwise eligible to vote. The law was then declared unconstitutional by a federal court and has not been applied since 2018.
“Just to exercise their inalienable law as citizens of this country, the Republicans would force the Americans to a paperwork of paperwork,” said representative Joe Morelle, Democrat in New York. “This bill really concerns Americans deprived of their rights – not non -citizens, Americans.”
Another concern appeared several times on Thursday: married women would need several documents to prove their citizenship if they had changed their names.
It was a complication that was born Town hall elections Held last month in New Hampshire, which applied a new state law demanding proof of citizenship to register. A woman, since divorced, told a registrar of the local elections that his first marriage was decades ago in Florida and that she no longer had the marriage certificate showing her name change. She could not register and vote for the elections of her city.
“This legislation would immediately deprive the 69 million women who changed their name after marriage or divorce,” said representative Deborah Ross, a democrat of North Carolina.
Representative Laurel Lee, a Florida republican, said that the bill “envisages this exact situation” of married women whose names have changed, affirming that it “orders explicitly to the States to establish a process so that they register to vote”.
MORELLE ATE BY SAYS: “Why not write it in the bill?” Why do we make the potential of 50 different standards to be fixed?
During a call with journalists on Thursday, the Secretary of State of Vermont Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Democrat, said that she had started trying to bring together her own personal documents which would be required under the bill around 10 days ago. She has not yet had them together despite more time and know-how than many other people.
“This pushes women out of the democratic process,” she said about the requirement of documentation. “And it is not a coincidence. This is part of a strategy to make the vote more difficult, sow the distrust of our elections. ”
Democrats also said that the bill would disproportionately affect the elderly in assisted care establishments, members of the military service who are unable to use only their military identifiers, their people of color and the Americans of the working class who may not have time or money to jump through bureaucratic hoops.
“The Save Act is all that our civil rights leaders have fought,” said representative Nikema Williams, Democrat of Georgia.
Republicans defended legislation as necessary to restore public confidence in the elections and affirm that it allows states to adopt procedures to help voters comply. They challenged the democratic characterizations of the bill.
Four Democrats voted for legislation: representatives of the Hawaii case, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden from Maine and Marie Perez de Washington.
“The truth is that those who have been registered to vote could still vote under their current inscription,” said Chip Roy representative, a Texas Republican who sponsored the bill. “We have mechanisms giving the state a fairly significant deference to take determinations on how to structure the situation where an individual has a name change, which is of course women.”
Roy Thursday said Cleta MitchellA key figure in Trump’s campaign to reverse the results of the 2020 elections, “had an important hand in what we are doing here.” Mitchell, a longtime lawyer for the GOP, played a central role in the coordination of the movement to tighten voting laws across the country.
Trump lost the 2020 elections against Democrat Joe Biden but has done several times the false complaint that he was stolen from him. There is no evidence in support of Trump’s claim: elections officials and his own attorney general rejected the concept, and his arguments were strongly rejected by the courts, including the judges he appointed.
Adrian Fontes, a democrat who is the highest electoral official in the state of Arizona, described the voting proposal as a solution in search of a problem, given the rare that non -citizen voting.
“What he does is to capitalize on fear – fear built on a lie,” said Fontes. “And the lie is that a whole bunch of people who are not eligible vote. This is simply not true.”
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Cassidy reported to Atlanta, Fernando de Chicago. The writer Associated Press Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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