It has come to our attention that multiple people were killed by bears in the United States last year. That we know of; there are far more missing people who might conceivably have also been killed by bears. We can safely assume, in fact, that many people are being killed by bears every year. We just don’t know how many.
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As such, legislators are considering a new law requiring that every window and door in the United States be fully secured against bears. This will be an encumbrance and may make it so that some people lose access to their homes. But probably not very many, and most of them will probably be people you don’t really like anyway.
Anyone voting against this law, incidentally, should be considered a traitor who is subject to execution.
Oh, sorry. Not this law. Another one that, in scope and effect, broadly mirrors our anti-bear legislation. It’s the Save Act, more fully identified as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. A product of the right-most edge of the House Republican conference, the Save Act would mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Like our anti-bear law, it would make Americans’ lives more difficult in service of addressing a problem that is not demonstrably significant.
There’s a reason this is emerging now. Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) agreed this year to address the purported flood of noncitizen voters — even though noncitizens are already barred by law from voting in federal elections. But “elections are subject to fraud” is one of the most important falsehoods in Trump’s rhetorical arsenal, followed closely by “immigrants are a danger to the U.S.” This idea that immigrants are illegally influencing elections, then, is simply too perfect not to embrace.
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That’s particularly true because it overlaps with the increasingly normalized claim within America’s political right that there is a deliberate effort underway to flood the country with immigrants who will vote Democratic. This is, in essence, the “great replacement” theory, an idea transmitted from the racist fringe into the mainstream by Tucker Carlson and, later, prominent Republican officials. In promoting the Save Act, Johnson specifically used great-replacement verbiage.
“Why are Democrats so adamantly against ensuring only American citizens vote in our elections?” he wrote on the social media platform X. “They want to turn illegal aliens into voters. We must pass the SAVE Act to prevent this.”
Elon Musk, the owner of X, quoted Johnson’s post to claim, “The goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible.” This was a step down in temperature from his declaration on the day after Independence Day, endorsing the Save Act.
“Those who oppose this are traitors. All Caps: TRAITORS,” Musk wrote. “What is the penalty for traitors again?”
The penalty is death.
So why not simply pass the bill? What’s the downside? Well, it’s the same downside as we see with our anti-bear legislation.
First, there’s no evidence that noncitizen voting is a significant problem, much less a regular occurrence. The Heritage Foundation, which has for years been adamantly promoting the idea that voter fraud is rampant, has a database of demonstrated fraud. It includes fewer than 100 cases of noncitizen voting or voter registrations since 2002 — a period during which more than 678 million votes were cast in presidential elections alone.
Johnson said this during a news conference earlier this year. Asked how common such voting was, he demurred.
“The answer is that it’s unanswerable,” he said, adding that “that is the problem.” But, he insisted, “we all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”
We all know intuitively, too, that bear-related deaths are rampant.
There isn’t a demonstrable problem that the legislation would address. There are state-level safeguards against noncitizen voter registration and, as the White House pointed out in announcing that it opposed the bill, there are robust penalties that apply in the event that a noncitizen casts a ballot. Among them: deportation and a permanent ban on admission. All for the upside of casting one ballot.
What the Save Act would do, though, is make it harder for citizens to vote. This is a central reason the League of Women Voters opposes the legislation. Require people to have documentation when they register to vote, and people without that documentation won’t register — even if they’re otherwise allowed to. Who are those people? Research published in January found that those without a valid driver’s license are more likely to be young as well as non-White. They are often, in other words, people who lean Democratic.
Win-win-win. Demonize immigrants, amplify the idea that elections are riddled with fraud and make it harder for people who vote Democratic to vote. The Save Act is a neat little package of Republican interests.
A good segue into mentioning that the anti-bear legislation is sponsored by Bearproof Doors Inc.
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As such, legislators are considering a new law requiring that every window and door in the United States be fully secured against bears. This will be an encumbrance and may make it so that some people lose access to their homes. But probably not very many, and most of them will probably be people you don’t really like anyway.
Anyone voting against this law, incidentally, should be considered a traitor who is subject to execution.
Oh, sorry. Not this law. Another one that, in scope and effect, broadly mirrors our anti-bear legislation. It’s the Save Act, more fully identified as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. A product of the right-most edge of the House Republican conference, the Save Act would mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Like our anti-bear law, it would make Americans’ lives more difficult in service of addressing a problem that is not demonstrably significant.
There’s a reason this is emerging now. Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) agreed this year to address the purported flood of noncitizen voters — even though noncitizens are already barred by law from voting in federal elections. But “elections are subject to fraud” is one of the most important falsehoods in Trump’s rhetorical arsenal, followed closely by “immigrants are a danger to the U.S.” This idea that immigrants are illegally influencing elections, then, is simply too perfect not to embrace.
🏛️
Follow Politics
That’s particularly true because it overlaps with the increasingly normalized claim within America’s political right that there is a deliberate effort underway to flood the country with immigrants who will vote Democratic. This is, in essence, the “great replacement” theory, an idea transmitted from the racist fringe into the mainstream by Tucker Carlson and, later, prominent Republican officials. In promoting the Save Act, Johnson specifically used great-replacement verbiage.
“Why are Democrats so adamantly against ensuring only American citizens vote in our elections?” he wrote on the social media platform X. “They want to turn illegal aliens into voters. We must pass the SAVE Act to prevent this.”
Elon Musk, the owner of X, quoted Johnson’s post to claim, “The goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible.” This was a step down in temperature from his declaration on the day after Independence Day, endorsing the Save Act.
“Those who oppose this are traitors. All Caps: TRAITORS,” Musk wrote. “What is the penalty for traitors again?”
The penalty is death.
So why not simply pass the bill? What’s the downside? Well, it’s the same downside as we see with our anti-bear legislation.
First, there’s no evidence that noncitizen voting is a significant problem, much less a regular occurrence. The Heritage Foundation, which has for years been adamantly promoting the idea that voter fraud is rampant, has a database of demonstrated fraud. It includes fewer than 100 cases of noncitizen voting or voter registrations since 2002 — a period during which more than 678 million votes were cast in presidential elections alone.
Johnson said this during a news conference earlier this year. Asked how common such voting was, he demurred.
“The answer is that it’s unanswerable,” he said, adding that “that is the problem.” But, he insisted, “we all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”
We all know intuitively, too, that bear-related deaths are rampant.
There isn’t a demonstrable problem that the legislation would address. There are state-level safeguards against noncitizen voter registration and, as the White House pointed out in announcing that it opposed the bill, there are robust penalties that apply in the event that a noncitizen casts a ballot. Among them: deportation and a permanent ban on admission. All for the upside of casting one ballot.
What the Save Act would do, though, is make it harder for citizens to vote. This is a central reason the League of Women Voters opposes the legislation. Require people to have documentation when they register to vote, and people without that documentation won’t register — even if they’re otherwise allowed to. Who are those people? Research published in January found that those without a valid driver’s license are more likely to be young as well as non-White. They are often, in other words, people who lean Democratic.
Win-win-win. Demonize immigrants, amplify the idea that elections are riddled with fraud and make it harder for people who vote Democratic to vote. The Save Act is a neat little package of Republican interests.
A good segue into mentioning that the anti-bear legislation is sponsored by Bearproof Doors Inc.
