The SAFE Act is Dangerous

Republicans are actively marginalizing women, and they’re not even trying to hide it.

Did you see how their “SAFE Act” passed the House? Otherwise known as the Screwing All Females Effectively Act, the bill contains nefarious provisions meant to look like they’re solving the non-existent voter fraud issue but are actually erecting barriers between probable Democrats and the voting booth. One part is removing the vote from married women who have changed their names. (Or anyone who has changed their names for any other reason, which is one more way they can stick it to the Trans community.)

The requirement is that one must prove their citizenship by providing a birth certificate, which matches enrollment information exactly. Obviously, that jams up anyone who went from Jane Smith to Mrs. Jane Jones. To solve this self-made crisis, the alternative is to provide a valid passport. That leaves literally millions of women without the opportunity to vote, short of a costly and time-consuming effort to acquire duplicate official documents (from a government that is shutting down agencies right and left). This is an obvious attempt to deter women from voting (who may be livid over their eroding reproduction rights or other professional diminishment):

Now, the contents of this bill have been public for months. Republicans and Democrats know what’s in it and what it does. Still, there were no substantial changes made to it before passing the House. That means this is not just some oversight or mistake. One major party wants to slash the number of women voting. There is no other logical (non-head-up-Fox’s-ass) way to interpret this. And I’m apoplectic that there were four Democrats who went along with the bill, who must have been bought off, threatened, or horse-traded into compliance.

And unless the Senate makes a change, they’ll be in on it too. So, like I said, this “side-effect” is no accident. They mean this, and they want it bad.

To overcome a filibuster, they will need seven Democrats to accept this bill. I just hope that’s a bridge too far, but I’ll never discount the lengths the Republicans will go to consolidate their own power.

This should be a front-page story in every newspaper, and so far, it’s barely made a blip, thanks to the new chumminess between mainstream media and the administration. No one seems to care.

This needs to go full Red Alert, with pressure brought to bear on the Senate. Otherwise, this is yet one more way the Republicans are rigging the next election. I’ve been pointing it out for the last couple of posts now. They wouldn’t be engaging in such unpopular actions if they were worried about being voted out in 2-4 years. 

But they’re not, they’re dismantling Social Security, killing weather research and storm reporting by defunding NOAA, spiking prices of goods and services, picking up brown people on sight and sending them to foreign prisons, killing caps on insulin and bank fees, and other malevolent actions that make an average citizen’s life worse and more costly. Usually, the threat of getting voted out prevents the most egregious things, but not this time. They are unconcerned about more elections because they know that if the deck isn’t sufficiently stacked for them, there won’t be any more elections.

I hate being such a naysayer, but you can see the results for yourself. These aren’t normal times, and they call for a heightened response. All those Hands Off protests were a good start, but we need to be more forceful in reminding these pols that they work for US, not the other way around.

At least they used to pretend to, anyway.