Our senators Marshall & Moran are cosponsors of the so-called SAVE act, legislation introduced to solve an election problem that does not exist and which imposes huge additional expenses upon the states with no federal funding.

Every state that has investigated this so-called problem, including Kansas, has not found non-citizens voting. The most recent state to do so was Utah and they found one possible out of 2 million votes cast! There are numerous problems with the act’s requirements, including the fact that 69 million married women in the United States have a birth certificate that doesn’t reflect their present name and thus would prevent them from registering to vote without meeting onerous requirements. And it requires a photo ID to vote that is more restrictive than any present state law, including Kansas. And it requires reregistration if you move across the street. And it requires the purging of voting rolls every 30 days. And it basically does away with mail-in voting. And this law only applies to the federal elections, thus creating confusion at polling places with the different ballots for the state elections and the different requirements for the ability to vote.

But the real problems are much scarier. The bill requires all states to deliver their voting rolls to the Department of Homeland Security. Proposed DHS secretary Mullin (nominated to replace the disgraced Noem) at his committee hearing refused to commit that ICE agents would not be patrolling polling places. (Moran & Marshall are both supporting Mullin, who has no experience in national security, immigration, or emergency management.) Even worse, the law gives any private citizen the right to sue if they feel that the law is not properly enforced. That means they could sue if their state in refuses to give DHS their voter rolls – which lawsuit would throw the election into chaos. But the sleeper is what if a private citizen sues saying that their state allowed people to vote when they originally registered to vote without meeting the requirements of the law? I don’t think these lawsuits would eventually win, but the election results would be tied up in court for years.

Senators Marshall & Moran & representatives Mann, Schmidt & Estes aren’t concerned about immigrants voting, they are terrified about incurring the wrath of Trump and are obeying his orders to pass the act or lose the midterms.

Ron Svaty

Ellsworth