The USA Politics Thread

It's a bad decision because it overemphasizes the 'injury' to the federal government (whih is essentially nil) and minimizes the 'injury' to eligible voters (which to every individual affected, is massive), but it's not a catastrophe for the midterms (like the USPS thing would have been if they sided with Trump). The SAVE database itself isn't new and is used to inquire about status for all kinds of government programs, and eligibility to vote isn't one of them, at least directly. Indirectly it can be, in that Citizenship status is one determinant of eligibility, but it's not the only one and SAVE's limited number of status codes aren't specific to any one program or benefit (or right).

Trump's EO is certainly meant to help red states kick certain classes of eligible voters -- namely naturalized citizens -- off the voter rolls, but neither the database nor the law really work to do that in a mass purge kind of way. For one, if a state enters someone's info into the system and it returns a non-Citizen status, the state has an obligation to contact that person to clear things up before they're removed from the voter register (and I believe this point is reiterated in the SCOTUS decision). That's kind of where the poll tax type stuff comes in here, having to prove yourself again, that kind of thing. But also, separately from all of that, since we're under 90 days before the election states can't really mess around with voter rolls anyway, so they can't do anything with SAVE to affect the midterms.

@Garak: We aren't issued any kind of card at any point unless we request them, and they typically have costs associated with them. Even Social Security Numbers are opt-in, though for most people born in the US that's usually handled pretty immediately at the hospital. The Social Security Card is free, and is one of the main things used to register to vote. But also non-citizens of various statuses can also get Social Security Numbers, so what Trump's EO is hoping to do is stop naturalized citizens from voting because the SAVE database hasn't updated their status from permanent resident to USC. Basically the hopse is to disenfranchise people due to bureaucracy issues outside their control.

It's a nasty, dirty trick for sure -- and again, the disenfrachisement of anyone from pursuing their right to vote is a massive injury on the individual level -- but it's not really a midterm issue. Post-midterm elections, in tandem with other devious efforts that exacerbate the buraucracy stuff for instance, could be an issue so this remains a bad decision. I guess also worth noting SCOTUS didn't decide the merits of the case, just the administrative stay, and the case is still in lower courts. But that's continually been one way the Roberts court has helped the GOP.

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