Wednesday, April 30

The right-wing assault on voting rights faces an uphill battle in Congress. But a number of states are trying to pass their own anti-voting bills to make it harder for millions of people to vote. The cumulative effect of all these efforts is to scare people away from voting in the next election. Also in this issue of Eye On The Right: A look at the DOJ’s dismantling of its voting rights section.

As always, thanks for reading. 

— Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter

The SAVE Act and Trump’s Assault on Voting Rights Was Always About One Thing: Fear

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — the most extraordinary attack on voting rights in American history — faces a steep uphill battle in the U.S. Senate.

But that doesn’t mean the threat to voting rights across the country isn’t a five-alarm fire. States are trying to pass their own version of the controversial bill — or take similar steps to impose proof of citizenship requirements, potentially disenfranchising a large number of voters.

Two of the SAVE Act’s key provisions include a strict proof of citizenship requirement and eliminating mail-in ballot receipt deadlines. Cumulatively, these provisions will disenfranchise tens of millions of people — particularly the proof of citizenship requirement, which will disenfranchise some 69 million women who changed their names when they got married. 

According to Voting Rights Lab’s voter legislation tracker, there are currently 52 bills introduced in 24 states to impose or expand proof of citizenship requirements. There are also 39 bills in 17 states — every state that accepts mail-in ballots after Election Day, so long as they are postmarked before that day — to completely eliminate these extended deadlines.

These provisions, and others just as dangerous to the future of elections, aren’t just in the SAVE Act but in Trump’s sweeping executive order to reshape how elections are run in the country. But, like the SAVE Act’s obstacles in the Senate, Trump’s anti-voting order hit a major roadblock when a judge blocked federal agencies from carrying out some of its key components. 

I don’t bring this up to make you feel better about the odds that these horrible anti-voting measures will come to fruition, but to point out what Trump’s ultimate goal is: To scare people out of voting. 

It started last year with Trump and the GOP’s obsession with noncitizen voting — which, as a reminder, is already illegal and very rarely happens. That’s what led to a widespread surge of attempts to implement proof of citizenship requirements across the country.

“We’ve been hearing from the President and other members of the administration about their obsession with this lie that noncitizens are casting ballots,” Hannah Fried, the executive director of the nonpartisan voting rights organization All Voting is Local, told me in a recent interview. “That has a trickle down effect. That then leads to state legislatures trying to pass their own laws.”

Coupled with the other elements of the SAVE Act, Trump’s anti-voting order and the various other state attempts to restrict access to the ballot box, the overall effect is one of fear. 

“It contributes to a broader environment of fear for immigrants, for Americans who were once immigrants to this country, who have naturalized, for people who are not white,” Fried said. “That someone might see you at a voting location, having heard the top officials in this country spewing a bunch of nonsense for the past four years, then take it upon themselves to call you out when you’re at the polling place. This is about fear, and it is about stopping people from voting.”

What the Mass Exodus at DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Means For Voting Rights (Spoiler: It’s Bad!)

In the coming week, more than 100 lawyers are expected to resign from the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division — arguably one of the most important arms of the agency. The mass exodus comes as Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the DOJ’s civil rights division, pivots priorities away from defending civil rights laws to things like attacking trans rights, eradicating anti-Christian bias and antisemitism on college campuses and fighting “woke ideology.”

The importance of the DOJ’s civil rights division can’t be overstated — especially in the realm of voting rights. Since the Civil Rights era, it has been the federal government’s chief enforcer of voting rights, bringing cases under the Voting Rights Act and other protections against racial discrimination in voting, and has spearheaded the U.S. government’s efforts to crack down on racist violence and intimidation.

But with the division’s new goals — ripped straight out of the Project 2025 playbook — it’s clear that enforcing the country’s voting laws to ensure everyone has a right to cast their ballots without fear or discrimination is in the past. Amid the reporting of the civil rights division’s mass departures is an interesting tidbit from The Guardian that Dhillon has removed the DOJ voting unit’s leadership and instructed attorneys to dismiss all active voting rights cases — something we’ll be keeping a close eye out for. 

“This is an effort to destroy the civil rights division, as far as I can tell,” Joseph Rich, a longtime former DOJ official who served as chief of the voting section before his retirement in 2005, told me. “This is like nothing that's ever happened before. There were ups and downs in the division when I was there — and it basically had to do with what kind of enforcement you wanted to do. This is way beyond that. I really can't express how bad it is.”

Though the DOJ has been dropping and withdrawing its involvement in Biden-era voting rights cases piecemeal since Trump returned to the White House, there are still quite a number of active cases on the table. According to Democracy Docket’s litigation tracker, the DOJ is currently involved in at least 29 voting rights or redistricting cases. With reports that the voting unit will soon drop their involvement in all of these cases, what then will its voting section actually do? 

Earlier this month, The Guardian also reported that the civil rights division changed mission statements for each of its units — including the voting section. Instead of focusing on enforcing voting laws like the VRA, the section will instead focus on preventing and prosecuting voter fraud — something that is extremely rare and traditionally carried out by the criminal division.

“What does that mean for the elections coming up?” Rich said to me about the voting section’s new directive. “What is going to happen when they start bringing voting fraud suits right in the middle of an election, or even close to an election?” 

It’s a great, if chilling question. The DOJ has a longstanding unwritten rule to not take any actions within 60 days of an election, so as not to interfere with any race. But if the voting section is chasing down voter fraud claims instead of enforcing voting laws, there’s a decent chance they won’t follow that rule.