SAVE Act might save Trump, but it would punish Wyoming’s rural voters

I have had it up to HERE — picture a bald, 5-foot-9 old man stretching by standing on his tippy-toes, then flinging his boney arms as high as they can go — with Wyoming’s congressional delegation’s dishonesty about the security of our elections.

I’m also willing to go to the highest mountaintop to scream about the lies being told to promote the wretched so-called “SAVE Act.” 

But the best way I can protest this election treachery is to calmly explain why U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman want to muck up Americans’ sacred right to vote, why they don’t give a damn about how this would harm their constituents back home, and why we must stop them.

It’s all in the name of saving the soiled career of President Donald Trump, who told the House GOP’s annual issues conference that if the bill passes, it will guarantee that Republicans keep House and Senate majorities in the midterms and keep winning elections for a long time.

“If you don’t get it, big trouble,” he warned. Finally, some truth from this guy.

Trump is scared to death that the GOP will get pummeled in November, making him spend his final two years in office as an embarrassing lame duck. 

Likely a thrice-impeached lame duck.

But the jobs of Barrasso, Lummis and Hageman are not on the line. Hageman thinks she has a free ride to the Senate, Barrasso isn’t up for reelection, and Lummis is retiring.

So these wealthy politicians won’t be affected, but thousands of rural Wyoming residents will find it much more difficult and costly to vote. 

That’s a strange position for ardent supporters of the bill, since rural voters tend to be more conservative and the base of the GOP. CNN exit polls in 2024 found that 64% of rural American voters backed Trump, compared to 38% of urban voters.

The SAVE Act will make it more expensive for rural voters in Wyoming, who would have to drive long distances to bring newly required documents to register in person instead of mailing them. And every time there’s a change, like a home address or a married voter’s new name, it’s back on the road to visit the county clerk.

The bill passed by the House and now being debated in the Senate would require that to vote in a federal election, a person would need to prove U.S. citizenship by showing a passport, a combination of a birth certificate and an enhanced driver’s license, or a military ID with records of service. 

About half of Americans do not have a U.S. passport, and more than 21 million citizens do not have immediate access to the other documents, the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in a letter opposing the bill.

Last Tuesday, Hageman held a town hall in Gillette before a sparse crowd of about 40 people. The Gillette News Record noted it was a pretty sedate affair; nothing like one in Casper, where she left scurrying offstage to a chorus of boos.

The newspaper interviewed Hageman about her support of the SAVE Act before the event. 

“I think that if even one person has voted, who is illegally voting, that’s the mountain,” Hageman said. “Nobody who’s not eligible to vote should be voting.”

Even if it disenfranchises millions and gives the federal government the power to nationalize state elections.

Asked for examples of noncitizens voting, Hageman displayed an extraordinary power: the ability to read people’s minds and determine what crimes they will commit.

The congresswoman referenced the recent arrest of Mahady Sacko, a Mauritanian national facing federal charges for voter fraud, and Minnesota’s Somali community. 

“I mean, the fraud that has been committed and the various businesses that have been created there that are not true businesses, if they’re willing to commit that level of fraud, does anybody question whether they would be ready, willing and able to go ahead and engage in our elections as well?” Hageman asked.

Sacko allegedly voted illegally in seven federal elections between 2005 and 2024, despite being under the apparently sloppy supervision of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now he’s the poster boy for why Republicans say we must pass massive, unprecedented changes in our election laws.

Unauthorized immigrants are already prohibited from voting in U.S. elections. The penalty is up to five years in prison, which is appropriate. But the Center for Election Innovation and Research has found that “sweeping allegations about noncitizen registrations or voting appear to arise from misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, or outright fabrications about complex voter data.”

Here’s an example: the Michigan Department of State performed an audit of that state’s voter rolls last April. It found 16 instances of what appeared to be noncitizens voting in the 2024 general election, which drew 5.6 million voters. That’s a non-whopping 0.0000028% of votes cast by Michiganders.

Senate Majority Whip Barrasso, the chamber’s No. 2 GOP member, has an extra incentive in his rabid support for the SAVE Act because he could win Trump’s favor over Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, who has angered the president by not pushing for a vote. 

Democrats have more than enough votes to keep the GOP from obtaining the 60 votes needed to end the debate.

Trump wants Thune to force Democrats to use the old  “talking filibuster” — like Jimmy Stewart famously did when playing a fictional U.S. senator from Wyoming in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” — to prevent reform of a Senate rule that requires the majority party to reach 60 votes to close debate on a bill. Democrats would be forced to hold the floor night and day, potentially delaying all other action for weeks.

The GOP strategy would be to wear down the opposition, so Democrats would cave and eventually agree to let the SAVE Act pass with a simple majority. But that outcome is not likely because of unanimous opposition to the bill by Democrats, who could use the situation to make endless amendments and prevent a vote. Republicans are wary that Democrats could simply change the filibuster rule if they take control of the Senate in the future, putting the GOP at a tremendous disadvantage.

Lummis supports the SAVE Act, but even she thinks weaponizing the talking filibuster is logistically impossible and a waste of time. The retiring senator told reporters last week she’d “talk till the cows come home” if her conference demanded it, but conceded it would “chew up the rest of the year” and produce few results.

Trump has threatened not to sign any legislation until the SAVE Act is passed. He also wants to expand the bill to prohibit voting by mail, which he cited as bogus evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from him by Democrats. But he reversed course in 2024 and encouraged people to vote by mail.

Barrasso said on the Senate floor that Wyoming has voter ID laws and getting your ID is free. What he fails to mention is that this would no longer be true under the SAVE Act, because simply obtaining a free ID card from the state would no longer suffice. Trump’s system would require a U.S. passport or an enhanced driver’s license linked to a birth certificate.

Senator, passports and copies of birth certificates are not free. Xavier Persad of the American Civil Liberties Union said the bill could potentially disenfranchise tens of millions of valid U.S. voters, because people would face more voting barriers at every step of the process.

The SAVE Act is a complex, expensive answer to a nonexistent problem. We don’t need to saddle voters with more regulations or burden our election workers who are already administering some of the most secure elections in the country.

The faster the Senate kills this damn thing, the better off Wyoming voters will be.