The United States Senate is 10 votes away from making sure that millions of Americans will not be able to vote in the midterms.
Ten votes.
The war on American voting is not on the horizon. It is not going to ramp up in advance of the August primary. It’s here, in plain sight.
Fifty U.S. senators are lined up to vote for the SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill wrapped in the myth of noncitizens sneaking into polling places. If another 10 senators sign on this week, the bill will usher in sweeping restrictions on who can vote.
The assault on elections goes far beyond voter ID, which is widely accepted by Americans.
‘The right people’
You saw it at a recent Homeland Security press conference, where Secretary Kristin Noem chillingly assured that her masked, armed thugs will be on hand when votes are being cast. “When it gets to Election Day,” Noem said, she wants to ensure “we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.”
You heard it when U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a candidate for Florida governor, wrongly told NewsNation that all voters need is their REAL ID driver’s license denoting citizenship. Florida’s REAL ID does not include citizenship information, and most other states don’t, either.
You saw it when former deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino interviewed the president. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places,” Trump said. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
In response, most Republican leaders were silent, signaling their willingness to be enablers, if not allies. Too few spoke up to remind Trump that the Constitution gives only Congress and states the power to conduct elections.
The same tack in Tallahassee
Tallahassee’s Republican supermajority is pushing HB 991 and SB 1334, much like the U.S. Senate bill. It will keep unknown numbers of women, students and the elderly from voting. It could make hand-filled paper ballots the preferred voting method, banning an electronic system used in early voting in Palm Beach, Lee and Duval counties.
Yet paper ballots are notorious for careless marking errors by voters that can lead to votes being discarded. Paper ballots take much longer to mark than using a computer interface, leading to longer lines. Long lines mean fewer people voting. In short, the legislation would both suppress voter turnout and increase errors.
The bill is presented, straight-faced, as securing election integrity.
As for Trump, when has he been constrained by the Constitution?
This is the president who regrets not sending in the military to seize voting machines in 2020. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone talked him down. Now, the attorney general is Pam Bondi. The current White House counsel previously represented Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to declare martial law in 2020.
Targeting women especially
And Pete Hegseth’s advice on sending in federal forces can be inferred by his support of a pastor calling for denying women the vote. The Florida bills would do much of that work by forcing married and divorced women to navigate expensive bureaucratic hurdles to match their maiden and married names.
Trump does not always follow through on his campaign pledges. But in 2024, he told rallygoers that if they voted for him one more time, they would never have to vote again, and he’s following up.
The Brennan Center at NYU has compiled pages of federal efforts to undermine voting, from dismantling the agency overseeing election cybersecurity to attacking law firms that protect voting rights. And even as lawmakers in Tallahassee and Washington reassure voters that under SAVE they can use their passport as an ID, the Trump administration has quietly ordered 1,400 libraries to stop processing passport applications.
Of course, eligible voters should have proof of identity. It’s why tough federal and state laws against noncitizen voting already exist.
But if the post-2020 wave of anti-voting legislation in Florida and the U.S. — curbing voter registration, removing ballot drop boxes, imposing new vote-by-mail hurdles and more — were about noncitizen voting, it would not so clearly target women, people of color, students, the elderly and disabled voters.
If this were only about noncitizen voting, millions of Americans’ right to vote would not depend on how 10 Senators vote this week.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/02/21/save-our-right-to-vote-stop-the-suppression-editorial/
