Connecticut’s Democratic leaders warned on Thursday that the SAVE America Act, the Republican-sponsored election bill currently being debated in Congress, could disenfranchise large numbers of voters by creating new requirements for registering and voting nationwide. The federal bill, which i s currently being debated in the U.S. Senate, would among other things create a new requirement that voters throughout the United States provide “documentary proof” of citizenship when registering to vote or changing their registration status. It would also require that voters nationwide present an approved form of photo identification each time they vote — both during in-person voting and when utilizing mail-in ballots. Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas told a pool of news reporters on Thursday that they were deeply concerned about both of those provisions and how they could disrupt the current registration and voting infrastructure in Connecticut. The three Democrats, all of whom are seeking reelection this year, argued that the bill could disenfranchise numerous voters who don’t have immediate access to the necessary documentation Republicans are demanding. And they said that the legislation, which is backed by President Donald Trump, was a “solution in search of a problem.” “I for the life me can’t understand why we are doing this. I want people to vote. I want them to be encouraged to vote. And I don’t want to put up all these bureaucratic road blocks to make it tougher,” Lamont said, adding that Connecticut takes voter integrity very seriously. “Frankly, I don’t think I need any lectures about election fraud from a President of the United States who famously called the Secretary of State down in Georgia and told him to ‘find me 11,780 votes,'” Lamont added, referencing a recorded phone call that Trump made following the 2020 Presidential election. Connecticut Republicans, meanwhile, called the news conference a distraction and argued that the state’s Democratic leaders have repeatedly refused to properly address alleged cases of voter fraud, particularly in Bridgeport, where 11 people have been criminally charged in recent years for violating the state’s absentee ballot rules. “The reason why this is happening is because of blue states like Connecticut that have refused to address real, live examples of election fraud,” state Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott said. “The whole point of the SAVE America Act is to make elections honest.” If the SAVE America Act were to pass, anyone registering to vote, moving addresses or even switching their political affiliation would need to supply election officials with a select set of documents to prove they were either born in the United States or became a naturalized citizen. Those documents include things like a birth certificate, adoption records, a naturalization certificate or a current and valid U.S. passport. According to the bill, they would need to be presented to election officials in-person, meaning online voter registration would become a thing of the past. Like many Democrats in Congress, Thomas said her concern is that a large number of U.S. citizens could struggle to obtain the records necessary to register or change their registration, especially since Congressional Republicans want to make the bill effective as soon as it passed. And Thomas said drivers’ licenses in Connecticut — even REAL ID — would not be accepted as documentary proof of citizenship under the proposed legislation. Like most other states in the country, Connecticut does not currently require documentary evidence of citizenship from people who are registering to vote. Instead, anyone who is registering to vote in the state has to attest that they are a U.S. Citizen and the form they sign makes it clear that anyone lying on that application can be criminally prosecuted. Government-issued identification isn’t required to vote in Connecticut, but when residents go to vote in person they must present a document showing their name and address, such as a utility bill, bank statement or library card. Without one of those documents, the voter can sign an affidavit attesting to their identity. Thomas and Bysciewicz, who previously served as Connecticut Secretary of the State from 1999 to 2011, acknowledged that there have been cases in the past in which noncitizens have illegally registered or voted. But they said those cases are exceedingly rare. Several Republican-led states have conducted investigations in recent years seeking to identify and remove noncitizens from their voter registration rolls. But those investigations have found small numbers of noncitizens registering to vote, and most of those people never cast a ballot. In North Carolina, for example, the state’s election board looked into the issue following the 2016 election and found that out of 4.8 million people who cast a ballot, there were 41 cases of noncitizens voting in that election statewide. All of those people were permanent residents, meaning they were in the country legally but were not eligible to vote. There were so few of them, it wasn’t possible for their votes to have affected even the lowest-turnout races in the state. In another example from Utah this year, the state’s Republican leaders did not find a single instance of a noncitizen voting in the state and only one instance of an ineligible individual registering to vote. Bysciewicz said the small number of cases in which a noncitizen registered to vote should not be used as an excuse to erect more barriers to voting nationwide. The “monumental changes” included in the bill, Bysciewicz argued, could lead to the potential disenfranchisement of millions of people.” ...read more read less