Hakeem Jeffries: SAVE Act Another Attempt by Trump, GOP to ‘Steal’ Elections

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) claimed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is another attempt by Republicans and President Donald Trump to steal elections.

Host Dana Bash said, “The president said this week that this past week that he wanted to nationalize elections at the White House and on Capitol Hill. They say that what they mean legislatively is pushing what they call the SAVE Act, which would mandate Americans show proof of citizenship like a birth certificate. And, also potentially more information about the registration to vote. Now, I understand you don’t support things like a passport, for example, but requiring basic ID in order to vote is really popular. A Pew poll from a few months ago showed 83% of Americans, including 71% of your fellow Democrats, support requiring an ID to vote. Why are they wrong?”

Jeffries said, “I haven’t said that they’re wrong. We know that states are the ones who are empowered to conduct elections in every state should be allowed to decide the best way to proceed to ensure that there’s a free and fair election here in New York. There are, in fact, voter identification requirements. The question is that what Republicans are trying to do is to engage in clear and blatant voter suppression. They know that if there’s a free and fair election in November, they’re going to lose.”

He added, “What Donald Trump wants to do is try to nationalize the election translation steal it. And we’re not going to let it happen. We stopped them in terms of their gerrymandering efforts, where they were going to try to redraw congressional maps in red states throughout the nation, not expect Democrats to respond forcefully and try to rig the midterms. They failed. We stopped Donald Trump from being able to federalize the National Guard, which we believe was probably part of some toxic attempt to unleash troops on American cities all across the nation and intimidate people from voting. And we’re going to stop him from nationalizing the election. This is going to be a free and fair election. It’s going to be conducted like every other election, where states and localities have the ability to administer the laws.”

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