Republicans have repeatedly and falsely accused Democrats of cheating during elections, especially by allowing undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens to vote, even though there is no evidence of that. Even the conservative Heritage Foundation has found just a handful of voting errors among hundreds of millions of votes cast.
Nevertheless, these claims continue, used as a justification to deny eligible Americans the right to vote. Republicans know that they may lose the House and possibly the Senate at the 2026 midterm elections, so some are doing everything they can to suppress the votes of people they think may vote against them.
President Donald Trump has vowed to nationalize the 2026 midterm elections by executive order, even though he knows that would be against the Constitution, which gives only the states the power to regulate elections. He has said he doesn’t care what the Constitution says. Last month he signed an order intended to restrict mail-in voting that has been challenged in court by 24 states, including Michigan. Last week, he demanded 2024 ballots from Wayne County.
Trump’s number one effort to ensure that the midterms go his way is the misnamed SAVE America Act, which is intended to eliminate as many voters as possible who may vote for Democrats.
And it threatens to undo more than 200 years of American progress.
Already passed by the House, if the act wins passage in the U.S. Senate, it would be the “worst voter suppression bill ever passed by Congress,” according to Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for the magazine Mother Jones.
But it certainly is not the first.
A long history of voter suppression in the United States
This country was founded on voter suppression. The U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1787, gave only property-owning white men, about 6% of the population, the right to vote.
It took over 178 years and many changes in federal, state, and local laws for every American citizen to have the right to vote, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The requirement to own property was gradually lifted between 1792 and 1856, but only for white male citizens. (A reminder that Trump has threatened to “un-naturalize” citizens he doesn’t like – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar are at the top of his list, but not his wife, Melania, Peter Thiel or Elon Musk.)
In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the United States for 10 years, required Chinese residents to carry identification certificates and barred them from naturalization. The law remained in force until the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943. Chinese immigration increased with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which abolished direct racial barriers, as did the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Women could vote in some Western states, beginning with Wyoming, in the late 19th century, but it was not until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 that (white) women gained full suffrage.
The 14th Amendment didn’t apply to Native Americans, who weren’t offered a path to citizenship – for Native Americans who gave up their tribal association – until the Dawes Act in 1887. It wasn’t until 1948 that the last state laws denying Native Americans the right to vote were overturned.
How voting rights expanded … and were rolled back
African American men were granted citizenship and the right to vote with the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments, in 1868 and 1870.
Suppression of the Black vote began almost immediately, when the southern Democrats used several means, including the “grandfather clause,” which stated that only if your grandfather was able to vote could you also vote. Of course, this policy excluded almost everyone but white male citizens. There were, of course, other voting barriers, including poll taxes and lynchings.
It wasn’t until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that Black people achieved near universal suffrage. The Voting Rights Act had been repeatedly updated with bipartisan support – until recently. In 2013, the Supreme Court, in Shelby County vs Holder, essentially gutted the law, eliminating federal oversight of state and local jurisdictions with a prior history of voter suppression.
The Voting Rights Act opened the doors to a new era of democracy. And for almost 50 years, from 1965 to 2013, American citizens enjoyed the opportunity to participate in free and fair elections.
But Trump and the GOP seek to move us backward, with former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem proudly admitting that “we’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”
What the SAVE America Act would change about voting
Trump is determined to eliminate absentee, early and mail-in voting (even though he himself votes by mail from Mar-a-Lago), claiming that those methods encourage cheating. He only wants “day of” voting and wants vote counting to stop at 8 p.m. local time, even though many states don’t start counting votes until after the polls close.
The so-called SAVE Act would require American citizens to show documents, like a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote, even though more than 21 million Americans do not have ready access to those documents. This could disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately. The State Department recently decided that non-profit libraries could no longer offer free passport application assistance and photos. Millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.
Originally, the SAVE America Act included a provision that would have also required voters to show documents such as a passport or birth certificate at the polls every time they vote. The current version requires states to regularly submit their voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
No Senate Democrats support this bill, and even a few Republicans have stated they will not vote for it, especially those from states with mail-in voting.
But Republicans hold a Senate majority, and Trump seems unlikely to halt his efforts.
What Michigan voters can do before the 2026 midterms
It is already April, so now that we know what is going on, what can we do about it?
Here in Detroit and in Michigan, along with all Democrat-run cities and states, and even some Republican-run jurisdictions, are refusing to yield to Trump’s demands.
Recently, a lot of the lower courts have ruled against many voter suppression efforts.
But we must do more:
We must fight every voter suppression effort from now until the 2026 midterms, and even after the election is over, because Trump and his MAGA Republicans have already proven that they will not accept the result of any election they do not win.
Free Press contributing columnist Pamela Hilliard Owens is a local writer, CEO of Pam Speaks 2 You Branding and Marketing Academy and podcast, and co-founder of the We Are Speaking Substack newsletter and podcast. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: From the founding to Trump’s SAVE Act, voter suppression Is nothing new | Opinion
Reporting by Pamela Hilliard Owens, Contributing columnist / Detroit Free Press
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