Speaker 1: And now for a moment of clarity.
Speaker 2: The Save Act is about stripping American citizens of the
most fundamental right, and that is to vote. It is
about making it more difficult to register. It's about threatening
election officials with imprisonment because they may make a small
error in a voter courage process or maintaining their databases.
The Save Act is meant to sabotage our elections. It's
meant to deprive tens of millions of Americans from being
able to exercise the fundamental right to vote, which preserves
all of our rights. So the Save Act must be
rejected by everyone in Congress. This shouldn't even be a
partisan issue. This should not be something that anyone, regardless
of what your political affiliation is, should support, because it
ultimately takes away what we as Americans need to hold
our government to account to determine who represents us. Why
should we have to show our papers just to register
to vote. It's not about voter ID, and I think
that's a huge misconception because we identify ourselves all the
time at the polls. We have to be verified through
state databases and through many other ways. So it's not
about voter ID. Voter ID exists, Voter verification exists. This
is about choosing a form of identification that half of
Americans don't have, and the black people don't have using
a passport. And I challenge all of your viewers to
tell me where they keep their birth certificate if they
could get their hands on it right now.
Speaker 3: What if I could call my mom, then I would
be able to provide.
Speaker 1: That for you. How recently I know where mine is.
Speaker 3: But yes, special circumstances. The reality, though, is to the misconception.
The reality is that most Americans in the main like
the idea, yes, a voter identification in the main, they do.
So That's why John Thune stands in front of a
bank of microphones and puts this piece in with banking
and with you know, checking out online and buying paying
something with your credit card.
Speaker 1: For them, the argument is all one innocent thing. I
don't understand why your Democrats are so upset about a
little voter bill. Y'all need to read the bill, that's right,
because the bill is more than the voting ID part.
The bill strips a lot away from folks in terms
of their civic and civil liberties regarding the franchise that
our constitution gives them. That's the messaging that the Democrats
need to put out. They can't get hooked up and
play the Republican game where you get sucked into a
dumb behind conversation on something as you just noted, jenay
is commonplace and everybody knows and it's not. It's right.
Number two, the Republicans aren't offering at the same time
they're requiring voter identification, they're not offering that the government
provide those people with voter identification cards that they set
up at libraries and banks and restaurants and grocery stores,
the opportunity for grandma to come in and get that idea.
I can tell you how hard it was to get
an ID for my ninety something year old mother, who
could not go down to the MVA to get her
identification card. So you know what we did. We ain't
get it right, and so when I had to do business,
I had to go in and talk on her behalf
and because it was too much effort. So if you
make it easy, then we can do it. So that's
the thing. They want to make this seem as simple
and easy as it possibly can and leave out all
the meat that's going to grind through the system and
take away their writes to vote.
Speaker 2: That's right, And you know, you remind me of a
really important fact that some people don't recognize. In nineteen
forty six, this is nineteen years before the Voting Rights
Act of nineteen sixty five was passed, more than half
of black children were not born in hospitals because of segregation,
because of Jim Crow, because of this ignominious history of
discrimination in this country.
Speaker 1: That's Michael Steele on the weeknight Monday through Friday at
seven pm Eastern on ms NOW.