Why Voting in the Midterms Is More Crucial than Ever
From the obscenely named "SAVE" Act to voter registration purges, Republicans know their only hope against losing power is to kill your right to vote
I wasn’t going to write anything today. I need a break. We all do. A break from the constant storm of mendacity1 that is this regime.
And I’ve been feeling extra cranky lately, angry at those who refused to vote for Kamala because she failed some litmus test or another. You’re the ones who got us here, not Trump. We all knew who he was going in. You could have just said, “No.”
The Republicans created a 900-page manifesto called Project 2025 stating their intentions before the election. We told you all about that. Allowing him to sneak back into office was stupid. It’s enough to make ME want to take away your voting rights.
But I felt compelled to write this today, anyway.
The SAVE Act is back in business
You probably figured I was going to talk about the grand lizard of Samoa, Tulsi Gabbard, who has betrayed every one of her original Democratic constituents. No, I just like to play with Photoshop, and she’s in the news for her role in the regime’s attempt to defraud Georgia voters. So, yeah, I’ll get to her, too, but something more important has come up.
Last night, far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives demanded that the Senate bring the SAVE Act to the floor in return for their vote for the government funding bill.
The SAVE Act, under a name which is classic Republican DoubleSpeak, is the acronym for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. Let’s call it what it is: The Destroy American Voter Eligibility Act (DAVE).
This is a fight Democrats can’t walk away from. If they do, the punishment needs to be fierce during the primaries, which begin in March.
The DAVE Act requires that states only register voters who have REAL IDs or specific kinds of government IDs. There has been some misinformation around the bill that claims the qualifications are more severe, but that’s it. Still, that’s enough to disenfranchise a lot of voters.
What’s a REAL ID? Anyone who’s received a driver’s license during the last couple of years probably has one.
The REAL ID Act of 2005 established federal security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards. For example, in Georgia, which has a big senate election coming up, the state Department of Motor Vehicles started issuing REAL IDs several years ago in advance of a deadline set by federal law.
You can’t fly without one, so if you’ve flown anywhere since the law was enacted on May 7, 2025, you have a REAL ID. A passport counts, as do state driver’s licenses and identification issued since May 7, 2025 (and, in most states, before).
Democrats, of course, had a chance to do battle with the REAL ID law before it was enacted in 2005, but didn’t bother. Back then, everyone was worried about a terrorist hiding in every airline terminal because Americans were still licking their wounds from 9/11. The law took a long time to implement because of fears of low compliance rates. So the deadline for compliance kept getting pushed back.
You may have been told that women are going to be disproportionately affected by the DAVE Act. This is true, but that’s more a function of the original REAL ID law than the DAVE Act, which simply picks up the requirements of the REAL ID law and passes them into voting requirements.
The REAL ID law established that REAL ID-compliant cards were required for such things as:
Boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft
Entering federal buildings
Accessing nuclear power facilities
Now, you can add voting to that mix.
The DAVE Act’s official summary is this:2
Specifically, the bill prohibits states from accepting and processing an application to register to vote in a federal election unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. The bill specifies what documents are considered acceptable proof of U.S. citizenship, such as identification that complies with the REAL ID Act of 2005 that indicates U.S. citizenship.
This means that things are tougher for anyone who has changed their maiden or original family names, but not any tougher than when/if you went to get a REAL ID.
That said, Chuck Schumer woke from a nap to release a Tweet that said, “I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, the SAVE Act would impose Jim Crow-type laws to the entire country and is dead on arrival in the Senate.”
He then yawned, stretched out on his couch, and fell back to sleep, so we are left trying to figure out what he meant by that. My guess is that he is saying Blacks will suffer disproportionately from the DAVE Act. There are, of course, many more poor white folks, especially in red states, who don’t have REAL IDs, so it’s really not a race issue.
It’s a voter registration issue. Republicans are trying to cut voter rolls down as much as possible. If there’s any comfort to be found there, it’s that low-information, low-education voters, the ones that have been so troublesome for Democrats, will be disproportionately affected.
As bad as it is, this won’t affect the midterms much. Patterns are patterns. The voters in the Texas special election that embarrassed the pants off Republicans (who have proven to enjoy taking their pants off during inappropriate moments) would have still turned out under the DAVE Act.
Confusion over maiden names
A lot of anguish has spread regarding maiden names for our lady friends. This largely comes from Section (5) of the DAVE Act, which stipulates that you need a verifiable name of birth to qualify for registration.
But this is not the case if you have a REAL ID already. Section (5) is for those who don’t have a REAL ID, an official United States military identification card, or some other “valid” government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State, or Tribal government showing that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States. (In other words, get a REAL ID).
Will it pass?
I promised my friend Susan Niemann in a comment thread on one of her posts the other day that it would not pass, so I’ll stick to that, but John Thune, Majority Leader of the United States Senate, has promised to try to use a standing filibuster (“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”) to ram it through at some unnamed date. It’s all kind of fluid now, but even if it passes, don’t panic, and take action instead.
You should take action anyway, because Republicans will never quit trying to get it passed.
What you should do
If you don’t have a passport (with a name that matches your voter registration card), which automatically qualifies as a REAL ID, check your Driver’s license to see if it is a REAL ID-compliant document. If you’ve received one in the last couple of years, it almost surely is, but check anyway. If it isn’t, go to your state driver’s license office this week and get your driver’s license updated. As long as your name in the voter registration rolls matches your REAL ID, you’re fine.
Everyone should check their voter registration card to see that it matches their REAL ID. This is true for men as well as women. There will be more voter challenges than ever in the upcoming midterms. Dot all your “i”s and cross all your “t”s. There aren’t very many of those, and it’s easy to do.
If you don’t have a driver’s license, you’ll need a state identification card. Go get one now if you don’t have one, before this law goes into effect.
You might think I’m downplaying the effects of the DAVE Act. I’m really not. It’s part of the overall attempt by Republicans to stifle the vote.
But from a meta standpoint, it won’t, by itself, affect the midterms much.
Unless you live in a state like Georgia, where disenfranchisement of Fulton County voters is a big deal because the senatorial elections are going to be close. But in the case of Georgia, there’s a bigger attack going on.
This gets to the heart of the matter.
Democrats must have a resounding victory to win a close senate election in Georgia
That makes no sense, right? Doesn’t a resounding victory mean it wasn’t a close election?
Not in Georgia.
Republicans are in an all-out effort to steal votes in Georgia and suppress the Black Vote.
Their current focus is on Fulton County, which is a mega county consisting of Atlanta and some outlying burgs. To the east of Fulton County, also containing Atlanta, is DeKalb County, about half the size of Fulton, which will presumably be targeted as well. Fulton County contains about 1.2 million souls, and DeKalb consists of a bit more than half a million.
Stealing votes from these counties will add to the strength of the racist vote in Georgia’s backwater counties, which is significant. Steal and suppress enough Black votes, and that Senate seat turns red. An overwhelming Democratic turnout will thwart those efforts.
The current Senator, Democrat Jon Ossoff, is a strong candidate who seems to appeal to moderate Republicans. It will take a serious “destroy the vote” effort for Republicans to defeat him. Obviously, they’re giving it the old college try.
There is also the wild card known as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has, for now, gone to war with the Trump regime over the Trump-Epstein case. She has said that she isn’t planning to run in the 2026 Senate election against Ossoff, but my answer to that is a list of the names in the current Republican primary field, none of whom are named Brian Kemp, Georgia’s popular governor:3
Reagan Box, Earl Carter, Christina Loren Clement, Mike Collins, Derek Dooley, Christoph La’Flare (Yikes!) Chapman, Jonathan McColumn, Chelsae Pile (of?), Rick Temple, and Vinson Watkins.
Nobody outside of hardcore Georgia political punditry (population: five) has heard of any of these people.
Unlike the mainstream media and even some independent journalists who have bought into her redemption tour, I wouldn’t trust Marj to clean my underwear, much less her sudden interest in Trump’s downfall. This looks like a political play, and if she wins a Senate seat, no matter how real her conversion to the anti-Trump world might seem now, women not named Marjorie Taylor Greene will pay a heavy price for her victory.
But the wild card is this: Will the regime be as eager to step in if she wins the Republican primary? Who knows with this crew? They come from a different planet than you and me.
The best answer to all this is to push hard for voter registration and not let these cannibals frighten you into thinking their efforts to steal the midterms will be successful.
The Republicans don’t just fight dirty, they fight criminally
This brings us to the star of today’s show, Tulsi Gabbard, and the palace intrigue during her recent visit to snatch Fulton County voter records.
Tulsi was a Democrat before she was a servant for Team Predator. She was even popular in many Democratic circles, including those who disliked the DNC (Democratic National Committee). Then, she joined Team Predator, where she discovered the joy of corruption, banality, incompetence, and general thuggery.
Nobody knows why she accompanied the FBI during its recent derelict collection of Fulton County voter rolls. All we really know, given that she’s the most underqualified Director of National Intelligence since before the office was born, is that it can’t be good and that she has been ordered to do something awful.
Trump was even on the call with the FBI agents during their theft, barking out orders like an insane cartoon animal from an impossibly deranged “Adult Swim” show. If you’re not familiar with what happened, here’s what went down, from the beginning:
The regime tried twice to get the courts to force Fulton County, a predominantly (by a lot) Democratic stronghold, to turn over its voting records. You probably know that the mad clown has been obsessed with Georgia for a long time, mostly because he’s the only Republican presidential candidate since anyone can remember to lose the state in a presidential election.
So, after Biden’s electoral victory, but before he reluctantly vacated the office, he made a famous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and demanded that Brad “find 11,780” votes.
Jack Smith, a professional federal prosecutor in the Before Times when those people existed, was this close to nailing him for it, and so was the State of Georgia, but, as we all know, the slithering rope of human excrement managed to slide out from under it all, and here we all are.
But, since the old codger can’t let anything go, he is still trying to find those votes. Or something. Nobody knows for sure what he’s up to, probably not even him.
The regime is trying to access voting records from many other states, so I suppose it’s for a different reason than finding votes from 2020. Someone, somewhere in that regime (Hi, Susie Wiles!) has apparently figured out a corrupt way to use the records so that they can interfere with future elections.
Everything is pretty much all speculation.
Right around the time Tulsi was slithering around Fulton County with the FBI, a whistleblower claimed that she hid “high-level intelligence from Congress for nearly eight months” and attempted to illegally snuff out the whistleblower’s complaint.4
Government sources have been quoted by the Wall Street Journal that the complaint remains sealed because “its disclosure could cause ‘grave damage to national security.’ A comment like that, of course, is catnip to independent journalists and outlets like ProPublica, so we can be sure the best, juiciest stuff is yet to come.5
By “grave damage to national security,” my bet is that the regime official means that the complaint’s revelation will add another log to the raging fire that is this regime, adding to the likelihood of its demise.
Register. Vote.
The regime’s attempt to derail the midterms is mostly performative. It’s a form of gaslighting intended to terrify you. If we vote in enough numbers, we can overwhelm these attempts and elect a Congress that is willing to open inquiries and investigations into this regime, and impeach some of it. If Democrats win both chambers of Congress, AOC has talked about clawing back ICE funds.
At a minimum, winning the Senate will block judicial appointments and more damaging legislation.
It’s time to register to vote. These midterms are more crucial than the 2024 Presidential election. It might really be our last chance to salvage what’s left of this nation.
The recent special election in Texas shows that this regime has mastered the art of self-harm. Let’s help them finish the job.
Footnotes
h/t to Tennessee Williams
Chip, Roy,. “H.R.22 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): SAVE Act.” Congress.gov, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22.
The most important part of the text in the bill is as follows:
SEC. 2. Ensuring only citizens are registered to vote in elections for Federal office.
(a) Definition of documentary proof of United States citizenship.—Section 3 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (52 U.S.C. 20502) is amended—
(1) by striking “As used” and inserting “(a) In general.—As used”; and
(2) by adding at the end the following:
“(b) Documentary proof of United States citizenship.—As used in this Act, the term ‘documentary proof of United States citizenship’ means, with respect to an applicant for voter registration, any of the following:
“(1) A form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005 that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States.
“(2) A valid United States passport.
“(3) The applicant’s official United States military identification card, together with a United States military record of service showing that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.
“(4) A valid government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State or Tribal government showing that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.
“(5) A valid government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State or Tribal government other than an identification described in paragraphs (1) through (4), but only if presented together with one or more of the following:
“(A) A certified birth certificate issued by a State, a unit of local government in a State, or a Tribal government which—
“(i) was issued by the State, unit of local government, or Tribal government in which the applicant was born;
“(ii) was filed with the office responsible for keeping vital records in the State;
“(iii) includes the full name, date of birth, and place of birth of the applicant;
“(iv) lists the full names of one or both of the parents of the applicant;
“(v) has the signature of an individual who is authorized to sign birth certificates on behalf of the State, unit of local government, or Tribal government in which the applicant was born;
“(vi) includes the date that the certificate was filed with the office responsible for keeping vital records in the State; and
“(vii) has the seal of the State, unit of local government, or Tribal government that issued the birth certificate.
“(B) An extract from a United States hospital Record of Birth created at the time of the applicant’s birth which indicates that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.
“(C) A final adoption decree showing the applicant’s name and that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.
“(D) A Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a citizen of the United States or a certification of the applicant’s Report of Birth of a United States citizen issued by the Secretary of State.
“(E) A Naturalization Certificate or Certificate of Citizenship issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security or any other document or method of proof of United States citizenship issued by the Federal government pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“(F) An American Indian Card issued by the Department of Homeland Security with the classification ‘KIC’.”.
(b) In general.—Section 4 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (52 U.S.C. 20503) is amended—
(1) in subsection (a), by striking “subsection (b)” and inserting “subsection (c)”;
(2) by redesignating subsection (b) as subsection (c); and
(3) by inserting after subsection (a) the following new subsection:
“(b) Requiring applicants to present documentary proof of United States citizenship.—Under any method of voter registration in a State, the State shall not accept and process an application to register to vote in an election for Federal office unless the applicant presents documentary proof of United States citizenship with the application.”.
(c) Registration with application for motor vehicle driver’s license.—Section 5 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (52 U.S.C. 20504) is amended—
That part, (c), is important because they’re playing around with Section 5 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which governs acceptable Driver’s licenses for use in voting. The best defense is to get your REAL ID-compliant driver’s license now, today, before they have a chance to put this law into effect.
Kemp is not running for governor again, either, because he is term-limited.
Sawyer, Robin. “WhistleblowerAid.org Client Reveals DNI Director Gabbard Violated the Law by Hiding High-Level Intelligence from Congress for Nearly Eight Months - Whistleblower Aid.” Whistleblower Aid, February 2, 2026. https://whistlebloweraid.org/whistlebloweraid-org-client-reveals-dni-director-gabbard-violated-the-law-by-hiding-high-level-intelligence-from-congress-for-nearly-eight-months/.
I have sourced WhistlebowerAid before:
We don’t know if this did or didn’t have any impact on DOGE’s removal from Team Predator’s campaign to wreck the bureaucracy and federal government.
It’s fair to begin a countdown to Trump’s first lawsuit against ProPublica.
Charles! Tremendous article.
My name is my maiden name. I changed it back after the divorce because I didn’t want to be associated with a malignant narcissist. He wasn’t quite as bad as the felon, but he was a gaslighter and lying was his go to answer to anything.