The SAVE act targets people who've changed their name *for any reason*.
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@bob_zim @alice @amydiehl I have had a collection of experiences, related to the different way that the UK and most other European countries treat identity.
Some countries base your permission to stay on your birth certificate and others on the passport you present.
In my case the names on the two are not the same.
The UK demands that if you have two passports then the names on both must be identical.
But UK passports do not support accented characters found in other European alphabets.
@the_wub @alice @amydiehl Yeah, the EU+UK situation is separately awful, since there’s no super-state authority you can directly be a citizen of (i.e, you can’t be a citizen of the EU directly, only of a state within it). Instead, there’s a mess of individual states all with their own individual idiosyncrasies. Most allow non-resident citizens to vote. Some allow non-citizen residents to vote. Ridiculous, inconsistent documentation standards like the passport situation you mentioned. All based on imaginary lines on the ground.
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@the_wub @alice @amydiehl Yeah, the EU+UK situation is separately awful, since there’s no super-state authority you can directly be a citizen of (i.e, you can’t be a citizen of the EU directly, only of a state within it). Instead, there’s a mess of individual states all with their own individual idiosyncrasies. Most allow non-resident citizens to vote. Some allow non-citizen residents to vote. Ridiculous, inconsistent documentation standards like the passport situation you mentioned. All based on imaginary lines on the ground.
@bob_zim @alice @amydiehl Before Brexit happened if there had been an "EU passport" I would have applied for it immediately.
Identity is a pain in the neck. In the UK you can choose the name that appears on your passport.
In the Netherlands and Norway people are all registered in the People Registers. So you get the name that you are officially registered with when you apply for a passport.
The UK has a perculiar way of dealing with legal identity and has no central register for all people.
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@bob_zim @alice @amydiehl Before Brexit happened if there had been an "EU passport" I would have applied for it immediately.
Identity is a pain in the neck. In the UK you can choose the name that appears on your passport.
In the Netherlands and Norway people are all registered in the People Registers. So you get the name that you are officially registered with when you apply for a passport.
The UK has a perculiar way of dealing with legal identity and has no central register for all people.
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@the_wub @alice @amydiehl Births are registered at the local level (county/parrish, below US state), but they confer citizenship at the federal level. The US federal government is the entity which issues passports and social security numbers (basically our national ID number for financial purposes). Driver licenses and most other non-passport IDs are managed by the US states. Depending on who is asking for identity and why, we may need a birth/naturalization certificate, passport, social security number, driver license/state ID number, or a paper utility bill (sometimes needed to prove residency for state and local elections).
US states run their own elections, so rules for voting are all over the place (which is why the USA doesn’t meet the minimum standards for election monitoring by the Carter Center).
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The SAVE act targets people who've changed their name *for any reason*. Ya know who's done that?
- Married women
- Trans & nonbinary folx
- ImmigrantsYou know which US citizens that leaves?
Mostly white men.
The SAVE act isn't trying to save anything other than patriarchy and fascism.
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@yPhil there's already a law against being a criminal, that's what made them a criminal. There are also already laws against election tampering and fraud.
Two states let felons vote while in prison.
If they've "paid their dues", then most places (eventually) let them vote again anyway.
Blocking upwards of a third of the population from voting because it might stop a handful of "criminals" is fucking ridiculous. If we wanted to do *that* and have fewer false-positives, we could just block straight men from voting—they make up ~93% of inmates¹—and that's with the fact that queer folx have arrest rates ~2.3× higher than straight people² (because the system is fucking busted).
Also, your argument is bullshit.
¹ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/beyondthecount.html
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@alice @amydiehl @spacehobo the idea that getting married would edit your birth certificate is so fucking weird
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@sleepytako @amydiehl @alice My wife and I both kept our names when we married (in academics it's a pita to prove authorship of something after a name change). We get confused looks regularly when people realize we have different last names. Most people are still living in the old world.
It also confuses people that our son has her last name. We did that mostly because her last name is far more interesting/unique than mine.@Jumpmed when I disowned my dad, I changed my last name to my mom's (she had kept hers, and her name was way cooler anyway).
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@CordiallyChloe @alice @amydiehl yikes
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@ruivo I'm a US citizen, as were my parents, and their parents, going back about as long as there's been a US.
I didn't take my spouse's name when I got married, but my birth certificate doesn't match my state ID or passport. I legally changed my name shortly after I became an adult, so I could get rid of my dad's last name (and my first name, because it was dumb).
At the time, I didn't have enough money to pay to update it everywhere, so I just never did.
I have a valid state ID and passport (well, my state ID has a nonbinary gender marker on it, so who knows if it'll be honored outside of Washington state
️ these days).By the wording of the SAVE act, I don't think I'd be eligible to vote (for the first time since I turned 18).
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@FaithinBones they should already do that
But more importantly, we should call out this legislation for what it is—an attempt to lock out non-MAGA voters and rig an election.
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@FaithinBones they should already do that
But more importantly, we should call out this legislation for what it is—an attempt to lock out non-MAGA voters and rig an election.
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@ruivo I'm a US citizen, as were my parents, and their parents, going back about as long as there's been a US.
I didn't take my spouse's name when I got married, but my birth certificate doesn't match my state ID or passport. I legally changed my name shortly after I became an adult, so I could get rid of my dad's last name (and my first name, because it was dumb).
At the time, I didn't have enough money to pay to update it everywhere, so I just never did.
I have a valid state ID and passport (well, my state ID has a nonbinary gender marker on it, so who knows if it'll be honored outside of Washington state
️ these days).By the wording of the SAVE act, I don't think I'd be eligible to vote (for the first time since I turned 18).
@amydiehl @alice I'm not defending it. Any kind of extra documentation asked will raise barriers. Even if you carry paperwork proving change it'll do exactly what they want: make it more difficult to vote for specific demographics. People forgetting to bring, not knowing, losing it, expired and so on. Just pointing out that first generation citizens (which I assume 'immigrants' meant there) aren't likely (again, not everyone) to be impacted as much.
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@amydiehl @alice I'm not defending it. Any kind of extra documentation asked will raise barriers. Even if you carry paperwork proving change it'll do exactly what they want: make it more difficult to vote for specific demographics. People forgetting to bring, not knowing, losing it, expired and so on. Just pointing out that first generation citizens (which I assume 'immigrants' meant there) aren't likely (again, not everyone) to be impacted as much.
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@the_wub @alice @amydiehl Births are registered at the local level (county/parrish, below US state), but they confer citizenship at the federal level. The US federal government is the entity which issues passports and social security numbers (basically our national ID number for financial purposes). Driver licenses and most other non-passport IDs are managed by the US states. Depending on who is asking for identity and why, we may need a birth/naturalization certificate, passport, social security number, driver license/state ID number, or a paper utility bill (sometimes needed to prove residency for state and local elections).
US states run their own elections, so rules for voting are all over the place (which is why the USA doesn’t meet the minimum standards for election monitoring by the Carter Center).
@bob_zim @alice @amydiehl "SAVE Act would require birth cert or passport that matches voters legal name. "
So where and how is a person's "legal name" recorded?
In the UK there is the concept of "known as" which means that you can end up being called something other than is on your passport.
You can change the name on your passport without changing your legal name by deed poll to match it.
Not advisable as I found out trying to help a relative but I believe even now it is still possible.
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@bob_zim @alice @amydiehl "SAVE Act would require birth cert or passport that matches voters legal name. "
So where and how is a person's "legal name" recorded?
In the UK there is the concept of "known as" which means that you can end up being called something other than is on your passport.
You can change the name on your passport without changing your legal name by deed poll to match it.
Not advisable as I found out trying to help a relative but I believe even now it is still possible.
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@the_wub @alice @amydiehl “Legal name” in this case is talking about the voter registration. We register to vote at the US state level. The registration involves name and address (to determine which county, city, town, etc. elections we vote in). We get a registration card (mine arrived two days ago) which lists all of the information about which districts we vote in, and we’re added to the voter rolls available to polling places.
Since US states run their own elections, they all have different rules about how to determine who someone is so they can use their ballot. Many have been adding photo ID requirements, and the name on the photo ID has to match the name on the voter roll. This proposed law is saying beyond just a photo ID, you also have to prove you’re a citizen using documentation with a name which matches the photo ID and the voter registration.
A passport is both a photo ID and proof of citizenship, so it fills both requirements. Everybody else would need to bring a birth/naturalization certificate. When people change their names, they often don’t go down to the county registrar’s office to get a new copy of their birth certificate. They usually just keep the original one and a copy of the name change documentation, as that’s enough for everything else we use a birth certificate for.
It’s ultimately a poll tax, just like the photo ID requirement. Blatantly unconstitutional, but we have an illegitimate Supreme Court.
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@yPhil there's already a law against being a criminal, that's what made them a criminal. There are also already laws against election tampering and fraud.
Two states let felons vote while in prison.
If they've "paid their dues", then most places (eventually) let them vote again anyway.
Blocking upwards of a third of the population from voting because it might stop a handful of "criminals" is fucking ridiculous. If we wanted to do *that* and have fewer false-positives, we could just block straight men from voting—they make up ~93% of inmates¹—and that's with the fact that queer folx have arrest rates ~2.3× higher than straight people² (because the system is fucking busted).
Also, your argument is bullshit.
¹ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/beyondthecount.html
