U.S. Rep. Chip Roy is behind a proposal that voting-rights groups say would amount to a “show-your-papers law.” Credit: Shutterstock / Philip Yabut

Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.

Between vomiting up claims that the COVID-19 pandemic was a hoax and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was the result of “woke DEI quotas,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy found time to write a bill that civil rights groups call one of the shittiest pieces of voting legislation in U.S. history.

The Austin-San Antonio congressman’s SAVE Act, which passed the GOP-controlled House on a 220-208 vote, would require Americans to show a valid passport or birth certificate to prove they’re a U.S. citizen before they can register to vote.

Setting aside the fact that stringent voter-ID laws are already in place, at least 21 million U.S. voters — or more than 9% — lack ready access to their passport or birth certificate, according to the voting rights-focused Brennan Center for Justice. An additional 4 million don’t have the documents at all because the paperwork has been lost, damaged or stolen.

As if that’s not bad enough, the SAVE Act creates special problems for people who changed their legal names through marriage, the majority of them women. An estimated 69 million women and 4 million men have last names that no longer match the ones on their birth certificates, according to the Center for American Progress.

The proposal now heads to the U.S. Senate. If passed there, it’s all but guaranteed President Donald Trump will sign it into law.

Roy and his Republican allies defend the bill by dredging up the repeatedly debunked claim that non-citizens regularly skirt existing voter ID laws and illegally cast ballots. However, there’s no evidence of widespread ballot fraud, according to voting experts, and existing penalties for non-citizens participating in elections are steep and well-enforced.

“This is not a voter ID law,” Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program told National Public Radio. “This is not a show-your-driver’s-license when you go to vote. This is a show-your-papers law.”

Many voters will need to start to start preparing now it they want to continue participating in the electoral process, Morales-Doyle also told NPR.

“That can be a lot of work,” he said. “It could mean spending a lot of money on a passport. It could mean going and finding your birth certificate and proof that you are the person on that birth certificate, because you’ve changed your name.”

Roy isn’t after voting security but voter suppression. It’s time this assclown’s constituents use their ballots to send him packing — while they still can.

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This article appears in Apr 16-29, 2025.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...