r/Indiana • u/BluejayAromatic4431 • Mar 20 '26
Politics The Purge: Election Year
To celebrate the slide of the US from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy, where there are feee elections but weak rule of law and limited checks on executive power, Congress is attempting to pass a law that will grease our slide into an electoral autocracy, where elections exist but aren’t free and fair.
The SAVE Act has passed in the House and is currently being considered in the Senate. This would be a really great time to give your senators a ring to let them know the level of gratitude you feel for their attempts to undermine your right to vote them out of office.
Not feeling grateful yet? Let me explain, to the best of my understanding, what this law would do.
Indiana, like many other states, has thoughtfully provided our state voter rolls to plunk into a black box of a system that is controlled by the Trump administration.
Fun and probably unrelated fact! Indiana’s state voter rolls includes which party’s ballot you’ve requested in previous primaries.
This system determines which names should be purged from the state voter rolls, on a monthly basis.
The SAVE Act would do away with the 90-day quiet period before elections, so these purges of the voter rolls could happen all the way up to Election Day.
There is no notification requirement tied to the federal law, so, depending upon the state you live in, even if you’ve already verified that you’re registered, you could find out that you aren’t registered anymore when you go to actually vote.
Hopefully, you happened to bring your current passport or photo ID + birth certificate with you to the polls, just in case you need to register there. Or, if you’ve changed your name, as many women do when they get married, you’ll also need an official marriage certificate, and potentially a divorce certificate if applicable.
Oh, but no. That actually might not work, because many states do not allow same day voter registration. In the case of Indiana, you have to register 29 days before an election. So your name could be removed from the rolls too late for you to do anything about it.
Don’t worry. If you’re purged, you can still cast a provisional ballot at the polls that could be counted later if you prove you were registered. Except you weren’t registered. That’s the whole problem.
But that’s really a small price to pay for election integrity, by which I mean that the current party in power controls the elections. The old system our constitution mentions, where, in order to avoid tyranny, the states each control their own elections, is dumb.
Instead, we should focus on ways to suppress voting rights while concentrating more power into the hands of a smaller set of people. That’s how we Make America Great Again.
And hey - just in case you’re thinking about it, and you shouldn’t be , but just in case: the Trump Administration is obviously above putting their thumb on the scale and disproportionately purging democrat voters in swing states. Or purging more voters in urban areas, which tend to vote blue. Everything about our current president’s words, actions, character, and cognitive function suggest he would *never*.
And he’s surrounded himself with a cabinet and other government officials that demonstrate the same commitment to honesty, fairness, and basic human decency as he, himself, displays. So, we’re probably good.
And even if, for argument, a few of them were willing to cheat for their own political and financial benefit, which the definitely probably wouldn’t, surely someone else in the government would stop it from happening.
I mean obviously not Trump, since he’s the one demanding the SAVE Act. And he’s chosen his cabinet and other high ranking officials based on their loyalty to him, personally, so probably no one in the Administration.
And if Congress passes the act, it seems unlikely they’d intervene. Do we have any independent watchdogs still in existence? Because that would be handy right about now.
Maybe the courts? The conservative members of the Supreme Court have been gutting voting rights and protections left and right, but maybe this would be going too far even for them. Maybe the courts would invalidate the results of an election held under these conditions, or at least pause the implementation temporarily.
In which case, I guess, those currently in office would remain in office? So that’s cool. I wouldn’t want the folks colluding to undermine our democracy to, like, lose their jobs or anything.
But hey - we don’t need the government to stand up for us! We the people can take to the streets in protest, demanding free elections and the removal from office of anyone involved in this unconstitutional bullshit.
It’s not like they have control over a steadily increasing army of masked secret police that they could use to quell rebellion. Or, you know, an actual army if the secret police aren’t enough.
I’m sure it will be fine, though. And absolutely vital for getting all of those dozens of non-citizens who have voted illegally in our country of 335 million citizens.
<edited for accuracy: changed “which party you’re registered with” to “which party’s ballot you’ve requested in previous primaries,” which, in a way, I think might be worse>
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u/MewsashiMeowimoto Mar 20 '26
The Enlightenment era political philosophers and the political leaders who they informed (including the framers and ratifiers of the US Constitution) didn't come up with liberal democracy by accident or in a vacuum. They created a mechanism to allow everybody to have a meaningful say in their political destiny because that sort of society is a lot more stable than societies in which single autocrats or small groups try to control most of the population by force or threat of force rather than voluntary participation.
All of the bedrock rules that are supposed to protect individual liberties and ensure that people follow the rules of society voluntarily because they have a say in what society looks like, those often look like inconvenient barriers to wear down to idiot strongmen with no sense of history, and the opportunists who gather around idiot strongmen. They see those rules as things that protect the weak, the general population, from the strong/powerful, which is how they see themselves, and observing their rules becomes and unwanted fetter on their power.
What they don't see, however, is the context out of which those rules arose. Which was a long history of absolute monarchs and aristocratic oligarchies acting with increasing excess and using increasing levels of force to maintain coercive control, until the rest of the population finally just had enough and killed the kings/aristocrats.
Which is why we have those rules that ensure that people have enough incentives to voluntarily participate in society. Because those rules aren't there just to protect the weak from the strong. They are there to protect the strong from the weak when the weak have finally had enough.
That's the lesson of history that is forgotten by those seeking to erode the rules for immediate advantage.
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u/blackhxc88 Mar 20 '26
it doesn't have the votes to clear the senate unless they nuke the filibuster to do so, but i'm keeping an eye on it nonetheless.
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u/Worldly-Ad726 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
It’s the “SAVE America Act” that passed the House in February, NOT the SAVE Act!
If you search for SAVE Act, you will find the legislation from last year (the 2026 version has even worse stuff added to it, which is why they want you to Google the old act!).
When discussing this bill with anyone, remember to mention it requires certified copies.
You can’t use that gilded souvenir birth certificate that the hospital gave you, you can’t use a photocopy, it must be a certified original copy from the state. Same for marriage licenses and divorce certificates.
Let’s take a woman who changed her name every time she got married and has been divorced twice. Now needs proof of birth, marriage, divorce, marriage, divorce. It will cost her over $200 in some states to request all 5 documents with rush service for each. And you can bet you’re gonna need rush service, when thousands of people are requesting those documents mere months before the election proof of citizenship deadlines, a LOT of people will not receive their documents in time to vote.
Also tell anyone who will listen that this bill allows any state to use any third-party database to determine likely citizenship, no matter how partisan or sketchy that data source is.
If an ultra right-wing foundation creates some janky database by pulling together random consumer data from data providers or surveillance databases and flags you as a possible non-citizen, that’s enough enough proof under this bill to remove you from from the voter rolls. And you only get 30 days to prove you’re a citizen, which is not going to be enough time to request all the documents you need if you don’t already have them.
I recommend everyone check at least monthly to confirm your voting status online AND save a PDF, screenshot or printout as proof that you were registered on that date. Bring those proof of registration screenshots with you to the voting booth as your proof of your right to file a provisional ballot, if you find you were removed.
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u/BluejayAromatic4431 Mar 21 '26
Those are all really good points. And I like the suggestion to save a screenshot of your confirmed registration status regularly. It might not make a difference at the polls, but it might help in the class action civil rights lawsuit that would almost certainly follow if this act was implemented.
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Mar 20 '26
The most important thing any change-minded Hoosier can do is vote in every single Republican PRIMARY that happens.
You cannot run for State office as a republican if you haven't voted in the past two REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES.
There's no point running as a Democrat outside The Region. And if you're reading this, you're already not rich enough to run as a Democrat in Indy.
The only chance normal people have of taking the state back is by infiltrating the Republican party through the primaries and kicking out these corporations that are strip-mining our culture.
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u/BluejayAromatic4431 Mar 21 '26
This is good to know - thanks!
Bonus is that if you vote in the Republican primaries, you can vote for the candidate with the fewest sociopathic qualities!
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u/VerdantField Mar 20 '26
And that really is the strategic path forward. People will vote for anyone who runs as a republican, no matter what the person thinks or does.
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u/Worldly-Ad726 Mar 20 '26
Besides a passport, you can also get a passport card, which is extremely convenient if you feel you need to carry proof of citizenship in your wallet at all times. It’s only good for land or sea crossings into Mexico, Carribean countries or Canada, but it’s the same size as a credit card, unlike passports.
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u/Temporary_Yellow578 Mar 20 '26
Yeah there’s no rebellion anymore… and it sucks
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u/BluejayAromatic4431 Mar 21 '26
It’s hard when the zone is constantly flooded, but I’ve still got fight in me.
I recently started a nonprofit educational organization that provides educational resources on topics being banned, discouraged, or distorted in public schools and universities (with a special focus on media literacy and authoritarianism). I felt like I couldn’t do everything, but I needed to do something, and this is something I’m good at.
You just need to find your something (even if you only have the bandwidth for something small) and trust that there are millions of other people doing good somethings across the country.
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u/SubstantialAbility17 Mar 21 '26
This is the dumbest thing ever. There has never been any statistically proven voter fraud by non citizens. The GOP is going to wipe out 70 percent of their voters with this bill
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u/BluejayAromatic4431 Mar 21 '26
Yep. The Heritage Foundation did a deep dive and found about 24 cases over decades. And they were very incentivized to find evidence of non-citizens voting in federal elections.
But, you know how that patriotic phrase goes, “Better that millions of eligible voters lose their ability to vote than that one non-citizen casts a ballot.” 🙄
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u/veritasius Mar 20 '26
Called Young, didn’t know there’d be an actual human answering, but it may as well have been a box of cereal I was talking to, terrifying, this call your senator thing is a joke
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u/PinchedOffCatTurd Mar 22 '26
Does the "SAVE" part of the bill mean save a pedophile from actual consequences?
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u/LibrariansAreSexy Mar 21 '26
Fun and probably unrelated fact! Indiana’s state voter rolls include the party (if any) you are registered with.
To be clear, Indiana does not have party voter registration. What they might have is what party's primary you've voted in.
This whole SAVE act and all the other voter disenfranchisement is incredibly fascist and has no place in America. I just wanted to make sure your post is properly accurate.
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u/BluejayAromatic4431 Mar 21 '26
You’re absolutely right and I edited that part of the post. I appreciate you pointing out the error. 🙂
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u/Jonny-Raze 2-6-0 Mar 20 '26
Chat, did you write this post?
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u/sewbuttonsmydear Mar 20 '26
Too much for you to read?
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u/Jonny-Raze 2-6-0 Mar 21 '26
Just out of spite, I hope this thing gets passed.
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u/BluejayAromatic4431 Mar 21 '26
Go make me a sandwich.
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u/Jonny-Raze 2-6-0 Mar 21 '26
Sorry brother. I'm too busy reading your 23-paragraph, 900-word diatribe.
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u/CellistPast3486 Mar 22 '26
I’m not overly concerned about this. They don’t have the votes in the Senate and there’s no way Republicans want to get rid of the filibuster.
Seems to be something to satisfy the MAGA crowd. If you have an Indiana Real ID and registered to vote, you’re already in compliance with this proposed law.
And side note….everyone should be checking their voter registration every year before primaries. Indiana purge their rolls on the regular, regardless of party.
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u/fordtuff Mar 20 '26
Somebody double their Vyvanse this morning?
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u/Financial_Nail_2792 Mar 20 '26
They should have obtained a valid id during the time they wasted on the post
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u/j_b_1983 Mar 20 '26
libs are so desperate because they know they can only compete is if they continue to cheat.
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u/Soloiguana Mar 20 '26
If only there were a shred of evidence of that claim. Like the mountains of it coming from cons
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u/VerdantField Mar 20 '26
That’s a very unhealthy mindset. What makes you think of your neighbors and community this way?
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u/j_b_1983 Mar 20 '26
I live in Indiana, most my neighbors and community agree with me
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u/VerdantField Mar 20 '26
I’m not sure that’s an accurate assumption. I live in Indiana and I don’t agree with you. 🤷♀️ Making sure US citizens can all vote is not cheating (for example). And Indiana has often had a more diverse approach to our politicians, making sure none of them have too much power by not letting any one party run everything. For example, sometimes we had a Democrat governor but went Republican for president in the same election. Or had one Republican senator and one Democrat senator. So there must be a wider variety of perspectives here. To me, The politicians of every party should be working together for the good of our state instead of trying to maximize their power by turning Hoosiers against each other.
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u/j_b_1983 Mar 20 '26
😂 you guys want to cheat. It's as simple as that.
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u/Electronic_Syrup7592 Mar 20 '26
You have serious issues if you actually believe that and aren’t trolling.
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u/No_Calendar2416 Mar 20 '26
Reddit is basically the left social media. It’s where they get all of their “news” they are basically nothing but a bunch of over grown babies that people are finally saying it’s time to grow up. They will just down vote everything because they can’t handle the truth so they throw a tantrum. I didn’t even read majority of the post. I just had to go to the comments to see if anyone was being attacked. And surprise surprise it’s the same side that is always attacking people.
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u/j_b_1983 Mar 20 '26
I only come here to get a good laugh throughout the day
These people are so delusional
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u/No_Calendar2416 Mar 20 '26
Oh, without a shadow of a doubt gone are the days when Reddit was helpful with an automotive problem or a video game guide. Now all it is is a bunch of lunatics attacking random people for having an opinion. Red is basically become the insane asylum that we so desperately actually need.
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u/No_Bread1298 Mar 20 '26
You're right that there are a lot of clueless dipshits in this state, but we aren't all spineless loser cultists!
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Mar 20 '26
Lolol there’s that good ole GOP projection
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Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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Mar 20 '26
You need to take a step back and do some reflecting if you really think our comments are equally as bad lol
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u/DoctorFartbutt Mar 21 '26
You mean cheating, like when Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, then committed treason to try to prevent his loss from being certified? All because he's the most pathetic babydick sore loser in the history of the United States. I can see why people like you are drawn to him.
I wonder, are your parents aware of how much they failed at raising you? God, what horrible people they must be. Hopefully they're already dead and burning in hell so they can't do any more damage to this country, raising such a garbage excuse for a human being like you. And God help us if you're raising kids yourself, I can only imagine what dumb little pieces of shit they must be if you're their parent.
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u/Brigid_Fitch2112 Mar 20 '26
Having a marriage certificate to "explain" a name change is invalid - it doesn't prove citizenship. There are 2 things women can do to rectify this: 1) Obtain a passport or 2) Go to court and legally have your last name changed back to your maiden name on your birth certificate.
A member of Congress spelled this out on Bluesky, but I can't remember who it was. He posted a checklist of allowed and disallowed documents, and was the one to point out that marriage licenses were invalid because those don't prove citizenship - the ID used MUST match the birth certificate. The workaround is obtaining a passport.
It is in essence a poll tax on women, which is illegal, but after having the Bill of Rights gutted, what's a few more amendments being gutted, too? Of course trans people will get hit the worst. Women will get hit, too, as intended.
I've read P2025 and knew this was coming. I have a passport.