Naomi Girson | opinions editor

Over the past year, President Donald Trump and his administration has made multiple attempts to change the way Americans vote, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress to decide on whether or not these changes should be implemented.

Ruth Quint, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh, wants voters to recognize that despite the Trump administration’s attempts at changing election rules, they should treat this year’s election the same as any other.

“One of my big goals this year is to make sure people know that all of the things that have been tried to suppress the vote have so far failed either legislatively, or they’ve failed in court,” Quint said. “The only active voter suppression going on is the fear of voter suppression and the confusion about voter suppression. Keep calm and vote on.”

In June, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or the SAVE act, failed to pass in the United States Senate.

Had it passed, the SAVE Act would have required voters to present valid documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, something many American citizens do not have readily available to them, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

“The SAVE Act is about requiring all voters to comply with a series of really burdensome requirements in order to be able to vote,” said Heather Szilagyi, legal counsel on the voting rights team at Campaign Legal Center.

On Sept. 14, the U.S. Supreme Court left a preliminary injunction in place that, if lifted, would have allowed the U.S. Postal Service to enforce restrictions on mail-in voters. This case began as a result of a March 31 executive order signed by Trump.

The court said that they did not believe the government would succeed in their challenge if the injunction was lifted, according to the court order. In the concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he also felt state and local election officials would not have enough time to effectively implement the changes.

This ruling did lead to more mail-in ballot applications closer to election day, in Allegheny County, said Susan Rogers, the public information officer for the Allegheny County Office of Elections.

“After the recent Supreme Court decision, we had a surge of people applying for mail-in ballots,
which threw our timing off a little bit. Usually, we get lots of mail-in ballot applications early in the process and then they taper off,” Rogers said.

According to data from the Allegheny County Office of Elections Mail-In Ballot Dashboard, they have sent out more than 147,000 ballots to voters, a number that Rogers expects to keep growing until the Oct. 27 deadline to apply for one.

When it comes to making changes to voting in elections, Jake Schiller, a teaching assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Pittsburgh, said they should be evaluated by two main factors: how much of a problem they are solving and how much they infringe on voters being able to cast their ballot.

The reasons for these changes can often be revealed through the agenda of the party trying to pass it, he said.

“We don’t always need to know what their intention was. We usually can infer that from that balancing scheme,” Schiller said. “But we look at a bunch of the proposals that have come out recently. The SAVE Act was a piece of legislation that would disenfranchise many voters while not solving any real problem.”

Despite many of these efforts being throttled by the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress, Schiller said any change to voting could have a large impact.

“[The Trump Administration] only needs one of them to work,” Schiller said. “Whereas Democrats are having to think about every possible thing and they can’t be prepared for everything. And that’s where a lot of the concern comes, is just there’s a big unknown about what’s going to be attempted.”

But Schiller said legislation is not the only way the Trump administration could affect voters.

The White House could try to disrupt the election from within by changing postal routes, limiting overtime or cutting postal worker staff around the country to put a stop on mail-in ballots or prevent them from getting counted in time, according to Schiller.

Some politicians fear they could also bring the National Guard or Immigration and Customs Enforcement to polling locations as an effort to intimidate voters, according to Schiller.

“Their hope is likely to just create enough confusion and chaos that they have enough room to influence things because if certain deadlines are not met then partisan politics gets to play more of a role in deciding how to handle things,” Schiller said. “And that’s where they could then have the power.”

Naomi Girson can be reached at girsonn@duq.edu