Donald Trump wants, for the November elections, proof of citizenship and, in his version, a passport at the polls. NOS went back to Kansas: a state law, SAFE, required citizenship papers from 2013. At the 2014 vote, tens of thousands stayed off the rolls. That is not the SAVE America bill in Congress. It is a state test. The test stuck. The federal bill has not.

Steven Fish, of Ottawa, Kansas, had to show a birth certificate. He did not know where it was. His stepfather, estranged. The military base where he was born, closed in the 1990s. Tad Stricker, in Kansas City, had the papers when he applied for a driving licence. Nobody asked. At the polling place, he was not on the list. He filled in a provisional ballot. It was not counted. Micah Kubic, of the ACLU: women also had to produce a marriage certificate if the name did not match the birth record. Half of Americans have no passport. In Kansas, even fewer.

SAFE was pushed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The research cited by NOS: some 30,000 registrations blocked without good cause. A few dozen non-citizens registered, often by confusion. A handful actually voted. The Heritage Foundation, over a quarter-century and more than a billion ballots: still fewer than ninety cases. Lana Nott, of the Campaign Legal Center: the penalty is prison or deportation; almost no one takes the risk. In 2018, Judge Julie A. Robinson struck the rule down as unconstitutional. Kansas paid the plaintiffs nearly two million dollars in legal costs. The appeal failed. The Supreme Court, in 2020, declined to revive the law.

Joe Ceballos, a mayor, a green-card holder, voted more than once for Trump. He resigned. A suspended one-year sentence and a fine. Then ICE took him. He is out on bail, waiting for a hearing. That is a state conviction and an immigration case. It is not proof that 30,000 registrations had to be cut. Republicans point to New Jersey: a software error, 6,600 wrongly registered, 400 of them voted. That is another state. Another mechanism. It is not Kansas 2014.

SAFE died in court. Trump produced the SAVE America Act, a nearly identical name. The House passed it. The Senate has not. PBS, an AP dispatch, 27 July: Trump told John Thune to cancel the August recess until the bill passed, or to kill the filibuster. Republicans hold 53–47. The threshold is 60. Thune has said he does not have the votes for the bill or for a rules change. A presidential decree with similar duties stalled before a judge. It is not law. It is not a November polling-place list on Washington paper.

NOS writes that a dozen Republican states already have similar rules; half would apply at the November vote. That is from NOS, not a count of ours. Fish: the same rights, the same rhetoric. Stricker: “We have seen this film, and the ending.” Without SAVE, Trump can still say, after a defeat, that there was fraud. With SAVE, Kansas showed what the paperwork costs: not an iceberg, an icicle, in Judge Robinson’s phrase.

Image: Aviper2k7, Kansas State Capitol, Topeka, 30 April 2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is of the building, not a 2014 polling place.

Sources consulted: Trump’s new voting law was already tested in Kansas in 2014, and it became chaos — NOS; Trump demands Senate cancel August break until it passes the SAVE America Act — PBS News / AP.