TAKE ACTION: Ask your Representative to vote NO on the SAVE Act.
We call on Congress to reject the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, H.R. 22, which could go directly to a House floor vote this month, skipping committees as one of 12 bills identified for fast tracking. A companion bill, S.128, has also been filed in the Senate where it would likely need to overcome the filibuster.
This bill, on its surface, requires proof of citizenship for registering to vote in all federal elections. However, existing law already does that. All federal voter registration forms include a checkbox requiring registrants to positively affirm citizenship. Violating that is punishable and instances of non-citizens voting is exceedingly rare. Instead of solving a real problem, the SAVE Act would have disastrous effects on our work, election official workloads, and eligible voters across the nation.
The SAVE Act’s would require all voters to provide, documentary proof of citizenship – a passport or birth certificate (with a photo ID) in most cases – anytime they register or update their registration. A Real ID would not be acceptable (it is only proof of lawful residence, not citizenship), nor would military IDs, without accompanying documentation like a birth certificate. What’s more, the law as written suggests the proof be presented in person. No allowance is made for online submissions or mailing copies.
As a result of these onerous requirements, tens of millions of eligible citizens could be barred from voting, in addition to the negative impact on the work of nonprofits doing nonpartisan voter registration work.
- The SAVE Act would effectively be the end of all third party voter registration drives. Since election officials must review the proof of citizenship, and no allowance is made for copies, third party groups would be unable to collect registration forms with accompanying proof of citizenship. Additionally, nonprofits would not have the option of registering voters online (see below).
- The SAVE Act makes no allowance for proof of citizenship to be submitted online. This would render the online voter registration systems currently running in 42 states useless, forcing election officials to revert to more far more costly and labor-intensive in-person registration.
The two impacts above would radically upend the work on nonprofits doing voter registration across the nation. The most nonprofits would be able to do is talk about the importance of registering, educate voters about what documents they would need, then send people to their local election office to actually register in person. Millions would simply not register.
The SAVE Act would also overwhelm election officials, leading to long lines for voters and dramatically increased costs for state and local governments. As of 2022, only 5.9% of voters registered to vote in person at election offices. While 55% of registrations are collected through motor vehicle departments, the vast majority of states now do license renewals online. All registrations currently collected online, whether through a motor vehicle department or state election’s office, or by mail, would likely have to be done in person. Election officials on both sides of the aisle have serious concerns about the additional costs required.
Then there is the highly discriminatory impact of the law on voters, disenfranchising tens of millions of eligible citizens.
- Both income and education level are major factors determining whether or not someone has a passport. Voters with higher incomes and more education are far more likely to have a passport. People with household incomes over $100K are three times as likely to have a current passport as those with incomes below $50,000. Residents of northeast and west coast states are more likely to have passports than others.
- Birth certificate requirements, even if voters can find them, are also problematic. People could be barred from voting because of birth certificate name mis-matches if they took their spouse’s name or changed their name for other reasons. Among the various groups impacted, as many as 69 million American married women do not have a birth certificate with their legal name on it.
- The in-person requirement for presenting the documents will be a barrier to those with limited access to transportation. Voters with disabilities and seniors who cannot easily get to an election office, as well as rural voters, would be especially challenged. Frequent movers will also be faced with the added burden of providing these documents in person every time they move. Many people simply won’t bother and become unregistered, non-voters.
- There are the many Americans, including lower-income individuals, younger first-time voters, and new citizen voters, who rely on third party registration drives to bring them into the system that has otherwise ignored them.
Even if the documents could be submitted online, over 21 million otherwise eligible American voters don’t have these proof of citizenship documents readily available. In the end, tens of millions of eligible American citizens who don’t have access to the required documents or can’t get to a government office in person would be unable to vote – all to prevent an exceedingly small number of non-citizens, a few dozen perhaps, from voting.
TAKE ACTION: Ask your Representative to vote “NO” on the SAVE Act.
And don’t forget to spread the word about the SAVE Act and ask those in your network to do the same.
Additional Resources:
- Summary of the SAVE Act from the Brennan Center
- Summary of SAVE Act from the Center for American Progress
- Bipartisan Policy Center on the SAVE Act
- Text of SAVE Act as filed in the House of Representatives
Notes
The text of the bill includes other proofs of citizenship that do not in practice exist, including a “REAL ID Act of 2005 that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States.” Citizenship is not a requirement for the REAL ID and nowhere on the REAL ID does it indicate one’s citizenship status. It also lists “A valid government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State or Tribal government showing that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.” State Driver’s Licenses, the most common form of government-issued photo ID, do not list “place of birth.” What remains in the bill is the requirement to provide either a passport or a birth certificate (or naturalization documentation, etc.) in conjunction with a photo ID. Military IDs, like state Drivers License, must be accompanied by proof of US birth.
The text of the bill makes no clear allowance for documents to be submitted digitally online or as copies via mail. The text reads that potential voters must “present” documentary proof of citizenship. It does not say attach, include, or upload. While there is no reference to online voter registration, there is a section that references mail-in registration. It states that for any mail-in registration to be valid, the voter must subsequently go “in person” to present the documentary proof of citizenship before the mail-in registration can be effective, which renders the mail-in registration meaningless. Absent text it the bill to the contrary, any online registration would almost certainly be subject to the same standard.
