What is the SAVE America Act?
According to the Center for American Progress:
- The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require all American citizens registering to vote or updating their registration information to present documentary proof of citizenship in person. For the vast majority of Americans, this would be a passport or birth certificate.
- Government-issued driver’s licenses—including REAL IDs—as well as military or tribal IDs would no longer be sufficient to prove citizenship.
- The legislation would take responsibility for verifying a person’s eligibility and citizenship status away from election officials and the government and place it on every single American citizen. We would have to convince the government that we’re eligible to vote.
- The SAVE Act would change the way all citizens register to vote upon enactment. It would upend online voter registration, make it impossible to mail in a registration application, and eliminate voter registration drives.
Why is it a threat to democracy?
We don’t have one election in the United States; we have thousands. The country is divided into thousands of different pieces, and each one has a specific ballot. States and counties depend on volunteer labor to pull off an election.
The SAVE Act will make this task harder. It will require voter registration personnel to verify that you are a US citizen, as well as your current address.. For the 48% of us who have a current passport, this is straightforward. For the 52% who don’t, a certified birth certificate is required, and the name on it must match your current ID. If you got married or changed your name for any reason, additional documentation must be presented, and the voter registration people must verify that they are authentic.
The additional workload on local officials will cost money; either taxes must go up, or other expenses cut back. If the voter registration people make a mistake, they are liable for criminal penalties, including jail time. This will make it very difficult to recruit the volunteers needed to actually conduct the election.
Estimates vary, but between 7 million and 21 million citizens will not be able to vote if the SAVE Act becomes law. Absentee and mail-in voting will be essentially impossible, because you will have to go to the voter registration office in person with your documents.
A better approach is where government officials, such as those at the department of motor vehicles, consult existing government data to verify a voter’s citizenship status. Most states already have this type of verification system in place, making the SAVE Act what one commentator called “a solution in search of a problem”. Only in the relatively few cases where the government records are incorrect does the citizen need to provide documentation that proves citizenship.
What can you do?
The House passed the SAVE Act in February. At the time of this writing, the Senate is not in session, so no vote on the act has been scheduled. Many commentators predict that the SAVE Act will not be passed by the Senate, but we need to act now to ensure that outcome. So call or write to your Senators and tell them you oppose the bill!
Contact information for Senators Crapo and Risch can be found here.
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This is the first article in our new series about 5 Big Issues for 2026.
The featured image above is by Lisa Johnson on pixabay.com.
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