Tell the U.S. Senate: BLOCK the SAVE Act Before It Silences Millions
Our right to vote is threatened.
As we wrote to you last week, the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act—the SAVE Act—has passed the U.S. House of Representatives. And now it goes to the Senate.
Don’t let the name fool you. It will not save democracy. It will strangle it, slowly and methodically, by requiring every new voter to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. Only original birth certificates, passports, or naturalization papers are accepted.
And if you need to update your registration or re-register—because you moved, got married and changed your name—you’ll have to start from scratch.
Millions of women—particularly the 69 million married women who changed their names—stand to be turned away from the ballot box.
To register to vote, you will be required to track down a decades-old birth certificate and marriage certificate. Or a court order you never had. Or spend over a hundred dollars on a passport you may never use. And if you live in a rural town, or on tribal land, or lack access to transportation—good luck getting to the nearest government office in time.
Contrary to Republicans’ misinformation, the “SAVE” act is not about stopping non-citizen voting, which is already illegal and virtually nonexistent. In truth, it amounts to a poll tax.
This is not a voter ID law. This is an obstacle course. A wall built against women.
As the Brennan Center for Justice notes, over 21 million citizens in this country don’t have either a birth certificate or passport. And even those who do may find they’ve fallen into bureaucratic limbo: mismatched names, outdated IDs, lost paperwork.
And who will be hit the hardest? Women of course. Young women. Older women. Poor women. Rural women. Black and Brown women. Widows whose marriages were decades ago. Survivors who changed their names to protect themselves. People who’ve always voted without issue—until now.
