Right now, President Trump and Republican lawmakers are backing a new voting reform act that could further complicate the (already complicated) voting process. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed the Safeguard Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE), which would require voters to provide documentation, like a birth certificate or a passport, in person when registering to vote for a federal election. That means your driver’s license or state ID wouldn’t suffice. It also states that people would need to show this documentation once again when casting their vote, unless they’re in a state that’s been regularly submitting voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans who support the SAVE Act say it will offset voter fraud. During Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Trump urged the Senate to pass the act “to stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections.” According to Trump, “the cheating is rampant in our elections.” But experts say this is far less prevalent an issue than he claims it to be. In 2024, the Center for Election Innovation & Research reported that a database search of billions of ballots cast over 40 years of US elections only found roughly 1,000 individual examples of voter fraud.
How will the SAVE Act impact married women and marginalized groups?
Right off the bat, birth certificates are notoriously hard to track down. And even if you do have yours on hand, you could run into issues while voting if your legal name doesn’t match the one on your birth certificate. So, the SAVE Act would disproportionally affect married women who’ve taken their partner’s last name (which, according to Vote Riders, is over 60 million Americans), as well as transgender people who’ve changed their government name. And it wouldn’t allow voting registrants to submit documentation of their name change (like a marriage certificate) instead.
Those in favor of the act say people with legally changed names are still able to present their passport as their version of a valid ID. But only 51 percent of Americans have a working passport. And opponents of the SAVE Act say financial and bureaucratic constraints can prevent people from obtaining one, especially on a time crunch. (Let’s also not forget that GOP lawmakers have already tried to give Secretary of State Marco Rubio the power to deny or revoke passports.)
Beyond all these circumstances, a study from the Brennan Center found that 9 percent of voting age American citizens don’t have proof of citizenship readily available because the documents are lost, stolen, or destroyed (that’s 21.3 million people). And among Americans of color specifically, that stat jumps to 11 percent.
Critics of the SAVE Act have called it the GOP’s attempt at voter suppression, flagging how it would specifically impede groups who already face systemic voting hurdles (like poll closures in Black and brown neighborhoods, and restrictions on absentee voting in certain states).
Xavier Persad, the senior policy counsel for ACLU’s National Political Advocacy Department, called it “another thinly veiled attempt to interfere with our elections,” in a recent statement. “Laws like this have historically resulted in many eligible citizens being delayed or denied access to the ballot due to paperwork issues, database mismatches, or bureaucratic error,” he continued.
“These attacks on the freedom to vote and local election administration are occurring while federal immigration agents continue to brutalize our communities, kidnap our neighbors, and violate constitutional protections that are foundational to our democracy.”
The League of Women Voters also issued a denunciation of this bill, citing how much it would disenfranchise marginalized groups. “Under the false banner of ‘election integrity,’ lawmakers are advancing policies designed to block lawful voters from participating in our elections,” their statement read. “This is modern-day voter suppression, plain and simple.”
When will the Senate vote on the SAVE Act?
According to Majority Leader John Thune, the Senate will vote on the SAVE Act this week, but he said that Senate Republicans can’t agree on whether they want to force Democrats who oppose the bill to filibuster. “If you go down that path, you’re talking about the need to table what are going to be numerous amendments and an ability to keep 50 Republicans unified pretty much on every single vote,” he said to reporters Wednesday. So Democrats will likely block the bill, but the GOP’s very vocal support for the SAVE Act has done its own work, sowing more unfounded distrust in our election process ahead of the midterm elections.
If you want to let your representative know how you feel about the SAVE Act before voting goes down, you can send them an email or give their office a quick call. Here’s a step-by-step guide (with a suggested email template) on how to do so.
Annabel Iwegbue is a culture editor at Cosmopolitan, where she primarily covers pop culture, lifestyle, relationships, and digital trends. She previously wrote for Harper's Bazaar, The Knockturnal, and Black Film. She's originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and Cinema Studies from New York University. You can check out some of Annabel’s work here and also find her on Instagram and Twitter.
