SAVE Act makes it harder for Republicans to vote, too. Think they know that? | Opinion
Why are Republicans so hell-bent on keeping people away from polling places?
It could be easy to mistake the so-called SAVE Act that passed the U.S. House April 10 as some sort of federal version of the voter ID laws on the books in several states. But the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act is so much worse than that.
Voter ID laws vary in the 36 states that require people to show some sort of identification at polling places, with some more stringent and disenfranchising than others.
The SAVE Act, by contrast, throws up impediments from the moment people attempt to register to vote, and then each time they try to re-register if they move or switch political parties. It would require voters to produce – in person – a passport or birth certificate to prove citizenship each time when registering. That probably sounds like no big deal if you have easy access to a passport or birth certificate. But there are millions of Americans with every right to vote who don't have those sorts of documents.
A 2023 study by some of the folks I spoke to for this column found that 21.3 million Americans – nearly a 10th of the electorate – "don’t have proof of citizenship readily available."
About half of America's citizens don't have a passport. And if you are a married woman who took her husband's last name – about 4 out of every 5 married women in America – your identification no longer matches the name on your birth certificate.
See the problem? If voter ID has long been a solution in search of a problem, the Republican-supported SAVE Act is a calamity in search of voters to victimize.
Do Republicans realize this hurts their voters, too?
This has always been more about messaging for the Republican Party than safeguarding elections. GOP leaders should be more careful about what they wish for.
The federal law, pushed by House Speaker Mike Johnson since last year to satisfy President Donald Trump's oft-repeated and completely debunked claims about widespread voting in America by noncitizens, would make it harder for all voters to cast a ballot, not just Democrats.
While voter ID laws are often contested because they disproportionately impact the elderly and voters of color, who may lean Democratic in their politics, the SAVE Act threatens to impose a bipartisan burden.
Liz Avore, a senior policy adviser at the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said registered Democratic voters are more likely to have a passport than Republicans.
"It doesn't seem like it would disproportionately benefit Republican voters," Avore told me about the SAVE Act. "But it creates a really strong narrative around arguing that this is a problem, that there are people who are not citizens who are voting, and there's no evidence at all that this is a thing that's happening."
Republican SAVE Act will disenfranchise millions of voters
This isn't theoretical. Arizona has a bifurcated voter registration system that requires residents to show proof of citizenship in state elections, but legal challenges blocked that requirement for federal elections.
Sean Morales-Doyle, the Brennan Center for Justice's director for voting rights, said a study this year of Arizona's 2024 election records showed that voters of color were half the electorate in federal elections there but just 36% in state elections. People in Arizona who only vote in federal elections are more likely to live in neighborhoods with lower incomes and lower education attainment, he said.
That's a working model for voter disenfranchisement. And it's no secret. So why are Republicans so hell-bent on keeping people away from polling places?
The SAVE Act is worse than Arizona's system, Morales-Doyle added, because the state at least keeps a record when voters prove their citizenship. The federal bill requires proving that over and over, with each registration.
Morales-Doyle predicts that the SAVE Act ‒ which he worries will "do massive harm to the way vote registration works in this country, and is going to immediately disenfranchise millions of people" ‒ will not pass in the U.S. Senate and ultimately will not become law.
I hope he's right.
SAVE Act would impact everything about campaigns and voting
Lauren Kunis, executive director at VoteRiders, told me that the SAVE Act, which offers zero remedies for the burdens it would create, would eliminate common ways that people register to vote. That means no voter registration drives, online registration or mail-in registration for any party.
It would also "impose enormous administrative and financial burdens on election officials across the country" as those underfunded and understaffed agencies scramble to cope with those changes, she added.
Kunis told me that, at best, the SAVE Act will make some people feel better about our elections but, at worst, will "immediately disenfranchise huge swaths of the electorate."
If you're Trump or Johnson, that probably sounds swell. If you're a voter in America, it should worry you.
"The way to build trust in electoral processes is not to shut people out and prevent them from exercising their freedom to vote," Kunis said.
This is all built on Republican lies about elections
Voter ID laws tend to poll well because the millions of people who have ready access to government identification probably don't spend too much time thinking about the millions who don't.
It's easy for Republicans to stake the "common sense" ground by noting that you need identification to fly domestically. Those same politicians show no interest in making identification easier to access for people who don't have it.
Hannah Fried, co-founder of All Voting Is Local, told me the voter ID debate "paved the way" for the unsupported claims that noncitizens are engaged in widespread and illegal voting in our elections.
"The SAVE act is going to have a real human toll that isn't just about like other people that you don't know," Fried said. "It's actually about you."
It all feels like an out-in-the-open attempt to restrict legal voting. And because this is constantly pushed by Republicans through unsubstantiated claims about widespread fraud, it looks directly targeted at non-Republican voters.
"If you can't attract people with your policies right, then you're going to look for ways to stop them from voting," said Fried, who told me she wants to ask the politicians eager to disenfranchise voters, "What are you so afraid of?"
Republicans trying to change who can vote just to appease Trump
The House speaker last year, pressed for proof that noncitizens vote in our elections, did what Republicans in the time of Trump always do – he offered nothing, then doubled down.
"We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections," Johnson said on the U.S. Capitol steps last May. "But it's not been something that is easily provable."
Here's what we all really know – Johnson's intuition is twisted by his constant need to satisfy Trump's fetishization of election fraud. Proof doesn't matter. Keeping Trump happy is all.
Johnson's colleagues in the Senate must know that. They should save him from himself and kill this bill.
Follow Paste BN columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.