There was a time when politicians running for office would try to get as many people engaged in an election as possible – the more voters, the more votes. But those days appear to have passed, with so much focus on gerrymandering districts, limiting polling places, and purging voter rolls. Despite protestations about these efforts as being aimed at limiting voter ‘fraud’ (a delusional concept, concocted from the minds of largely losing politicians), most of these efforts are centered around disenfranchising groups of voters. The SAVE Act is another example of this same tactic, with reminiscences of Jim Crow thrown in for good measure.

The SAVE America Act (named after a DHS database that is used to verify the citizenship status of one-time immigrants to the US, but in the Senate known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, S 1383) is being pushed by the Republican leaders in Congress and the President to add ‘common sense’ regulations to elections. (Ironic that the same Republicans that despise federal regulations are anxious to add these regulations to the lawbooks.) They say, nearly universally, that it’s about ‘secure elections’ or ‘election integrity’. Are they saying that they were elected illegitimately (since there is so much election fraud, their elections must be fraudulent, right?) But even the Heritage Foundation (the authors of the now-infamous Project 2025), have only been able to identify a miniscule fraction of cases of voter fraud over a 30 year period.

So what are they talking about fixing? Well, there are three primary areas of the bill – documentation requirements, how registration must be performed, and sharing of voter registration rolls to the Federal government. I don’t believe any of these areas would have stopped this Republican candidate for office from forging signatures on his candidate nomination form. Nor would these tactics have stopped Tina Peters from allowing a data breach from a partisan Republican activist. Nor would they have prevented this Republican Party official in Georgia from illegally voting nine times.

But they would make documenting your citizenship a hassle (and probably next to impossible for many). Because your RealID won’t cut it for voting – it doesn’t prove you’re a citizen (sorry Senator Mullin). A passport will (for $165), a certified birth certificate will (but it needs to match your current name as registered, or additional information will be required), an adoption record might, and some tribal IDs might (although the bill is very specific about only DHS issued cards qualifying). So what’s the big deal? Well, 11% of Americans do not have their birth certificates and 9% of Americans don’t have access to any sort of citizenship records. And married (or divorced) women, will need to prove that their birth certificate and marriage license (or name change record) provides a sufficient chain for proof of citizenship. This is confounded by our history around public accommodations that forced non-white Americans to lack access to hospitals and give birth in their homes prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and then the county clerks would not register their births. It is estimated that 20% of all black Americans born in their homes in 1940 do not have a birth certificate, with Jim Crow customs at work. Rural Americans are most likely not to have citizenship records. So, without documentation you either cannot register or you have to pay for documents – for the sole purposes of voting. If that is not a poll tax, in violation of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, I’m not certain what is.

Let’s say you do have the documents to prove your citizenship. The SAVE America Act requires every voter to provide their citizenship documentation in person at their local election office. We don’t all live near our election offices, or have a car to get there (8% of all households do not have a car, 17% of Black households, and 13% of Native American households). This study indicates that millions of people living in rural counties will need to travel for hours to register to vote, and the same goes for people living in metropolitan areas that use public transportation. And what happens when the clerk asks for more information – another round trip to a government office? What these procedures definitely end is same-day voting registration, voter registration drives by interest groups, and DMV office voter registration – essentially an application to vote will not get you on the voter rolls.

Finally, the bill sticks the Federal government’s fingers into voter roll information. It requires that each state essentially audit their voter rolls regularly for accuracy (which might entail requiring citizens to re-affirm their citizenship or re-register to vote) – this is something Secretaries of State do regularly anyways. It also requires that the states provide the Department of Homeland Security (those folks that have been mistakenly detaining US citizens in their hunt for the ‘worst of the worst’) with voter information to compare to their SAVE database, and purge their rolls if their isn’t a match. But their database, like the eVerify database used to verify work authorization, lacks reliability. A recent study in Texas indicated that SAVE too frequently identified citizens as non-citizens. And the result can be a knock on a citizen’s door by ICE – guilty until proven innocent.

There is already a law on the books requiring registered voters to be citizens – the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. There is also the US Constitution, and the Supreme Court, that has given the states the responsibility for the ‘time, places and manner’ of elections, with the courts extending this to registration. Is our federal government best suited to regulate lives or are representatives elected locally (and more present in our communities) best situated to govern our democracy? The Republican Party used to believe that local decision making was best – what happened to that party? Don’t save the SAVE America Act – let it die.

And the national disgrace continues…