If you move in-state or out of state, or if you plan to vote for a first time or must re-register because of non-voting for consecutive years – should President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act is made into law, it will be far more difficult for voter registration.
And the new requirements – must provide in person to an election official a US passport or birth certificate to register — are being pushed for adoption by Trump and the Republican-majority Congress before this midterm election.
Most Americans agree that voter identification to become eligible to vote is a sound and reasonable requirement, but the SAVE America Act would require Americans to prove their citizenship with documentation unavailable to millions and upend the way American citizens register to vote.
Millions of Americans do not have a US passport, costing nearly $200 to acquire. According to the US Department of State, approximately 146 million American citizens do not possess a valid passport—for context, 153 million Americans voted in the 2024 presidential general election. Could this disproportionately disenfranchise poorer Americans? Yes, only 1 in 5 Americans with income below $50,000 have a valid passport.
Furthermore, most Americans do not have a copy of their birth certificate. For the millions of women – 84% of women who marry change their surname – their birth certificate name must match their current name otherwise that documentation cannot be used.
No longer would government-issued driver’s licenses — including REAL IDs — as well as military or tribal IDs, meet the bill’s requirements for voting registration.
The SAVE America Act has many other disturbing features including limiting mail-in voting which has become the preferred and most effective way of voting for many Americans including in Hawaii when upon implementing universal mail-in voting in the year of the COVID-19 outbreak, voter participation has gone way up.
Forty-two states permit online voter registration. That no longer will be permitted, nor will mail-in voter registration or community voter registration drives. Why? All voter registration must be completed in person before an official election worker.
Here is a shocking statistic: for the 2022 cycle, of the 80.1 million Americans who registered to vote or update their voter registration, only 5.9% did it in person at an election office. Will Americans make that extra effort to register to vote in person? Most likely, fewer.
Is this a voter suppression bill?
The added barriers of the SAVE America Act to voting and the potential for millions to be disenfranchised from voting due to difficulty, cost or a lack of time, leads most logical – not cynical – Americans to believe that this bill is in fact a voter suppression bill.
Upon examining closer, this bill is not designed for added voter security, the aim is mass disenfranchisement to keep millions of Americans from voting. Why would Republican politicians be in favor of this?
Broad participation in elections hurts Trump and Republicans
Senator Mike Lee of Utah perhaps revealed this administration and Republicans’ real agenda in pushing for the SAVE America Act. He circulated polling showing his party poised to lose its Senate majority, arguing the bill could “turn this around.”
While data suggests that some of the requirements like providing a US passport to register would impact deep red states where residents there have the lowest rates of US passports in possession, they’re considered safe red states and most likely these states will not suddenly become blue. It is in the purple states with key traditional Democrat voters where these requirements could sway the election to the side of Republicans. Election experts say women, the poor and Black Americans would be hardest hit should this bill become law.
Trump has emphasized that the SAVE America Act is his top legislative priority, that it “supersedes everything else” in Congress. He said it himself that the bill’s passage “will guarantee the midterms.” That speech suggests political motivation, not one driven by an independent motivation for enhanced voter security.
The very premise of the SAVE America Act itself is one based more on myth than fact – that there are widespread systemic voting problems, specifically that non-citizens are voting in mass, which data confirms not to be true in multiple studies. Again, as has been Trump’s go-to for his entire political career, blame and scapegoat the undocumented. Illegal voting, especially by non-citizens has been found to be extremely rare. Voter fraud accusations have always been a political weapon and not based on reality.
Voter identification certainly is very important. But many of the SAVE America Act features are just excessive barriers. Yes, voting should be secure, but it should also be easy in order to maximize citizen participation.
We encourage our readers to call their US Senators and ask them to vote against this undemocratic bill, the SAVE America Act. It was defeated last year, and it must be blocked again, especially before this year’s midterm elections.
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