SAVE Act: Think you can vote under your married name? Think again.
Deprioritized for two years, the House suddenly wants the Senate to act. It would disenfranchise millions of voters. Are you one? (Midterms? Did someone say midterms?)
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, was first introduced by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX)1 in May 2024 as HR 8281. Deprioritized for almost two years, it’s now suddenly come alive again, now as HR 22 after its reintroduction by Roy in January 2025 with additional related bills. The current version would require photo ID-accompanied proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, which sounds bland enough, even patriotic.
If passed, it would immediately affect any voter registration application submitted in any state on or after the date of passage. While the states would be required to make substantive election processing changes, there is no funding for states to do so and no phase-in period. In other words, just in time for midterm chaos. Not to mention the included private ‘right of action’ allowing private individuals to sue their states if they don’t think the state is performing all this correctly.2 There’s a reason state legislatures aren’t enthused.
Why now?
It’s been a media blip on and off in those two years. The Republican House passed it almost a year ago and sent it to the Senate, where nothing happened, partly because of negative pubic reaction. But the coming midterms elections are causing substantial angst in certain DC halls and Dems have built a head of steam aheaad of the midterms on healthcare and ICE reform, bolstered by almost two thirds of the public angered by ICE “going too far” and anger about escalating healthcare costs. So Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is pushing the House to get the Senate to act on the bill as a way to divert Democratic Congressional attention, position Democrats, and distract from Democrats’ growing leverage on ICE reform. There are logistical issues to iron out in the Senate, but after calling for nationalization of elections last week, Trump has already signaled he wants this passed, without which nothing much happens in the Senate.
Well … doesn’t everyone have a photo ID proof of citizenship?
Even the relatively new REAL ID-compliant licenses only require proof of lawful status (such as U.S. citizenship, permanent residency, or valid visa), not exclusively US citizenship. REAL ID was designed back in 2005, although only recently finally implemented. Barring that, the only real one-document citizenship proof right now is passports. Without that, states running elections are stuck looking at multiple documents, a nightmare for millions of volunteer elections staff, not to mention a confused public.
At least half of the population doesn’t have (or otherwise need) a passport, which currently costs $165 new3 with a routine six week wait for the State Department to process after applicants obtain state-verified birth (and any name change/marriage) certificates for proof of citizenship under their current name and get the photos taken. But the biggest passport barrier that no one talks about may be securing the required in-person interview appointment anytime soon at some USPS office, often in the middle of nowhere.4 Of course, good luck wresting your birth (or other) certificates out of your state or country of birth before that at another cost of time and money.5
The Bipartisan Policy Center says these three demographics will be particularly at risk:
50% or more of registered voters who do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name.
11% of registered voters who do not have access to their birth certificate.
9% of all eligible voters who do not have, or do not have easy access to, documentary proof of citizenship.
Married and voting under your married name?
That won’t work under the current version of SAVE if you don’t also have a passport in your married name OR a birth certificate and valid proof of marriage/name change. If SAVE passes, wandering into a polling station expecting to vote as usual will be a rude awakening. Which is in itself odd: This is a Republican bill, but half or more of those most likely to be affected by this—30 million 45+ currently married women—vote Republican.
In fact, the in person audience for the first night of the Melania film was primarily older, conservative, White women who called it a Republican Girls Night Out. Of course, that was the heavily-publicized first night. Things have changed a bit since.6 But still. Well, perhaps Rs simply overlooked this issue; while almost a third of Congress is female overall, only 15% of Congressional Republicans are women.7
Who else is likely to be disenfranchised?
Anyone who doesn’t have or can’t afford a passport or doesn’t have a birth certificate in their name—and/or doesn’t know how to get one or simply can’t afford the time, hassle or money to do so. The population that will be hit the hardest is the 50% of the US population working multiple jobs to make an average of $50K/year—the people who keep the other 50% fed, vertical, moving, and functioning. As currently written, the SAVE Act nicely supports our recent twist into a plutocracy, with the affluent implementing policies that benefit them at the expense of lower classes.
If you want to see what that looks like in data from the Fed, click here and take a look at what’s happened in US wealth distribution since the Reagan administration. The bottom 50% of the population — half of our population — is that tiny red line at the bottom. By chance or intent, that’s who will get left out when it costs too much to vote.
What to do
Learn more about the SAVE Act suite of bills; see some resources below, with many more showing up every day on searches. Decide where you are on the issues; maybe you like some portions of it but not others. Then keep an eye on the news. Let your Congressional representatives know now how you feel about the bills; the House is generating the urgency. Click here to find House reps. And if the Senate gets active on it, call, email or write yours immediately. If it moves in the Senate, it will do so quickly. In the meantime, don’t let up on pressure over ICE. In addition to the midterms, that’s what this is all about. Know how your senators are positioning on the ICE issue and use the same link above to keep pressure on them about that.
More on the SAVE Act:
National Council of State Legislatures: 9 things to know about the proposed SAVE Act. This has a good list of questions to ask about your state’s process to ensure safe elections.
League of Women Voters: Tell Congress to oppose the SAVE Act suite of bills.
The Brennan Center for Justice: New SAVE Act bills would still block millions of Americans from voting.
The Bipartisan Policy Center: Five things to know about the SAVE Act.
Axios: SAVE America Act becomes catch-all for Trump’s election demands: Here’s what’s actually in it.
Chip Roy, the Policy Chair of the Freedom Caucus, is always a reliable signal on bill intent. Roy is running in 2026 to replace term-limited Ken Paxton as Texas Attorney General.
The legal field has to be the biggest beneficiary of our current policy strategies.
Renewals are $130. I’m unable to find anything that says definitively that the less expensive ($30) passport card will be accepted.
We just renewed our passports. After we put everything together for the renewal, we still had to have an in-person interview — now even for a renewal. We live 22 minutes from a city of 2 million people. The first time for an appointment at the USPS office nearest us was two months away. We were able to get an interview only three weeks out at a USPS location 40 miles away in a town of 14,000 people, all of which says a lot about how easy this administration wants to make getting a passport.
I recently paid for an expedited copy of a marriage-related certificate from the state where it occurred. A month later I got a form letter telling me what I did wrong. No, they didn’t return the check. Bureaucracy marches merrily on.
Those who saw Melania in person the first night weren’t the same people who bought tickets, so who knows what the first night demo really was. Reports indicate that the surprisingly high $7 million opening weekend box office for the documentary Melania was heavily influenced by bulk ticket purchases, with claims that those tickets were distributed to supporters to boost figures. By week two ticket sales dropped 67% even with military service members being pressured by their commanding officers to attend.