Making Registering to Vote as Awful as a Trip to the DMV
The House is fast-tracking the SAVE Act. Get your papers ready if you want to vote.
Imagine if registering to vote meant jumping through the same hoops as getting a driver’s license:
You can’t register online or submit your application by mail; the only option is to wait at the local election office.
You have to bring a pre-approved document (originals only, no copies or images on your phone ) or come back when you have the right papers.
You don’t just do this the first time you register; it’s every time you update your address or change your name.
That’s the world we might live in under the SAVE Act (H.R. 22), a bill that Republicans have pledged to fast-track for President Trump’s signature.
Here’s How It Could Work
The bill has vague requirements along with severe penalties for violating those requirements. A dangerous combination.
The main idea of the SAVE Act is that your local election official can’t accept your voter application unless you also provide a U.S. passport, birth certificate, or other ID that says you’re a U.S. citizen. (The idea is to “crack down” on the fake “problem” of noncitizen voting.)
If you use the standardized federal registration form that works in every state, the bill says you have to present your passport or birth certificate in person.
Here’s where things get problematic: if you use your state’s voter form instead of the standard federal form, the bill doesn’t say how you’re supposed to provide your document. It also doesn’t say whether electronic or photocopies are allowed.
The bill does, however, call for federal criminal penalties for election officials who accept registrations without the right proof.
So officials can choose: take a strict view of the law (in-person registration only, original documents only), or they can offer voter-friendly options like online or by-mail voter registration and wait for a knock on their door from our new Attorney General Pam Bondi and (likely) FBI Director Kash Patel.
Here’s Who the Law Would Impacts (Hint: Everyone)
The Brennan Center says the SAVE Act would disenfranchise 21 million Americans who don’t have easy access to a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers.
Brennan’s always-excellent Wendy Weiser and Andrew Garber tell us that
voters of color (11% of whom lacked access to citizenship documents as compared to 8% of white Americans), voters who change their names (most notably, married women), and lower income voters would be most significantly affected.
But the law would touch anyone and everyone:
How many seniors who just moved from home to assisted living will be physically unable to stand in line at the election office to update their address?
How many North Carolinians lost their birth certificates to Hurricane Helene and didn’t have time to get a replacement before the voter registration deadline?
How many working parents with two or three jobs even have time for this?
The SAVE Act would also spell the end for one of the leading tactics of the civil rights movement and generations of organizers who have sought to change the face of political representation in America: voter registration drives. Even if photocopies were allowed, the logistics of making copies and potential legal liability of retaining voters’ passport and birth certificate images would likely shutter most nonprofit registration operations.
Remember the golden rule of new voting laws: they do more harm than good. They disenfranchise more than they stop fraud.
That’s true for the SAVE Act by orders of magnitude.