STOP the SAVE Act

 

The SAVE Act is scheduled for a vote in the US House THIS WEEK.

We need every single person to take action NOW - email and call their elected representatives to demand they vote NO on this disastrous bill.

From Center for American Progeess - The SAVE Act would disenfranchise millions of voters

Quick summary

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require all American citizens registering to vote or updating their registration information to present documentary proof of citizenship in person. For the vast majority of Americans, this would be a passport or birth certificate.

Government-issued driver’s licenses—including REAL IDs—as well as military or tribal IDs do not satisfy the bill’s requirements.

The legislation would invert the responsibility to verify a person’s eligibility and citizenship status from election officials and the government onto every single American citizen, making citizens convince the government that they’re eligible to exercise their right to vote.

The SAVE Act would change the way all citizens register to vote upon enactment. It would upend online voter registration, make it impossible to mail in a registration application, and eliminate voter registration drives.

Statistics

• Approximately 146 million American citizens do not possess a valid passport—for context, 153 million Americans voted in the 2024 presidential general election:
• High rates of passport ownership are overwhelmingly concentrated in blue states, while low rates are concentrated in red states.
• In seven states, less than one-third of citizens have a valid passport: West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.
• Only in four states do more than two-thirds of citizens have a valid passport: New York, Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey.
• 84 percent of women who marry change their surname, meaning as many as 69 million American women do not have a birth certificate with their legal name on it and thereby could not use their birth certificate to prove citizenship. The SAVE Act makes no mention of being able to show a marriage certificate or change-of-name documentation.
• The SAVE Act poses a serious socioeconomic issue that would disproportionately impact working-class and lower-income Americans:
• Only 1 in 4 Americans with a high school degree or less have a valid passport.
• Only 1 in 5 Americans with income below $50,000 have a valid passport.
• Young Americans (those ages 18 to 29), those with college and postgraduate levels of education, wealthy Americans, and those who identify as liberal or Democrat are the most likely groups to possess the required forms of documentation. “Coastal elites” are the least likely group to be adversely affected by the bill.
• Republicans are less likely to possess a passport, and conservative and Republican-leaning women are twice as likely to have changed their surname.