The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act, just passed in the House and is intriguing some states as it makes its way to the Senate floor. This act will require voters to present not only their driver’s license or valid ID, as has been the case, but also a document proving citizenship (like a passport or a birth certificate) with all information matching their first form of ID. Those backing this act say that it would not affect those who are already registered—so long as they don’t move or change their name. It would also require those wanting to vote to register in person at a local election office.
Sinisterly, the reasoning behind Republicans pushing it so hard is that they don’t want noncitizens voting for elected office, and it’s almost a moot point; it’s federally illegal already for noncitizens of the United States to vote in the elections for presidential and senatorial seats, and if it does happen (it’s very rare), it’s almost always a slip-up on the behalf of the election office. This doesn’t stop Trump and his Republican backers from proliferating misinformation that unregistered immigrants frequently vote in elections, and high voter turnout benefits exclusively the Democratic Party—despite this unfortunately not being the case in 2024. This nonsense was also the backing for Trump putting out an executive order essentially putting a mini SAVE Act in place for the time being and also requiring that all ballots be in and counted by election day nationwide.
The act is being paraded as a way to ensure that unregistered immigrants aren’t voting in elections—but it somehow becomes even more sinister when you realize that it means trans people and married people (historically women) who have changed their names, “coincidentally,” could have issues registering to vote. Roughly 69 million American women and four million American men do not have a birth certificate matching their current legal name; trans people only make up 1.6 million of the entire country’s population, so backhandedly, this is an overreaction to not only migrants, but trans people’s presence in America. It will also impact married people who have changed their last name to their partner’s family name or something else entirely, which, historically, has been the woman in heterosexual marriages. Is this an attempt to undermine women’s voting power and default to their husband, as women historically vote more Democratically than men do in America? Signs point to yes.
Unfortunately, this is just the latest hit in a barrage of orders directed at trans and female Americans since Trump’s inauguration. So far, the second coming of the Trump administration has fired at trans people in prisons, bathrooms, sports, healthcare, and many more. Many are also fearing for women’s reproductive rights under the current administration, after the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 under Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices.
