A Republican proposal ostensibly aimed at discouraging noncitizens from voting in federal elections — an act that is already illegal and rarely happens, experts say — could have another effect: discouraging women from taking part in democracy.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, reintroduced by Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas this legislative session, seeks to amend the National Voter Registration Act to mandate that eligible voters provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, a response to unsubstantiated concerns of widespread noncitizen voting. Voting rights advocates and legal experts worry, however, that the bill also threatens to restrict voting access for women — and millions of other Americans — by making it harder for them to prove they are eligible to cast a ballot.
Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters of the United States, told Salon that the bill would create "substantial barriers" for eligible voters that would especially burden low-income and working Americans, who may not be able to afford fees for document copies or have to take time off work to acquire them.
"While on its face, it appears to address election security, this measure deceptively creates unnecessary obstacles to voting when adequate safeguards against non-citizen voting exist," Stewart said in a statement. "The timing and scope of these requirements will prevent individuals from voting rather than [be] meaningful election security reform."
The bill, which had been passed by the House but stalled in the Senate during the last legislative session, is billed as an effort to prevent voter fraud and ensure only citizens participate in U.S. elections. Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from registering to vote and participating in federal elections, and research indicates noncitizen registration and voting is exceedingly rare. The 1993 NVRA also requires voters to attest to their eligibility on their registration application under the penalty of perjury.
Acceptable documentation to prove one's citizenship under the SAVE Act includes an ID that fulfills the 2005 REAL ID Act's requirements; a valid U.S. passport and a valid government-issued photo ID when presented alongside a certified birth certificate; an extract from a U.S. hospital record of birth; a final adoption decree; or an American Indian Card, among other documents.
A problem that opponents of the bill flag concerns Americans' access to proof of citizenship. While the majority of Americans have documents proving their citizenship readily available, a 2023 Brennan Center and University of Maryland Center for Civic Democracy and Engagement survey found that at least 9% of American citizens of voting age do not, amounting to around 21.3 million people. That disparity is more pronounced among Americans of color, 11% of whom lack ready access to citizenship documents compared to just 8% of white Americans.
For Americans' who do have documents proving their citizenship readily available, the primary document type they'd reach for is their birth certificates. More than 140 million American citizens do not have a U.S. passport, according to a Center for American Progress report.
That's where the SAVE Act presents an additional hurdle. If someone's birth certificate does not match their legal name — which is more often the case for married women who have taken their spouse's last name — they may have to provide additional documentation to register to vote under the measure. Marriage certificates and name-change documents are not listed in the bill as accepted documents to prove citizenship.
Per the CAP report, some 69 million voting-age women who have taken a spouse's last name would then face obstacles voting under the SAVE Act.
As currently written, the hurdles the bill creates could serve as a disincentive to marriage — or, at least, traditional marriage — agued Marcia Zug, a University of South Carolina School of Law professor whose research focuses on immigration law, reproductive rights, federal Indian law and marital law.
"If you want to be cynical — there a lot of policies attacking women — the way it struck me, almost, was a kind of return to coverture," Zug said in a phone interview, referencing the colonial legal practice that held women had no legal identity of their own. "'Married women don't need to vote, right? They're married. Their husbands will take care of their interests.'"
"I don't know it's that thought out — that's maybe being ungenerous," she added, emphasizing that "it's concerning to me."
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In a statement to Salon, primary bill sponsor Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, called claims that the SAVE Act would make it harder for married women to vote "absurd armchair speculation being spun up by media outlets who care more about clicks than reality." He emphasized the "myriad ways for people to prove citizenship" provided in the proposal and pointed to a safeguard in the bill's language intended to address discrepancies in proof of citizenship documents.
That provision requires that each state establish a process that allows a voter registration applicant to provide "such additional documentation to the appropriate election of the State as may be necessary to establish that the applicant is a citizen of the United States."
“This bill isn't being attacked because it'll exclude citizens from voting — it won't," Roy said. "It's being attacked because the policy is wildly popular with the American people, its opponents want and need illegals to vote, and they'll use anything they can to attack it.”
But Joanna Grossman, an SMU Dedman School of Law professor who specializes in women and the law, said that even if the legislation includes a mechanism allowing for states to overcome the discrepancies in documentation, it can still dissuade eligible voters from exercising their right to vote.
"Any administrative burden you add to voting just decreases the number of people affected who can vote," she told Salon in a phone interview.
The added difficulty in registering to vote will likely dissuade some eligible voters from bothering to, while a swath of others may be unable to successfully obtain documentation needed to do so due to procedural hurdles, Grossman said, citing as an example the recent challenges Texans faced in getting IDs renewed and reissued ahead of an election.
"It doesn't really matter what the formal rule is," Grossman said. "You're just adding administrative obstacles that are, in fact, going to mean that lots of people who should be eligible to vote can't vote, and those people will be almost 100% women just based on name-changing practices."
Similar requirements implemented for state and local elections in Arizona and Kansas in 2022 and 2011, respectively, either threatened or led to the denial of tens of thousands of legitimate voter registrations. As a result of its law, some 31,000 Kansans — around 12.4% of new voter registrations between Jan. 1, 2013 and Dec. 11, 2015 — had their registration applications canceled or suspended because they could not provide the required documentation, according to court documents from a 2020 U.S. Court of Appeals case challenging the law.
The process of addressing discrepancies that Roy's bill would establish, Stewart said, "ignores the documented failures of these policies at the state level." The legislation would also fundamentally change how millions of Americans register to vote by, in practice, eliminating online and mail-in registration and voter registration drives, she added.
"This bill is not solving a problem; it’s creating one by making it harder for eligible Americans to vote," Stewart said.
She called on Congress instead take "immediate action" to support measures that protect democracy, safeguard voting rights and ensure fair access to the ballot without creating barriers like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, and the Native American Voting Rights Act.
"Leaving it to the states is not a solution, as we saw in Arizona and Kansas," Stewart said of the SAVE Act. "The bill is another barrier to voting, and Congress should not and will not pass it."
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