Voter Disenfranchisement On The Way If SAVE Act Is Passed
This country should be encouraging, not discouraging voting through such underhanded efforts like the oxymoronic, Republican “SAVE Act.”
The “SAVE Act” is a shameful, dishonest effort to disenfranchise voters particularly people of color. It is being hyped by trump and Republicans as a way to end voter fraud and create voter accountability. Actually, the act is an attempt to return a 21st century version of the dreaded poll tax, which was used in the Jim Crow era after the Civil War and the period of reconstruction, to keep newly enfranchised African Americans from voting.
The SAVE Act barely won House support on Feb. 11, passing by a vote of 218–213, with one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, joining Republicans to vote yes. A vote in the Senate is pending.
True to form, trump ignored the facts with his own, trademark incendiary comments during Tuesday’s marathon, State of the Union address when he urged the Senate to pass the SAVE Act. Trump falsely claimed that “both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on the policy that we just enunciated.”
Trump said Democrats have not supported the bill because “they don’t wanna do it, why would anybody not want voter ID? One reason! Because they wanna cheat. There’s only one reason.”
He repeated, that the “only way” Democrats can be voted into office is by cheating through voter fraud.
Voter disenfranchisement has deep roots in American history through methods like voter ID laws, purging voter rolls, and implementing restrictive voting procedures that disproportionately impact certain communities. Too often, African Americans have been intimidated against voting through widespread violence by whites.
President Andrew Johnson, a racist who succeeded Abraham Lincoln, set the tone for disenfranchising African Americans in his Dec. 3, 1867, annual message to Congress.
“Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism,” Johnson said.
The SAVE Act is an extension of trump’s interminable, neurotic fixation on the myth that he created that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race only because of widespread voter fraud. Absent the fictional voter fraud, trump would have been reelected, or so he claims.
Phony Solution
The SAVE Act is a fake solution in search of a non-existent problem. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and research finds just 0.04 percent of voter verification cases are returned as non-citizens. The act would prevent millions of eligible voters who don’t have immediate access to the specific documents required in the bill from being able to exercise their right.
Regardless of trump’s persistent and unsubstantiated claims, there was no significant voter fraud in 2020 and trump lost. Undocumented Americans do not vote. Numerous safeguards are in place to successfully ensure that only American citizens vote. Hard stop.
Under current safeguards, the federal voter registration form asks registrants to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens. They must provide a driver’s license number, state ID number, or Social Security number for election officials to verify their identity and eligibility.
The specter of deportation, prison and fines is a major deterrence to efforts by noncitizens to register and vote. Illegally voting in a federal election can result in a fine and up to one year in federal prison, and noncitizens may also face deportation. Falsely claiming U.S. citizenship for the purpose of registering to vote may also result in deportation or denial of future immigration status, even if no voting occurs.
States have various methods to verify citizenship. In some states, the motor vehicles department shares the types of documents a voter used to obtain an ID with the state or local election office. The documents, such as a birth certificate or passport, can often confirm a voter’s citizenship.
A number of states have an agreement to use federal data to verify citizenship. A total of 23 state have such agreements with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services SAVE System.
Election officials in some states consult jury list dismissals when the reason for dismissal is a lack of citizenship status.
The SAVE Act, an acronym for the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” is simply the latest in a very long history of sordid, barely hidden Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters who typically support Democrats. Trump and the Republican Party are desperate for passage of the SAVE Act, as they hope it would save them from their historically low voter approval.
The SAVE Act is one important part of trump’s incessant attacks on the voting system. Trump has said he wants to nationalize elections in 15 states despite the Constitution granting states control over elections. In addition, based on debunked voter fraud claims, trump ordered the FBI to seize thousands of ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi also has tried to strongarm Minnesota to turn over the state’s voter rolls to the Department of Justice. This latest effort came after the administration had already sued more than 20 states for refusing to turn over their voter data.
It is altogether possible that trump would order the federal government to run state elections or send in federal troops to ostensibly deter violence at the polls but instead would frighten voters away. Additionally, trump and the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) have created such a climate of fear that many legitimate voters may not turn out, fearing they could be arrested by ICE.
The overall result of trump’s assaults have undermined the election system, potentially leading many voters to stay home on election day.
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The League of Women Voters has strongly opposed the SAVE Act.
“Under the false banner of ‘election integrity,’ lawmakers are advancing policies designed to block lawful voters from participating in our elections — particularly rural voters, voters of color, and nearly 70 million married women who have changed their last names, along with other voters who have been historically marginalized and already face barriers to casting a ballot,” said a league statemen. “This is modern-day voter suppression, plain and simple.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Senate minority leader, called the SAVE Act “Jim Crow 2.0” and said that it would disenfranchise more than 20 million legitimate voters, mainly poorer individuals and people of color.
SAVE Act Explained
Among other things, the SAVE Act would:
- Require voters to provide a birth certificate or passport to prove their citizenship. Those who have lost or misplaced their birth certificate would be out of luck. Likewise, birth certificates showing maiden names of millions of women rather than married names would be rejected. Only about half of Americans have a valid passport. It takes four to six weeks to acquire a passport and many cannot afford the $130 a passport fee.
- Mandate election officials to purge voter rolls every 30 days.
- Prohibit universal mail voting, requiring all mail voters to submit an application in order to receive a mail ballot.
- Limit voting for many transgender people who have changed their names to match their gender identity.
- Young voters, people with disabilities, rural voters and Tribal citizens would be more likely to lack the required documentation and therefore face unnecessary barriers to registering or updating their voter registration.
- Shut down online voter registration and community‑based voter registration drives.
- Establish increased criminal penalties for election workers who register voters without the required documentary proof of citizenship.
Reuters reported that the right wing, pro-Trump Heritage Foundation’s database of election crimes listed only 24 instances of non-citizens voting in U.S. elections from 2003 to 2023.
A number of states have undertaken investigations into non-citizen voting, cross-checking voter rolls with citizenship status, and found it virtually nonexistent, the N.Y. Times reported on Feb. 5.
In Utah, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state’s top election official, initiated a lengthy review of around 2.1 million registered voters. The review found one “confirmed non-citizen” and that non-citizen had never voted.
Idaho conducted similar tests in 2024, and found 36 non-citizens voted, out of more than one million registered voters.
Likewise, Louisiana looked into the matter and in 2025 found around 390 non-citizen registrants, including 79 who voted in at least one election over the last several decades, out of 2.9 million registrants.
Montana found 23 possible non-citizen registrants(out of around 785,000 people registered. Georgia, the target of much of trump’s anger and lies, found in its 2024 audit a total of 20 registered non-citizens out of 8.2 million registrations.
Poll Tax
The fees to buy passports or duplicate birth certificates as required by the SAVE Act sound a lot like the poll taxes that were imposed as a condition to voting in southern states after the Civil War. The taxes were used in the United States until they were outlawed under section 10 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The poll tax, which unfairly implemented literacy tests and intimidation by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, was successful in largely disenfranchising not just African American voters but also Asian American, Native American voters and poor whites.
Poll taxes were enacted in the southern states to discourage African Americans from voting and also to raise state revenues. The taxes also were in place in some northern states, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
The 24th Amendment, ratified January 23, 1964, abolished the use poll taxes for Federal elections. In 1966, the Supreme Court barred the imposition of poll taxes in state elections.
Alabama was the last state to repeal its poll tax in 1966 of $58.05 per voter in 2025 dollars.
Fears of renewed voter suppression and disenfranchisement grew after the 2013 Supreme Court ruling of Shelby County v. Holder. The court ruled that the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act power requiring that the federal government give pre-clearance to states with a history of voter discrimination was unconstitutional. Since then more than 361 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 47 states.
