2 weeks Ago
The SAVE Act in Congress will save nothing. It will actually destroy voting for many Americans — because we are in the military, or women, or living with disabilities, or we have lost some old documents. This legislation goes against America’s proud history of continued expansion of the right to vote.
The 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed that right to Black and white men born in our country.
The 19th Amendment added women in 1920. Native Americans weren’t treated as citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. In 1943, the Magnuson Act allowed Chinese Americans to become citizens.
In 1971, as American soldiers younger than 21 fought and died in Vietnam, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. Our Constitution gave the states control of elections, but some states resisted those gains and put barriers in the way of voters. To make the constitutional promises a reality, we needed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 24th Amendment barring poll taxes, the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1986, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and the Military and Overseas Voting Empowerment Act of 2009.
Because of those laws, more than 155 million Americans were able to cast their ballots in 2024. Now the SAVE Act (House Resolution 22) is before Congress. It is not like the laws and amendments that have made our government more truly representative of the people.
This SAVE Act will interfere with states’ management of elections — not to ensure voters’ rights but to create fresh barriers to voting. It will require you and all other voters to go in person to your city or county registrar’s office, taking some very specific documents to prove your citizenship, before you can register or update your registration. Your Virginia driver’s license will not be considered good enough proof.
If Congress passes this bill, it will create barriers for military voters, rural voters, voters with disabilities, voters who have never needed to get a passport, and voters who have lost some of their older documents. The SAVE Act will create barriers for married women (80% of us have changed our name, and no longer use the name on our birth certificate). Voters struggling to put their lives back together after Hurricane Helene and other natural disasters will face even more difficulties in showing documents, in order to vote.
This SAVE Act will not let members of the military use their military ID, unless they also present their military service record and that record shows they were born in the U.S. Members of the military who were born overseas while their parents were serving abroad will not be able to use their military ID.
Tribal citizens will not be able to use their tribal ID, unless it shows their place of birth, and most tribal IDs do not have that information. Sign up for Viewpoints, an opinion newsletter This bill will also put an end to voter registration events in our communities because it will require all of us to go in person to the registrar’s office. Here in Virginia, many of us use the excellent online citizen portal ( elections.
virginia.gov ) to update our voter information or learn about upcoming primaries and elections. The SAVE Act will not allow that portal to continue.
So why is this bill even being proposed in Congress? It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and they know they will risk deportation if they try. Instead of this SAVE Act, we need Congress to restore the protections in the Voting Rights Act. We need funding for the Election Assistance Commission, upgraded equipment and more election staff.
We all need to tell our members of Congress what we think of the destructive SAVE Act, and how it will affect us and our families. Judith E. Brown of Norfolk is president of the League of Women Voters of South Hampton Roads .
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