The SAVE Act Extends the GOP’s War on Women to the Voter Rolls
Last week, the U.S. House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill that Republicans, including President Donald Trump, claim is necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
But the bill could also make it much harder for women who’ve taken their spouses’ names to vote. It underscores how attacks on Americans based on characteristics like gender and race can overlap with attacks on democracy itself.
The SAVE Act is likely to face an uphill climb in the Senate, where Democrats are likely to filibuster it. But if passed into law, it would require that states obtain proof of citizenship when people register to vote — or update their registration because they moved or want to change their party affiliation. Under the bill, voters have to show proof of citizenship in person via a document like a passport or a state or federal ID card plus a birth certificate where, importantly, the names must match. Given the in-person requirement, the bill would effectively end registration or updates online or by mail. It would also ban states from counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.
As many as 69 million married women who changed their last names would not be able to use their birth certificate as proof of citizenship, per the Center for American Progress. About 84% of American women married to men have changed their legal names, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. Should these women move, change party affiliation or register for the first time, they would need a passport or perhaps their marriage certificate — but it would ultimately be up to each state to decide the process “for those without documentary proof,” per the bill text.
“We have mechanisms giving the state fairly significant deference to make determinations as to how to structure the situation where an individual does have a name change,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told the Associated Press. “The process is specifically contemplated in this legislation.”
In other words, there’s nothing in the measure requiring states to make accommodations to ensure married women, and others who have changed their names, including transgender people, can cast a ballot.
In an interesting wrinkle for the GOP, the women most likely to change their names after getting married lean conservative. The same Pew survey found that, among married women who identified as Republican or lean Republican, just 10% kept their maiden names, compared to 20% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning women. As the Center for American Progress summarized, “while the legislation would unfairly disenfranchise women as a whole, the requirement to present a birth certificate would disproportionately disenfranchise conservative and Republican women.”
It sounds like Trump’s idea of protecting women is limiting their rights to preserve his own grip on power.
A similar bill that passed in New Hampshire caused problems for voters in a March election. One married woman was sent home twice: first to get her birth certificate, then to get her marriage certificate. Another woman, Betsy Spencer, is divorced but she didn’t change her name back. She was only able to vote after the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office told local election officials that an expired passport was sufficient. “The idea that women have to prove their name change is profoundly sexist and limiting,” Spencer told New Hampshire Public Radio.
Not everyone can make multiple trips to an election office or polling site, including people with disabilities, those with caregiving responsibilities, or people who don’t get paid time off from work. Some people simply won’t come back to register, change their party affiliation or vote, if they’re lucky enough to live in a state with same-day registration. The GOP is probably hoping that, on balance, the law blocks more Democrats than Republicans from voting.
In his ruling in Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal right to abortion, Justice Samuel Alito noted that not everyone would agree with the court’s decision but that “women are not without electoral or political power” to affect legislation. He added: “it is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.”
But blocking people from voting and rigging the legislative maps is a big part of how state lawmakers have passed abortion bans opposed by the majority of voters. In 2011, Mississippi voters considered ballot measures on both fetal personhood and voter ID; the former failed, but the latter passed. (Reproductive rights groups did not campaign against the voter ID measure.) Seven years of voter suppression later, the governor signed into law the 15-week ban that anti-abortion advocates designed to topple Roe.
“The fight for reproductive freedom is intertwined with the fight for democracy,” said Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju in response to the SAVE Act’s passage. “And both are built on the simple idea that every American has the right to vote.”
But Trump doesn’t want a democracy. He wants to let an unelected billionaire destroy government programs, yank legal residents off the streets for participating in protests, ban media outlets from the White House, and possibly even serve a third term. He claims to still be very upset that he lost the 2020 election and the 2016 popular vote and spreads lies that undocumented immigrants voting illegally are to blame. The SAVE Act is nominally about noncitizen voting, but perhaps the real point is just to prevent so many actual citizens from voting that Republicans, and Trump, remain in power.
In the final week of the 2024 campaign, Trump said at a Green Bay, Wisconsin, rally that he wanted to “protect the women of our country,” adding, “whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.'” He claimed he would be protecting them from “migrants coming in.” In an all-caps Truth Social post in September, Trump said he’d “PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE.”
It sounds like Trump’s idea of protecting women is limiting their rights to preserve his own grip on power.
Susan Rinkunas is an independent journalist covering abortion, reproductive health, and politics. She is a contributing writer at Jezebel and her reporting has appeared in The Guardian, Slate, The New Republic, The Nation and more.
As a Democracy Docket contributor, Susan covers the intersection of abortion, bodily autonomy and democracy.