This was originally published by Governing.
After a busy 2024 election cycle, the Trump administration cut critical resources and funding for election security, leaving the nation’s voting infrastructure vulnerable. In the wake of that damaging pullback, election officials are now bracing for Congress to vote on the SAVE Act — an anti-voter bill that threatens the thousands of administrators running our elections.
The bill’s acronym comes from its official title, Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, which is ironic: Simply put, the SAVE Act would be the worst voting law passed by Congress in memory, and that’s not hyperbole. I would know. For almost 14 years, I worked as a state election official in North Carolina and Pennsylvania (most recently serving as the acting secretary of the Pennsylvania commonwealth). Much of my work to keep our elections efficient and secure was driven by twin goals: ensuring that only eligible citizens were properly registered to vote and making certain that no eligible voter was turned away, ever.
The SAVE Act, which is currently pending in both chambers, would require American citizens to show in person a birth certificate, passport or other document proving citizenship when they register or re-register to vote. That single requirement could bar as many as 21 million American citizens who don’t have these documents readily available from voting. It would effectively eliminate online and mail registration — popular options for many Americans. It would also upend existing processes and procedures that keep our elections running — without any federal funding or guidance for the officials charged with implementing it.
The SAVE Act would place an extraordinary burden on election officials by imposing criminal penalties if they get things wrong. The costs of this bill — which isn’t necessary to protect elections in the first place — are far too high.
As a bipartisan group of nearly 60 election officials wrote to members of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and the House Administration Committee, “The SAVE Act places an unfunded, unworkable, and legally risky burden on election administrators without offering the necessary resources or implementation support.”
I stand behind them. This ill-conceived bill must never become law.
Burdens on Election Officials
The SAVE Act leaves it up to states to create a process to register those eligible citizens who lack proof of citizenship and up to local administrators to determine whether an applicant has provided sufficient evidence of their citizenship to register. At the same time, the bill also puts election officials in legal crosshairs by establishing criminal and civil penalties if an official — even mistakenly — registers a voter without sufficient proof of citizenship, even if that person is in fact a citizen.
These liabilities are a strong deterrent. As a result, election officials might feel obligated to deny an eligible American citizen if, for example, the name on their passport didn’t exactly match their legal name. Millions of married women who changed their last names could be especially impacted by the bill’s strict requirements.
We don’t have to guess how this will turn out — just look to New Hampshire after it implemented a new proof-of-citizenship requirement. Last month, it took one woman there multiple attempts and several hours to register to vote due to mismatches between her last name and the name on her documents. Other voters who were initially turned away never returned.
If Congress passes the SAVE Act, which is even stricter than the New Hampshire law, these episodes would be exacerbated on a national scale. Putting election officials in the position of deciding whether an eligible American voter can cast a ballot, based on whether they appropriately meet a vague new requirement, cuts against the purpose of the job. I know firsthand that an election official’s goal is to help eligible citizens vote, not stand in their way.
Added Pressure on Election Administration
Moreover, the added pressure could intensify the growing exodus of election officials who have been leaving the profession since the 2020 election amid experiences of harassment, threats or abuse. That would further destabilize an already battered election system.
But the bill’s faults and risks don’t end there. The SAVE Act would saddle election officials with the responsibility of hashing out all of the practical details for implementing the new requirement — from creating new forms and processes to public education — and leaves them to cover the costs. For many hardworking election officials who are already stretched too thin, this would hamper their ability to do their jobs.
A federal show-your-papers requirement for voting would create a two-track system for elections in any state without a state-level requirement. That could mean that election officials in those states would need to process one set of voter registration applications and ballots for federal elections and another set for state and local elections every two years. The resulting chaos and confusion would imperil the running of smooth elections.
The SAVE Act would also compel election officials to conduct problematic purges of their voter rolls based on unreliable data-matching and without the guardrails needed to make sure no one is wrongly removed. While voter list maintenance is an important and effective way of ensuring that only eligible citizens cast ballots, requiring purges without ensuring that states provide voters notice before they are removed is reckless.
In essence, the SAVE Act would be an operational nightmare, an unfunded mandate, and put election officials at legal risk — all for an unnecessary requirement. There are already multiple protections in place to ensure that only eligible U.S. citizens can vote.
The SAVE Act is more likely to exclude millions of Americans from voting than meaningfully improve the security of our election systems.
Congress must reject this dangerous bill.
