This is adapted from a piece that first appeared on Election Law Blog.
Last month, congressional Republicans pledged to fast-track the SAVE Act, a bill that would require all Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or one of a few other citizenship documents every time they register or re-register to vote. If enacted, it would devastate voter registration while disenfranchising tens of millions of eligible American citizens.
More than 21 million American citizens don’t have these documents readily available, according to survey data. But the SAVE Act would likely adversely affect far more Americans than the data suggests. Many might not have noticed how broadly the bill could apply — its show-your-papers requirement is not just limited to new registrations but rather applies to every “application to register to vote,” which in many jurisdictions includes re-registrations and changes of address. And tens of millions of Americans register or re-register between every federal election.
The SAVE Act would upend most methods of voter registration
What’s more, the bill would obliterate or upend longstanding and popular methods of voter registration for all voters, including registration by mail, voter registration drives, online voter registration, and automatic voter registration.
The bill would functionally eliminate mail registration by requiring voters registering by mail to produce citizenship documents “in person” to an election official before the registration deadline. It would also abolish many or all voter registration drives and online voter registration systems, which are typically treated like mail registration. (Moreover, the bill does not contemplate copies or electronic records of citizenship documents.) And it would severely hamper automatic voter registration, as many of those transactions don’t occur in person while someone has citizenship documents with them.
Address changes could be significantly impacted, too. Instead of your registration automatically updating when, for instance, you change your driver’s license address online, you might have to bring your passport or birth certificate to an election agency office to update your voter registration.
Nothing in the SAVE Act addresses these concerns. The bill consistently cuts in favor of in-person registration at a select few places for your registration to count. And that would likely be the case every time you needed to update your registration.
The SAVE Act’s documentation requirement could exclude tens of millions of Americans from voter rolls
Beyond the impact on voter registration methods, the SAVE Act would exclude millions of eligible American citizens who do not have ready access to the documentation it requires. According to a survey conducted by the Brennan Center and partners, more than 9 percent of American voting-age citizens, or 21.3 million people, don’t have a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers readily available. Voters of color, voters who change their names (most notably, married women), and younger voters would be most significantly affected.
In addition, as our colleagues Owen Bacskai and Eliza Sweren-Becker cataloged, similar requirements in Arizona and Kansas blocked tens of thousands of citizens from registering. Kansas’s show-your-papers policy was struck down as unconstitutional and recently prompted criticism even from Kansas’s Republican secretary of state.
Contrary to what some have suggested, the SAVE Act does not contain a meaningful failsafe provision that would allow those without physical documentation to register. While the bill includes a provision requiring states to establish a failsafe process for those without citizenship documents to demonstrate their citizenship through “other evidence” and swearing to an affidavit, that option is vague and severely undercut by another provision making it a crime for election officials to register any applicant who does not “present documentary proof of United States citizenship.” Many election officials would be wary of risking criminal prosecution for running afoul of this provision.
In short, the SAVE Act would disenfranchise huge numbers of Americans, and Congress should reject it.
