The SAVE Act: Yet Another Dressed-Up Voter Suppression Bill

A solution desperately searching for a problem—that’s the most generous description I can offer for Texas Rep. Chip Roy’s reintroduced “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.”

Behind its patriotic acronym (SAVE) and reasonable-sounding premise lies the latest iteration of a tired political strategy: identify which demographics tend to vote for your opponents, create requirements that disproportionately burden those groups, package it as “security,” and act shocked when people call it what it is—voter suppression.

TL;DR - The SAVE Act Deception

  • The Requirement: Everyone must provide IN-PERSON proof of citizenship when registering to vote
  • The Problem: Non-citizen voting is virtually non-existent (0.0001% of votes)
  • The Impact: Creates significant barriers for millions of eligible voters
  • Most Affected: Married women, low-income voters, college students, and transgender individuals
  • The Strategy: Create obstacles that disproportionately affect specific demographic groups

Who This Really Hurts 🚫

Let’s talk about who this requirement actually impacts:

Married Women 👰

About 69 MILLION women in the US have changed their names after marriage. You think all their documentation perfectly matches? Hell no.

My sister had to take a day off work, pay $120, and wait 6 weeks just to get her passport updated after she got married. Many women never bother updating their birth certificates because it’s such a hassle.

People Without Documentation Access 📄

The Brennan Center found that 11% of eligible voters don’t have the required documentation. That’s millions of people.

Guess who’s overrepresented in that group? Poor people. People of color. People who work multiple jobs and can’t take a day off to stand in line at a government office.

Young Voters 🎓

College students often don’t have their birth certificates with them at school, and getting copies sent can be a bureaucratic nightmare, especially if they’re from out of state.

Trans People 🏳️‍⚧️

Don’t even get me started on the nightmare that trans folks face with documentation. Many have identification documents that don’t match their current name or gender presentation.

A Solution Without a Problem 🔍

All this to solve what problem exactly? I looked into the actual numbers:

  • A comprehensive Brennan Center study found 30 cases of non-citizen voting out of 23.5 MILLION votes in 2016. That’s 0.0001%.

  • Even the Heritage Foundation (hardly a liberal organization) only found 24 cases over TWENTY YEARS.

This is like requiring everyone to wear a hazmat suit to prevent lightning strikes.

The Transparent Strategy 🧩

The approach is so obvious it’s insulting:

  1. Identify which demographics tend to vote for your opponents
  2. Find requirements that disproportionately burden those groups
  3. Package it as “security” or “integrity”
  4. Act shocked when people call it what it is: voter suppression

I used to try to assume good faith in these debates. Maybe they’re just really concerned about election security? But the math doesn’t add up.

You don’t create barriers that could affect MILLIONS to prevent something that happens at a rate of 0.0001%.

The False Choice Fallacy ⚖️

The most frustrating part is watching people fall for it. “But don’t you want secure elections?”

Of course I do. I also want proportionate responses to actual threats, not sledgehammers to kill ants while ignoring the elephants in the room (like election systems without paper trails or proper auditing).

This isn’t about choosing between access and security. We can have both. But the SAVE Act offers security theater at the expense of legitimate voters’ rights.

What’s Actually At Stake 🗳️

Voting is the fundamental right upon which all others depend. When we place unnecessary barriers in front of eligible voters, we undermine the very foundation of our democracy.

The real question isn’t “why shouldn’t people prove citizenship?"—it’s “why should we implement a solution that creates massive barriers to address a virtually non-existent problem?”

The answer, unfortunately, is politics. And not the good kind.

Take Action 💪

  • Contact your representatives to oppose the SAVE Act
  • Support organizations fighting for voting rights
  • Register to vote and help others navigate the process
  • Share accurate information about the true scale of voting issues
  • Vote for candidates who support expanding—not restricting—the franchise

Democracy thrives when participation is broad and barriers are low. The SAVE Act moves us in precisely the wrong direction.