Voting Rights Advocates Highlight Trump’s Dangerous Executive Order and the “SAVE Act”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ahead of an impending House vote on the so-called “SAVE Act,” directly impacted voters and advocates blasted the anti-voter legislation and a recent Trump executive order that requires “government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship on its voter registration forms.”
Speakers from MALDEF, NAACP, Center for American Progress, Brennan Center for Justice and Public Citizen attend a joint news conference hosted by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Declaration for American Democracy Coalition this week to push back against the harmful policy proposals.
The SAVE Act would require every American citizen to present a passport or an original copy of their birth certificate in person when registering to vote and any time they update their voter registration, but more than half of American citizens – about 146 million people – do not have a passport and 13 million U.S. citizens do not have ready access to citizenship documents. The bill would upend online voter registration, a practice in 42 states, make it nearly impossible for Americans to register to vote by mail and end voter registration drives nationwide.
Public Citizen Democracy Organizing Manager Ilana Beller-Kernish shared how her experience as a married woman who changed her name would make registering to vote difficult.
“Once you change your name, the name on your birth certificate is no longer your legal name,” said Beller. “This means that in order to update your voter registration to reflect your legal name you would be required to get a passport. Anyone who has gotten or updated a passport knows it takes a ton of documentation and time…at best it takes six weeks or months to get [it].”
Beller added the legislation is a ploy to stop eligible voters from engaging in elections.
“I am currently doing the things that conservatives so badly want women to do in this country. Get married, have kids, work a job. And because of that, congress wants to force me to pay $165 and spend months jumping through hoops in order to participate in our democracy?”
Quick facts:
- Nationwide, approximately 146 million American citizens do not possess a passport – to put that into perspective, 153 million Americans cast a ballot in the 2024 presidential general election.
- In seven states, less than one-third of citizens have a valid passport: West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.
- Only in four states do more than two-thirds of the citizens have a valid passport: New York, Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey.
Nationwide, approximately 69 million women who have married and 4 million men who have married could not use their birth certificate to prove their identity or citizenship status under the SAVE Act