How the SAVE America Act Republicans are touting will disenfranchise married & LGBTQ+ Americans

Republicans in Congress have cast the SAVE America Act as a straightforward effort to “protect election integrity,” with Speaker Mike Johnson calling it “commonsense” and saying it is supported by “more than 80 percent of the American people.” But civil rights advocates and voting law experts warn the bill would do far more than tighten verification rules: It would erect new barriers that disproportionately burden marginalized voters whose legal identities do not neatly align with government paperwork, while also blocking millions of eligible Americans from voting.

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The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and impose stricter photo ID requirements at the polls. Supporters argue the measure is necessary to prevent noncitizen voting. But incidents of such voting are exceedingly rare, and the bill’s impact would fall overwhelmingly on eligible voters, according to voting rights researchers.

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According to the American Immigration Council, a review of Heritage Foundation data found just 68 proven cases of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections over more than 40 years, out of more than one billion votes cast in that period. That translates to an incidence below 0.0001 percent.

Under current federal law, voters generally attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury when registering. The SAVE Act would replace that system with a requirement to present specific documents, such as a passport or birth certificate. That change would be significant. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million eligible U.S. citizens lack ready access to those documents, and roughly half of Americans do not have a passport.

Those gaps are not evenly distributed. According to the Brennan Center, people who have changed their names, including many transgender and nonbinary people and married people who changed their names, are more likely to encounter documentation problems. Young voters, low-income Americans, rural residents, and voters of color are also less likely to have immediate access to the required paperwork, making them more vulnerable to being blocked from registering.

For LGBTQ+ people, the consequences are deeply personal, said Allen Morris, director of policy for the National LGBTQ Task Force, in an interview with The Advocate.

“One of the main points that we have to consider is that a lot of people do not have ready access to documents that may align with their current name and gender identities,” Morris said. “When you are a trans or nonbinary person who has gone through so many life changes, and now you can’t even vote because someone is making it illegal for you to not only exist, but to be able to show up in how you identify, that’s one of our main problems.”

Related: How the SAVE Act would make it harder for trans people, married women, and some men to vote

Related: Protecting the Right to Vote: The Only Way to Safeguard LGBTQ+ Rights

Updating identity documents can involve court filings, fees, and, in some states, a judge’s approval. Some states have passed laws that forbid people from changing the gender on their identity documents. The State Department, under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has limited how sex is displayed on federal documents like passports. In the current political climate, Morris said, many transgender people are delaying or abandoning that process altogether.

“Right now, because trans communities are so under attack, we are seeing where more people are either pausing that process, or they’re not even going through with the process at all out of fear,” Morris said. “We also have some folks who went through the process of updating their passport to their name, and the government literally said no. They rejected those passport applications.”

That leaves many voters trapped between how they live and how the government recognizes them. That gap, Morris said, would turn into a barrier to the ballot box.

“In the system, your name may be this, but if you identify [some other way], or if you’ve changed your name, you have to be able to meet in the middle,” Morris said.

After the House passed the bill, Johnson framed it as a moral and political necessity. “Proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote; everyone in the country understands the necessity of that and understands how simple it is and how important it is,” he said at a press conference with House Republican leaders. He argued that opponents simply want to “participate in our elections illegally.”

But voting rights experts say the simplicity Johnson describes exists mostly in theory. The Brennan Center notes that the bill would also create new legal risks for election officials, who could face penalties for registering voters without the required documentation, creating incentives to reject registrations and discouraging proactive voter assistance. The result, the group warns, would be confusion, delays, and lower participation, not greater trust in elections.

Related: STUDY: Voter ID Laws in 10 States May Disenfranchise Transgender Citizens

Morris said the danger is compounded by existing policies such as voter roll purges and tighter registration rules, which remove voters from the system with little notice.

“Not everyone knows that there are these systems that are being set into place to push them out of the voting poll,” Morris said. Add new documentation requirements on top of that, he said, and many people will simply give up.

“It’s just going to make people go, ‘What is the point? Why am I voting?' Or, 'It is too much of a hardship for me to vote,'” Morris said. “And I think that’s the goal.”

Supporters of the bill reject the idea that it is meant to suppress turnout, arguing instead that it will restore confidence in elections. But Morris said the central premise driving the legislation — that U.S. elections are plagued by significant voter fraud — is not supported by evidence.

“When you look at the statistics, when you look at the history, when you look at where we are, elections have worked,” he said. “There hasn’t been this outbreak of voter fraud. No one has ever illegally voted in an election with significant numbers. It’s just never occurred, regardless of what the occupant of the White House is saying.”

The bill now heads to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain path and would need bipartisan support to clear procedural hurdles.

Allen said, “We’re going to try our best to consistently give as much information and find the legal ways that folks can know, ‘Hey, this is how you can overcome this task, and this is how you can keep your voter registration valid.’”