Are you married and took your spouse’s last name?

Should it cost $165 to be able to vote?

Do you think laws should be passed to target and prevent a particular political party from voting?

Those and a list of other obstacles to voting would be waiting for you if the SAVE Act passes.

Under the guise that the SAVE Act is to prevent noncitizens from voting, it’s clear the existing guardrails in place are already doing the job and the SAVE Act is intended to disenfranchise legal voters. Noncitizen voting in elections is exceedingly rare — even the Heritage Foundation, the far right organization behind Project 2025 — has been able to uncover just 100 total instances of noncitizen voter fraud since 2000 – the a 0.0% noncitizen voting incident percentage. It is already illegal for noncitizens to register and vote in federal or state elections. Election officials already use state and federal data — including citizenship data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration — to verify an individual’s eligibility to cast a ballot.

As they used to say, the SAVE Act is a solution in search of a problem – noncitizen voting isn’t an issue. The SAVE Act is meant to disenfranchise legal voters.

And, for the record, North Dakota already requires ID for voting. Click here for voter ID requirements from the North Dakota Secretary of State’s office.

Tens of Millions Lack the Required Documents

More than 21 million Americans lack ready access to documents like a passport or birth certificate. Roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport – which would add a $165 cost burden to be eligible to vote. Both income and education level are major factors determining whether or not someone has a passport. People with household incomes over $100K are three times as likely to have a current passport as those with incomes below $50,000 – so a passport requirement with the SAVE Act is meant to prevent low income people from voting.

Disproportionate Impact on Married Women

As many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name. They would face extra steps just to register or be forced to update their voter registration.

Disproportionate Impact on Voters of Color

Two-thirds of Black Americans lack a valid U.S. passport, and passport ownership increases dramatically with income. The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately.

Creates a De Facto Poll Tax

The legislation would essentially create a new poll tax for voters who would need to purchase additional documentation in order to register to vote. Poll taxes are illegal.

Eliminates Convenient Registration Methods

In 2022, more than 7 million Americans registered to vote by mail, and almost 11 million Americans registered to vote online. The SAVE Act and its variants would effectively end these options by requiring in-person document presentation. This rule would shut down most community-based voter registration efforts, which help voters at shopping centers, churches, campuses, and other public places where even people who have documents at home do not have them handy.

Burdens People Who Move or Change Their Registration

The legislation would affect not just first-time registrants but also any citizen making a voter registration update for things such as moving, changing their name after marriage, or even switching party affiliation. For a federal election cycle, approximately 80 million to 100 million Americans register to vote for the first time or for updates.

REAL ID and Driver’s Licenses Won’t Work

The REAL ID driver’s licenses of nearly all Americans would not work, as REAL IDs are proof of legal residence, not citizenship, and are available to noncitizens, such as green card and visa holders. The REAL ID driver’s licenses of citizens and noncitizens look indistinguishable. Driver’s licenses — including REAL IDs — as well as military or tribal IDs would not be sufficient forms of documentation to prove citizenship under the legislation.

Mandates Aggressive Voter Purges

The SAVE America Act and the SAVE Act would mandate that states conduct frequent voter purges, a practice that removes registered voters from the rolls based on faulty data. The SAVE Act would require voter purges without appropriate guardrails — it would not require officials to notify registered voters before their removal, so Americans who are improperly purged might not find out until they show up to vote.

Puts Election Officials at Legal Risk

Under these bills, election workers could go to prison for up to five years if they help to register somebody without the correct documents, even if the registered voter is a citizen. This chilling effect would make officials reluctant to help any voter whose documents are borderline, further suppressing registration.

Exposes Sensitive Voter Data to Federal Government

Under the SAVE America Act, every single state would be required to submit its voter registration list to the Department of Homeland Security for comparison to the agency’s error-ridden database. The legislation places no restrictions on what the federal government can do with the sensitive data once DHS receives it, and no safeguards against using the data to force voter purges or unduly question election results.

Real-World Failures in States That Have Tried It

Arizona’s policy created an administrative nightmare — in September 2025, the state discovered that more than 200,000 voters who had registered before the proof-of-citizenship requirement was adopted inadvertently had their citizenship status updated in the voter database without providing additional documentation, throwing into question the eligibility of these longtime, lawful voters – who were predominantly Republicans and older Arizonans – to cast ballots in state races in the final weeks before the 2024 election.

Politically Motivated, Not a Good-Faith Reform

Remember the questions at the start of this article? One of them asked if you were OK with laws being passed that prevented a particular party from voting. If you’re Republican and you thought that was OK, guess what: The data shows that it would actually be Republican voters who would be disproportionately affected by the SAVE Act.

Despite that, President Trump is still pushing for the SAVE Act to became law because he believes it will prevent Democrats from voting, stating, if it passes, Republicans would “never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”

It’s hard to argue: That is Trump’s admission of the law’s true intent – he’s trying to block Democrats from voting.