posted April 11, 2025 12:42 AM
http://www.newsweek.com/republicans-rejected-save-act-amendments-protect-women-votes-2057981
Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked an amendment to the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act which would protect married women's ability to register to vote.
They also blocked amendments brought forward by Oregon Representative Maxine Dexter which would protect several other groups of people from the strict parameters for voter registration put forward by SAVE.
Representatives Maxine Dexter and Chip Roy have been contacted via email for comment.
Why It Matters
The SAVE Act has come under intense scrutiny for how it would require US citizens to register to vote in person with their ID and a birth certificate, passport, or other ID that proves citizenship—something that is difficult for the 69 million married women whose current legal last name does not match their birth certificate.
Republicans have said the SAVE Act is necessary to prevent noncitizen voting. However, recent audits of voter rolls have found instances of noncitizen voting to be "vanishingly rare."
What To Know
The SAVE Act was written by Representative Chip Roy and has received support from President Donald Trump.
Representative Dexter brought forward amendments to the SAVE Act on April 1 which were intended to protect married women, military service members, people of color, native communities, survivors of domestic violence, seniors, people with disabilities, and rural residents.
She introduced these amendments to "[force] a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives requiring Republicans to defend their anti-woman, voter suppression bill, the SAVE Act."
The amendments were introduced as a "Previous Question," a procedural tool to change bills, and would have required additional research and certification before passing the bill to ensure the law's new requirements would not disenfranchise millions of people.
In blocking these amendments, Republicans prevented the ability to thoroughly research the impact this bill is predicted to have on minorities. They ensured that, if passed, they could not guarantee the voting rights safety of several groups of Americans under the SAVE Act.
When discussing her amendment on married women on the House floor, Rep. Dexter said: "If this amendment fails, we are putting 70 million American women at risk of disenfranchisement. 70 million. That's one in four voters in this country."
Rep Dexter added: "I cannot believe, in the year 2025, I have to stand here on the House floor of the United States to defend a woman's right to vote. But I will."
She asked her Republican colleagues to "show courage in this moment" to vote on her "common sense amendment."
Republican voters may be more heavily impacted by this bill than Democratic voters, as a Pew study found that more Republican than Democratic women choose to change their name after getting married.
The SAVE Act also accepts valid passports as proof of ID. The states with the fewest number of people with passports are West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. All of these states voted for President Donald Trump in 2024.
The SAVE Act's requirement that rural and older voters register in person may also chip away at the traditional Republican base.
Representative Roy told Newsweek previously that the SAVE Act has provisions to allow states to make their own exceptions for aspects of the law.
However, Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at Campaign Legal Center, pushed back on this, telling Newsweek that the bill does not appropriate money for state electoral facilities, which would make it significantly more difficult for individual states to make their own laws built around the SAVE Act.
He also informed Newsweek that one state with similar voter registration provisions, Arizona, just had its laws struck down due to civil rights violations.
The SAVE Act has drawn headlines over how difficult registering to vote would become for married women whose surnames do not match their birth certificates, but the SAVE Act's requirement for people to register in person would also make it impossible for troops serving overseas, and Americans living abroad, for example Ambassadors or people working in the foreign service, to be put on voter rolls.
It would also make voter registration significantly more difficult for people with disabilities, seniors, and people in remote areas, who may not be able to physically access a registration point.
Married women are not the only group hit by the strict ID requirements. Many older Black Americans do not have a birth certificate because they were denied hospital births, and many Native Americans do not have citizenship listed on their tribal IDs.
People with no birth certificate can use a passport, but 146 million Americans do not have one, and many cannot afford to purchase one.
Although people who are already registered to vote may think the SAVE Act will not apply to them, the bill also requires frequent voter roll purges. Those purges often result in taking American citizens off the rolls, meaning they would have to reregister under the new parameters of the SAVE Act.
Additionally, Americans who move home to a new district would have to reregister there. This would especially impact people who are moving due to a natural disaster and may have lost their ID alongside their other possessions.
Civil rights advocate Genesis Robison, the Executive Director of the Equal Ground Action Fund in Florida, spoke with Newsweek about the financial impact for many Americans who would have to purchase new documents in order to vote, saying: "It basically amounts to a poll tax, which I know Black voters know all too well, right? Having currency to access the ballot box.
"And so obviously there's a whole host of reasons this is bad, but that is just obviously another layer, the financial impact that's standing in the way of folks being able to cast their ballot."
What People Are Saying
Representative Dexter: "The SAVE Act isn't about preventing fraud, it's about preventing participation in our elections. That's why I demanded that House Republicans adopt my amendment to give assurances that married women who change their last name will not be shut out of the ballot box. This amendment isn't a theoretical, it's about the married woman in Hood River whose documents don't match after changing her name. It's about making sure our democracy includes all of us. And House Republicans voted it down."
Representative Chip Roy in a statement to Newsweek in February: "This is absurd armchair speculation being spun up by media outlets who care more about clicks than reality … This bill isn't being attacked because it'll exclude citizens from voting—it won't. It's being attacked because the policy is wildly popular with the American people, its opponents want and need illegals to vote, and they'll use anything they can to attack it."
Jonathan Diaz told Newsweek: "The top line is that the SAVE Act would create really significant new burdens on Americans to register to vote. It would make it harder for most eligible American citizens to register and cast a ballot … [States] don't have the money and the resources to do this without appropriations from Congress, which the bill doesn't provide for. And the impact on voters would be really significant."
What Happens Next
The SAVE Act passed the House on April 10, with all Democratic Representatives and only one Republican, Andy Biggs, voting against it.
It now heads to the Senate, where members will have the chance to include amendments similar to Rep. Dexter's.
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