House passes elections overhaul bill that could make it harder for married women to vote

This story was originally reported by Marissa Martinez of The 19th. Meet Marissa and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House on Wednesday passed the SAVE America Act, which would implement strict limitations on voter registration and casting a ballot — including new rules that could make it more difficult for married women or LGBTQ+ people to register if they’ve changed their names.

The vote passed on partisan lines, with only Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar voting for the legislation, and will face an uphill battle in the Senate.

Stricter voter ID requirements are part of a more aggressive GOP strategy to question the validity of elections. The vote comes after the White House reopened investigations on an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, one of the central sites in President Donald Trump’s unfounded concerns of election fraud in 2020. Trump also recently said he wanted to “nationalize” voting, and while he has been vague on what that means, it could include a federal override on states’ abilities to run their own elections — particularly in places where he lost to former President Joe Biden.

While voter ID requirements are popular among Americans across the political spectrum, critics say the provisions in the SAVE America Act would be overly burdensome on already eligible voters and dissuade new registration, particularly in rural areas.

Voting rights groups have said the bill would pose a barrier for millions of American women and others who have changed their legal names because of marriage, assimilation or to better align with their gender identity. An estimated 69 million American women and 4 million men do not have a birth certificate that matches their current legal name.

The SAVE America Act requires voters to provide documents proving their citizenship at the time of registration. Many otherwise eligible citizens do not have access to the required documents, such as an unexpired passport. Birth certificates are also one of the few options to prove a registrant’s identity, but they often do not reflect a married person’s or LGBTQ+ individual’s current legal name once they have changed it. While there are ways to further corroborate one’s identity, some experts warn the bureaucratic burden may turn people off registering altogether due to complications — preventing citizens from being able to cast a ballot.

“A real solution would eliminate the provision that requires women to go around and gather all these documents only to then affirm their own identity,” said New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, who chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, during a press conference.

She added that as a Latina, she and others often have multiple documents with different legal names, which would add to confusion when registering: “This bill will make it harder, more expensive, for you to register and vote.”

Proponents of the bill have scoffed at the idea that the act would meaningfully affect married people who have changed their names.

GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, a vocal advocate of the bill from Tennessee, said the concept of married women not being able to vote under the act was “ridiculous.”

“It’s an easy change — there’s no problem with that at all,” Burchett told The 19th. “That’s just like saying it’s Jim Crow. That’s an antiquated argument that nobody buys.”

Republicans introduced its predecessor, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility America Act (SAVE), last year to purportedly block noncitizens from voting — something that is already illegal. That House-passed version still hasn’t been taken up in the Senate.

Between the new SAVE America Act and its amendments, passed in the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, the new version would have individuals present an eligible photo ID before voting, in addition to the former version’s requirement of proof of citizenship while registering. Mail-in ballots would also require voters to include a scanned copy of their identification, even in states that automatically send ballots to eligible individuals.

The bill also mandates states to remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls — already an extremely rare occurrence — after submitting those logs to the Department of Homeland Security for review. Critics say on the state level, such voter roll reviews have in the past erroneously purged legal citizen voters.

The voter ID provisions would be effective immediately, potentially affecting those who have already cast mail-in ballots for their primary elections, as well as the millions of people who would want to register to vote for the upcoming midterms. There are also logistical delays seen with voter overhauls over the last decade in states such as Texas or Kansas, when election officials and administrators faced confusing or conflicting information following the changes.

“There’s absolutely no runway for this bill,” said Gréta Bedekovics, director of democracy policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “Overnight, you would be changing the way that every single American registers to vote, and how millions of people actually vote at the ballot box, and elected officials would have to be doing all this education in real time.”

Key Republican sponsors had gotten antsy about the delay in passing this voter legislation, going so far as to try to connect the measure to the wider spending package required for the government to run. That spending package already had been sidelined by debates over reforming and further funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after federal officers killed two people during its ongoing anti-immigrant campaign in Minneapolis.

To the chagrin of the bill’s staunchest advocates, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune punted on the issue to separate it from DHS funding last week, with Johnson saying, “I don’t think we need to be playing games with government funding.”

Trying to find a guaranteed vehicle to force a Senate vote on the provisions didn’t work, showing that the GOP is still strained to pass the controversial SAVE Act and get it to President Donald Trump’s desk before midterm primary voting begins in earnest.

While the majority of Republican senators are listed as co-sponsors, the bill would likely need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and House lawmakers are concerned that Democrats in the upper chamber would not be easy to divide over voting rights.

Some Senate Republicans have also expressed hesitancy. Among them is Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, who said the voter ID push is “not how we build trust.”

“When Democrats attempted to advance sweeping election reform legislation in 2021, Republicans were unanimous in opposition because it would have federalized elections, something we have long opposed,” she said in a statement. “One-size-fits-all mandates from Washington, D.C., seldom work in places like Alaska.”

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