The SAVE act

Blog by Rachel Gavaghan, AF committee member

The SAVE Act: A Direct Threat to Women’s Voting Rights

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, and its implications for voting rights cannot be underestimated.

If passed, the SAVE Act would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting either a passport or a birth certificate in order to vote. Although there is the alternative of using ‘Enhanced Drivers License’, these are only available in five states (Michigan; Minnesota; New York; Vermont; and Washington). While this may seem like yet another attempt by Trump to create outrage (Glasser, 2025), this legislation has been positioned as a top priority for the 119th Congress.

A Threat to Women’s Right to Vote

This Act poses a serious threat to women’s voting rights in the United States.

Currently, an estimated 140 million American citizens do not have a passport. That means they would need to rely on their birth certificates as proof of citizenship. However, 79% of American women in heterosexual marriages have taken their spouse’s last name (Pew Research Center, 2023), meaning their birth certificates do not reflect their current legal name. Under the SAVE Act, married women who lack a passport and have changed their name would be unable to vote (Bedekovics & Bryant, 2025).

This issue also extends to the trans community, whose right to vote would be jeopardised if their legal name no longer matches their birth certificate. By enforcing rigid name-matching requirements, the SAVE Act risks disenfranchising millions of voters, particularly women and LGBTQ+ individuals.

A Step Backward for Equal Voting Rights

This Act is not just a bureaucratic hurdle—it is a direct attack on the hard-won fight for equal voting rights, a struggle that lasted well into the late 1960s. Women, people of colour, and marginalised communities have fought tirelessly for their right to vote, and the SAVE Act threatens to undo decades of progress.

The long fight for women’s voting rights in the U.S. began with the Seneca Falls Convention (1848), which marked the start of the organised women’s rights movement, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. After decades of activism, the movement achieved the 19th Amendment (1920) granting women the right to vote.

However, this was not victory for all. Women of colour were still systemically disenfranchised, through racial discriminatory practices in voting, such as literacy tests, denying them the right to vote (Gidlow, 2020). The fight for truly equal voting rights continued through the Civil Rights Movement and after more than a century of struggle- led in large by Black Women activists- the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 was finally passed, banning racial discrimination in voting (Gidlow, 2020).

Centuries of activism, marches, strikes, protests- met with intimidation, murders and persecutions- were used to secure the right to vote for all in America. The threat of these rights being slowly eroded is not something to dismiss. The United States already has strict laws in place to protect election security. The SAVE Act does not enhance democracy. Instead, it introduces unnecessary barriers that restrict a fundamental human right.

This is yet another peeling back of the facade of American freedom.