When then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told us during the campaign that “we’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote” in future elections, many scoffed at his promise of a fascist dictatorship. But with the House of Representatives voting on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act this week—along with now-President Trump’s recent executive order directing states to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections—we might be taking a giant step towards that promise.

The SAVE Act, if enacted, would amend the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to require people to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Under the SAVE Act, many people who are already registered would be required to update their registration, or risk being purged from the voter rolls. Driver’s licenses—even REAL IDs—wouldn’t be sufficient proof of American citizenship. While the language of the bill claims REAL IDs would be sufficient to register to vote, the Center for American Progress points out that REAL IDs don’t prove citizenship, and a Brennan Center for Justice analysis explains that in reality, we will all likely need to provide a birth certificate or passport every time we register to vote. The bill also would require people to provide this documentation in person, presenting an extra obstacle, particularly for disabled people.

Disproportionate effect on women and other marginalized groups

While the SAVE Act wouldn’t stop elections altogether, it would make voting incredibly difficult for millions of Americans—especially for rural voters, tribal citizens, people of color, disabled people, unhoused people, people living below the poverty line, and transgender people. To have a form of identification that matches your current name, you have to present proof of the name change. It’s already difficult enough to access a driver’s license or other documentary proof of citizenship, but what do you do if the name on your birth certificate doesn’t match your current name?

According to the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, more than 21 million people can’t access the additional documents that would be required under the SAVE Act. It would target a demographic not often thought of as marginalized: married women. The suppression of women’s votes, across race and income, has long been a problem that has garnered very little attention. The SAVE Act would actually exacerbate existing obstacles to women voting.

The SAVE Act doesn’t provide any language on how to reconcile a birth certificate that has a different name than your current legal name. Married women are a sizable group of Americans whose legal names are different from the ones printed on their birth certificates—and they’re also more likely to identify as Republicans, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center report. In a separate survey, the Pew Research Center also found that 84 percent of women married to men changed their names when they got married, either by taking their spouse’s last name or hyphenating it. Conservative women—the women most likely to support Trump—changed their names more often than their liberal counterparts. Only 7 percent of conservative women kept their last name, compared to 25 percent of liberal women who kept their last name.

Proving a name change can get complicated quickly: For example, someone who has been divorced multiple times may have changed their last name with each marriage—and could have moved states. They then may have to provide all that documentation just to have an ID that matches their name when it comes time to vote.

And as any transgender person will tell you, birth certificates are difficult to update. Transgender people not only face the issue of name changes, but also gender identification and presentation. Even if a trans person hasn’t tried to legally change their name, they could face difficulty voting if a poll worker doesn’t think a transgender voter’s photo ID matches their gender presentation.

Any voting law that requires extra documentation also presents an obstacle for domestic violence survivors. Abusers may keep their partner’s important documents as a method of control, and when people flee abusive situations, they might not think to grab their birth certificate or passport. There are other existing obstacles to voting for domestic violence victims, 85% of whom are women. Caucusing, a public voting process used by some states to determine a party’s presidential nominees, could endanger people in abusive situations if they vote differently than their partners. On top of that, some states publicize voter data like addresses and phone numbers, which can be of concern to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking because their abusers could find them. Most states have address confidentiality programs, where people can apply to keep their address private if they are in danger, but the requirements to participate in the programs vary and there are far too many exceptions that put people at risk.

Republicans are—and have been—alienating their own base

It appears that in sponsoring legislation that could limit their own supporters’ ability to vote for them, Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot. But a law like this isn’t just about winning future elections—it’s about control. As much as they hate liberal women voting (we’re all supposed to want to be trad wives with ten children hanging off of us while we look like white supremacist pioneers, right?), the idea that their wives might vote differently, or even need to vote at all, is also offensive to the conservative patriarchal ideology.

Not only does the SAVE Act make it harder for Republicans voters to cast a ballot, it also exacerbates an existing problem: strict voter ID laws that have already prevented many women and other marginalized groups from voting. Currently, 12 states have strict photo ID requirements to vote, and four more require an ID, though it doesn’t need to include a photo, according to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP). MAP’s data shows that 20 percent of the voting-eligible population lives in the 12 strict-ID states, 11 of which voted Trump into office in the 2024 election.

But strict voter ID laws didn’t start with the Trump era. Republicans began a renewed push for voter IDs in 2002, when then-President George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act into law, requiring all first-time voters who register by mail to present an ID when voting. In 2004, Arizona passed a law requiring voters to present documentary proof of citizenship when they registered to vote, as well as present an ID to vote. A year later, Indiana passed a law requiring all voters present a photo ID to vote. The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s law in 2008.

However, the Supreme Court struck down the Arizona law’s documentary proof of citizenship requirement for federal elections in 2013 case Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, finding that it violated the NVRA’s voter registration requirements. In 2018, a federal court once again ruled that documentary proof of citizenship requirements violate the NVRA and the U.S. Constitution, throwing out then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s attempt to require proof of citizenship to address the nonexistent problem of voter fraud. But a few months before the 2024 election, the Supreme Court allowed Arizona lawmakers to reinstate part of a law requiring proof of citizenship to register via a state form, SCOTUSBlog reported.

The SAVE Act is just trying once again to require documentary proof of citizenship, even though it has already been ruled unconstitutional. Unfortunately, we know precedent doesn’t mean what it used to.

Voter suppression is a reproductive justice issue

We could see a rise of disenfranchisement among people who can become pregnant. According to Pregnancy Justice, pregnancy criminalization already occurred before the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. A 2024 Pregnancy Justice report found that “in the first year after Dobbs, at least 210 pregnant people faced criminal charges for conduct associated with pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth.” That number is, according to the report, the highest single-year number since researchers began studying these cases—and it’s likely an undercount.

The states with the most prosecutions of people for pregnancy related crimes are Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, and Texas. All six of these states also have voter ID laws, laws disenfranchising people with felony convictions, or other obstacles to voting such as limits on vote by mail or online registration. Additionally, while there are more incarcerated men than women, women are a growing prison population. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of incarcerated women is nearly seven times higher now than it was in 1980. That population has also grown at twice the pace of men, per the Prison Policy Initiative. The Prison Policy Initiative also found that 60 percent of women incarcerated in local jails have not yet been convicted of a crime and are being held while awaiting trial. Most people held in jail awaiting trial should legally retain their right to vote, but are often prevented from doing so because many jails don’t provide voting materials.

The disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies is a huge problem on its own. Many states continue to deny people the right to vote if they have a felony conviction, even after they have completed their sentence. Incarcerated women’s disenfranchisement disproportionately targets women of color, with Black women incarcerated at 1.6 times the rate of white women. The SAVE Act will make the structural barriers to incarcerated voting even more extreme, as it would be almost impossible to access documentary proof of citizenship from behind bars.

Like many conservative efforts, the SAVE Act is a “solution” in search of a problem. Non-citizen voting is a statistical non-issue—according to the Migration Policy Institute, there is no evidence that nonTcitizens are voting in significant numbers, and “audits by election officials and numerous studies reflect that voter fraud by noncitizens is extremely rare.” A Brennan Center survey found that “improper noncitizen votes” made up 0.0001 percent of votes in 42 jurisdictions during the 2016 election. Our government already makes sure only citizens are voting, but the SAVE Act would place an even heavier burden on individual voters.

Republicans can spout whatever justifications they have for reintroducing the SAVE Act, but in reality, it’s a transparent attempt to prevent large swaths of Americans voting. It will have a huge impact on marginalized groups, including women—even married, white, rich, Christian women. If you’ve already changed your name, make sure your passport, driver’s license, and birth certificate are updated. You may need them to protect your right to vote.