Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) claimed the SAVE Act could be used to deny voter registration to people with Hispanic last names.
Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Gillibrand criticized a provision she said would require states to send their voter rolls to the federal government for review. She questioned how the government would decide who is eligible to vote and suggested people with Hispanic surnames could be unfairly targeted.
“Are they just going to say if you have a Latin last name, if you’re a Latino, and it’s Diaz or Alvarez, that you are not allowed to vote because there’s a question about whether you’re a citizen?” Gillibrand questioned. “That is how they’re going to disenfranchise people. Like it’s the amount of harm they would do to access to the ballot is unknowable.”
Contrary to what Gillibrand stated, the SAVE Act contains no provision directing election officials to consider a person’s surname or ethnicity when determining voter eligibility.
Gillibrand claimed the SAVE Act would require Americans to present a passport to register to vote, arguing that driver’s licenses and REAL IDs would not be sufficient under the proposal.
“Well, what the SAVE Act does — don’t let him fool you — it’s not about having ID. The IDs that are in our wallet today are not sufficient for the SAVE Act,” Gillibrand argued. “So you couldn’t use a driver’s license, you couldn’t even use a real ID driver’s license, you would need to have a passport. If you had to register to vote today, I think only 50 percent of Americans have passports.”
Gillibrand said the SAVE Act would disenfranchise married women and military personnel by imposing documentation requirements she argued many eligible voters would be unable to meet.
“If your passport doesn’t match your birth certificate because you got married, you don’t get to register to vote, you have to go change your birth certificate to your new married name. So that’s going to disenfranchise a lot of women. So many things, and so, and military IDs don’t count,” Gillibrand continued. “So all those veterans, all those military members serving all across the world, they couldn’t register to vote either. So it was written intentionally to subvert access to the ballot, written intentionally so less people will vote.”
The SAVE Act does not require every voter to present a passport. The bill lists several forms of documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, including a qualifying REAL ID that indicates citizenship, certain government-issued IDs used with supporting documents, birth certificates, naturalization certificates, Consular Reports of Birth Abroad, and some military documentation.
Gillibrand also said military IDs “don’t count,” but the SAVE Act specifically includes an official U.S. military identification card when presented with a military record showing the applicant was born in the United States.
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