Commentaries at the San Antonio Report provide space for our community to share perspectives and offer solutions to pressing local issues. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author alone.
For more than a decade, Texas has set a shameful precedent, leading the way in implementing harmful and suppressive voting policies that have severely restricted Texans’ access to the ballot. From restrictive voter ID and vote-by-mail laws to limiting access to the polls by closing hundreds of polling stations over the past decade and, now, attempting to pass a statewide proof of citizenship mandate in order to vote in Texas; Texas legislators continue to infringe on our right to vote and have effectively made it one of the hardest places to vote in the country.
But our legislators aren’t satisfied with just Texas. No, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Austin) has made it his personal mission to bring Texas’ oppressive voting laws to the national level by introducing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, a new bill that, like Texas’ Senate Bill 16, would require all Americans to provide proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
Just like in Texas, the SAVE Act is nothing but an attempt to trick us into making it harder for millions of eligible Americans to cast their votes. This unnecessary and burdensome bill would require every single American citizen to provide very specific documents, chiefly by either presenting a passport or an original copy of their birth certificate in person when registering to vote and anytime they update their voter registration.
Not only does this put up additional barriers to voting, but 21 million Americans don’t even have these documents readily available. The restrictions in this bill would especially burden military voters, tribal voters, rural voters, survivors of natural disasters and the tens of millions of married women in the U.S. who have changed their legal names.
While politicians in Washington, like Roy, say the SAVE Act would prevent noncitizens from voting, what they have conveniently forgotten to mention is that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. In fact, we have had this law on the books for almost 30 years now.
All states, including Texas, already have strong systems in place to verify voter eligibility, with both counties and the Secretary of State’s office in Texas working daily to maintain accurate and secure voter rolls. Requiring individuals to track down and provide additional documents places an unnecessary burden on eligible Texans when the state is ultimately responsible for maintaining these records. These additional requirements would not only be burdensome but also severely limit eligible voters from casting their ballots.
As an issue advocacy director for a civic engagement nonprofit, I have seen firsthand the severe barriers to voting that young people in Texas particularly have had to face over the past several years. Due to Texas’ strict voting laws, many young Texans have to overcome enormous obstacles just to cast their ballot or face barriers that lead to their disenfranchisement altogether.
For example, navigating a paper-only registration system with no confirmation process leaves many young voters thinking they’re registered, only to find out they’re not when they’re turned away at the polls. Others are caught off guard by our state’s restrictive ID laws, which accept a handgun license but not a student ID, leaving students without a driver’s license or another accepted form of identification scrambling to understand their options.
Proof of citizenship requirements would just further disenfranchise the millions of young Texans who want to make their voices heard. Moreover, young eligible voters are far more likely to lack easy access to the required documents and may also be harder to verify in existing databases due to having fewer extensive records. In fact, an estimated 1.3 million voting-age Texans don’t have easy access to the documents that the SAVE Act requires.
The SAVE Act and the Trump administration’s recent executive order are just the latest examples of a string of schemes to make voting more difficult for citizens while hiding behind a thin veil of disinformation and false claims of widespread voter fraud. Democracy should be about participation, not exclusion. Instead of creating more obstacles that make it harder for Americans to cast their ballot, we should work to ensure that every eligible voter can participate in our democracy without undue burden. I urge our lawmakers, like representatives Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez Jr. of Texas, to protect the sanctity of our democracy and vote “no” on the SAVE Act.
