> An estimated 69 million American women and 4 million men do not have a birth certificate that matches their current legal name, according to the liberal Center for American Progress.
Not to worry! Per the "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections" executive order, birth certificates are not valid proof of citizenship for the purposes of voting in a federal election anyway.
It depends on the state as far as I understand it.
You need to be registered as a voter, which requires that you be a citizen. How that is enforced varies.
There are also ID requirements at the poll site. Again, those vary.
In every state I've lived in voting was in some way (optionally) tied to your driver's license. But the body issuing the license has always known whether or not I was a US citizen so it boils down to the same thing.
Driving license, no, because non citizens can get one. Passport, yes. But plenty of Americans don’t have a passport.
The OP would say these people are being deliberately disenfranchised. Personally I’ve long since given up judging these things based on what I think may or may not be in the hearts of those writing it. We don’t know so it just becomes an endless back and forth. Instead I look to the facts: the SAVE act would make it more difficult for many people to vote, with an aim of stopping those who are unauthorized to vote from doing so. There’s never really been any solid evidence of the latter happening in notable numbers so to me the trade off doesn’t feel worth it.
IMO something like the SAVE Act needs to also legislate the process by which a citizen can easily get an ID in order to vote. But it doesn’t, it just says that states would manage it. Given that some states used “literacy tests” to disenfranchise black people not so long ago I personally don’t trust they would all approach ID access in a fair and equal way.
Slight correction: there's a thing called "enhanced driver license" that some states issue that complies with the relevant federal standards and can serve as proof of citizenship (they are only issued to citizens). It is, in effect, a passport card combined with a driver license on a single card.
https://19thnews.org/2025/03/save-act-voting-married-women/
> An estimated 69 million American women and 4 million men do not have a birth certificate that matches their current legal name, according to the liberal Center for American Progress.