The SAVE Act passed the House on Feb. 11, 2026 by a vote of 218-213 and is now in the Senate awaiting a vote. Voting is expected to take place next week, according to Thune. If and when it passes the Senate, it will go to the president for a final signature.
Will SAVE Act Prevent Married Women from Registering to Vote?
Posted on February 28, 2025
Q: Is it true that under the SAVE Act married women will not be able to register to vote if their married name doesn’t match their birth certificate?
A: The proposed SAVE Act instructs states to establish a process for people whose legal name doesn’t match their birth certificate to provide additional documents. But voting rights advocates say that married women and others who have changed their names may face difficulty when registering because of the ambiguity in the bill over what documents may be accepted.
Why on earth is a birth certificate used at all for identification?
Long form or short form? Lol
Here is a list of allowed document for a similar problem, for employment. Note that it categorizes the possibilities as ID, citizenship, and work authorization, and you may need one each from multiple groups. For example you might use a drivers license as ID and a certified birth certificate as proof of citizenship
Obviously I’m not saying this is appropriate to mandate for voting but if we were, this is a well thought out answer to that sort of question.
It doesn’t address the voter suppression concern though
No reason to use the I9 instead of the actual bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22/text
That’s the version that passed the house. And the relevant bit is near the top, section 2(b).
Is no one going to point out that it establishes requirements for birth certificates? If a state doesn’t already comply with all of those, are we going to have to be reborn?
It’s proof of citizenship. But also, here it’s a convenient and plausibly deniable way to disenfranchise people who vote differently than them.
Yeah, but that seems like a really dumb and not-all-encompassing proof of citizenship. That’s why I asked. The 2nd part of your reaction makes sense and very likely accurate, but probably not the official reason right? Like, what is their public excuse for using it as proof of citizenship?
What do you use?
A passport or national ID
Less than half of Americans have a passport, and that’s the only form of national ID we have. We have 50 different state IDs, but iirc only 3 of them show proof of citizenship.
Americans doesn’t necessarily have those.
Like if you don’t leave the US (like a lot of Americans don’t) you don’t have a incentive to keep your passport up to date.
Everyone in Europe has Passports, because you need it so much more.
Everyone in America have a birth certificate
Everyone in America have a birth certificate
Probably not if you’re an immigrant right? Legal or not.
I’m trying to say that a birth certificate doesn’t make much sense as a form of proof of citizenship, since it doesn’t accurately reflect immigrants and, apparently, marital status
You don’t become a legal immigrant in the us without presenting your birth certificate I think
Yeah I’m guessing even most MAGA voters don’t have a birth certificate handy, and certainly don’t have passports. This just disenfranchises MOST Americans.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
The enforcement will be extremely selective. We’re talking about Republicans here. They’re not subtle about ignoring the constitution.
“Ignoring the constitution” is the bedrock of our political parties.
For example the “powers not enumerated in the constitution rest with the people” bits. There’s no limit to powers today, they do what they want.
To further your point, this is about registering to vote, not voting. People already registered grandfather in. Just like the literacy treats that white folks also wouldn’t pass, but it was only about the newly allowed black voters.
And also the source of the term “grandfathered in”.
The law was typically along the lines of “literacy test or your grandfather could vote”.
Don’t forget there are various reasons you might get disenrolled and have to register again.
Including excessive “cleaning” the registration list, for districts which have too many non-Republican voters
This being on the horizon stopped me from changing my name from my father’s to my mother’s last name. A shame. She has a much cooler name.
They’ll go after each demographic whose voting habits favour democrats: Immigrants, women, educated, non-christian, poor, lbgtq+, young, non-white. Whichever ones you belong to, makes you a potential target of voter disenfranchisement.
Depends on the immigrants, sadly.
Death by a thousand cuts. Each issue by itself might evoke a shrug, but put it all together, a very clear picture emerges.
BTW (and I’m sure you know) this has been going on for waaaay longer than MAGA. Arguably since the USA’s independence. Every conservative president seems to have added a little bit. The system is near completely eroded.
Wait til you hear why they created a “war” on “drugs”!
If convicted felons can be president, they should be allowed to vote too.
As a non white lol why can’t I vote? I’m a legal citizen I will have no issue. I would like to know what rights the whites have over me?
You don’t know if you won’t have issues or not. Their whole goal is to create issues.
Live in a black area of a county in GA? Close down the polling station.
Look Hispanic near a polling station? Maybe ICE tackles you and arrests you for no reason.
Woman and your name doesn’t match? No vote.
It’s really not hard to understand what they’re trying to do. Whites don’t have more rights than you on paper. They would love to change that, and they start by bending and then breaking the law.
Never had an issue voting lol
Rights? Have you been paying attention?
They’re blatantly and regularly violating the first, second, fourth, and fifth amendments whenever they feel like it.
They’re absolutely going to have ICE around harassing anyone they think might vote blue, particularly people of color.
You aren’t wealthy enough to have rights.
What rights do people wealthier than me have?
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, to start with.
Grow up.
Lol so your answer is a catch phrase. Cause I notice the harm of using my people as a political football. This is why the part system is fucking stupid. Your fans just trying to help your team not the actual people
If your name doesn’t match what’s on your birth certificate, look into whether your state allows you to change your birth certificate and do it before it’s too late. My name is not my birth name or my married name, I had it legally changed. I got tired of hauling around my birth certificate, marriage certificate, divorce paperwork, and legal name change to show the paper trail that I both was who I was and was no longer legally married. Turns out in my state I just had to send in a notarized form, copies of my paperwork and pay small fee and I got my birth certificate updated to my current name. Now I can “prove” who I am by just showing my birth certificate and ignore the fact that I was married and changed my name. It also made updating my passport easier. Granted, I am not trans, but I did it last year and they had the option to change gender on the form.
How isn’t showing your passport sufficient evidence to tell you are who you tell you are?
Not everyone has their passport. If you do, that should be sufficient. It also made updating my passport easier, way less paperwork to send in. I’d never gotten around to updating my passport to the correct name and it was much less paperwork to send in.
So hear me out. Conservatives are more likely to take someone’s last name than a liberal couple right? Doesn’t this disproportionately disenfranchise Republican women? Could this potentially actually harm the Republican vote?
Yeah. But the hit to potential Democratic voters will make it worth their while.
Essentially women would need to provide additional paperwork in order to vote. Republican women have that paperwork, or can get it easier.
Women aren’t the only people who change their names. I’m a straight white guy and I took my wife’s last name when we got married. So I’m affected by this dumbass shit too.
What makes you think Republican women would have an easier time getting that paperwork?
As far as I know, the demographics of passport holding Americans skews slightly left, and more left leaning couples would be expected to have kept their maiden names upon marriage.
What makes you think Republican women would have an easier time getting that paperwork?
money and privilege?
Marginally yes they are, but it’s still more common in my experience that the woman changes their name more often than not.
It’s a bit of paperwork, but it does make things easier when you have the same last name. Until president asshat decided to disenchanted people.
I’d say the important statistic is that more conservative women get married overall
A lot of states have been banning name changes for trans people, I think this was a dumb attack on trans people.
When my wife and I married she only took my last name because her father abandoned her when she was 6 months old, and she wanted to erase that from her identity.
One of my male coworkers at a previous job did the same thing for the same reason, took his wife’s name.
This is from USA Today. This is where political journalism is:
Will the SAVE America Act pass the Senate? Odds, predictions
The odds of the SAVE America Act passing the Senate and signed into law in 2026 are 12% according to the Polymarket betting odds, and the Kalshi market odds show 13.9% confidence that it will become law.
TBF the betting platforms had higher accuracy than aggregate polls in 2024.
I definitely trust the prediction markets more than just about any poll.
Nah, I once made a hundred bucks because they had Doug Jones losing to that pedo. They’d just as fallible as anything else.
I mean, nothing is 100%.
Well, nothing anyone would allow you to bet on.
Why would I need Steve Kornacki or whoever when I’ve got degenerate gamblers?
IDK about that, but credit where due they aren’t a terrible source.
Betting platforms aggregate the beliefs of the people betting on them, but this means that biases of that group affect the odds.
People who receive and respond to polls are also a subset with biases.
That’s true, but also a group that has a real and vested interest in getting the answer RIGHT. That helps.
yes, but pollsters will try to account for that in their models
So do the bookies setting odds and the people betting. People don’t win money by getting their bets wrong.
For every mathematician who beat the lottery there are millions who did not.
That’s not how bookies set odds! They do it based on what people bet, so if 10 people bet against something and 20 bet for it, the same account each, the odds will be 2:1, reduced a bit so the bookies makes a profit. This guarantees that the bookies make money.
How is that any different from what I said? The simple ratio is an automatic adjustment for Bias.
Are you being serious?
Are you?
Betting on me losing my rights is wild.
And yet it doesn’t even make the top ten fucked up shit for today.
Human behavior is depressing.
Alternatively: Humans are capable of adapting to intensely negative situations orchestrated by a few people in positions of great unearned power and privilege. Some people do their best to survive by betting on their own continued lack of survival, because they see no other options and the buy in is low.
Easy solution, just don’t marry anyone with a different last name.
[Sweet Home Alabama intensifies]
That’s how MAGA does marriage, usually
Might go a long way in explaining those long jaws they frequently have
Roll tide
Hmmm
Found the Kentuckian
I get the joke, but is it really so rare in the US for a woman to keep her own surname after marriage?
That was the point elsewhere here that it would hurt republicans more.
- republicans tend to be conservative, older, so are more likely for the woman to have changed her name
- democrats tend to be more liberal or more progressive or more educated, all of which are more likely for the woman to keep her name when getting married.
It’s actually pretty common for one person to take on the other’s last name.
My partner started out keeping hers, then took my last name after getting hassled over her name not matching our son’s in various situations.
This would make voting difficult for her.
My circles have been discussing this one for a while. Not a coincidence that they are making it more difficult to get a passport.
Or else what
Do the Republicans really think they are going to benefit from a requirement that disenfranchises people who don’t have proof of citizenship like:
-Women who got married and took their husbands last name
-People who keep getting divorced over and over again
-People who have never travelled outside the USBear in mind that the people who are basically guaranteed to have their documents in order are:
-Recently naturalized citizens
-People who travel a lot
-Unmarried women
-People who graduated collegeSo your local lesbian coven of naturalized middle aged Latinas. They are going to have zero problem voting. Joe Bob the cousin fucker from Alabama who has never gotten more than 20 miles from his trailer park and doesn’t believe in “the gummet”, and hasn’t had a job that didn’t pay cash in his whole life? Yeah, that fucker doesn’t have a passport.
But hey, at least they are going to stop all the undocumented immigrants who already weren’t allowed to register to vote in the first place.
This is going to be like how they attacked absentee voting without realizing that the majority of absentees were retirees and the military.
So your local lesbian coven of naturalized middle aged Latinas.
Just want to emphasize this hilarious line for anyone who doesn’t feel like reading the entire post. Please carry on.
See, the thing Jim Crow and its “literacy tests” taught us is that you just need a rule that you can enforce on the wrong people, and then you just choose not to enforce it when it’s convenient.
But that’s the thing. YOU know that. But do they? ID verification, unlike literacy tests, is pretty objective. There isn’t much room to target that enforcement apart from the existing biases in who has id and who doesn’t.
As a white guy, I’m aware that there have been times where I’m just accepted at face value when other people would have required ID. Why would voting be any different? It’s not the ID itself necessarily, but who is asked for it and who likely has it in order
As an older guy I’ve also had occasion to laugh at zero tolerance ID mandates for alcohol. At one point I went out for drinks with co-workers of a variety of ages. I somehow forgot my ID so they refused service despite me obviously being well over the age requirement. Instead of getting frustrated, I was amused at getting a coworker less than half my age to buy my beer. Sometimes you just need to laugh at the ridiculousness. But it would not have been funny if something like this kept me from voting
The literacy tests were only given to “specific kinds” of people.
And the same will be true for ID verification.
If you look “trustworthy” they won’t ask for your ID.
Do the Republicans really think
Not usually
How funny that they constantly provide more incentive to NOT get married
Cis women, trans people, and abuse victims. Their favourite targets.
Wait, this is even dumber then it looks like. Under this crap unmarried women will be unaffected but the more traditional marriage types will be hooped. So this will remove the “trad” wife votes but not touch the ladies in say the local polycule. Gee I wonder if all the single/divorced women will be more or less likely to vote for the red party?
“Don’t get married, women. Or you no longer have the right to vote!” – MAGA, apparently
I’d be willing to bet this will disenfranchise more republican women than democrat women. Democrats are way more likely to have a passport
