The SAVE Act Doesn’t Save Anyone

 

Under the Safeguard American Eligibility Act, legal barriers will restrict the voting rights of millions of Americans, including survivors of domestic abuse. Photo courtesy of Aaron Webb.

In August of 1920, the passage of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. This amendment granted women more than just the ability to participate in elections; it marked a monumental step in the decades-long fight for gender equality. Now, 105 years later, this right is being threatened by the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, also known as the SAVE Act, which could infringe upon the voting rights of millions of Americans.

On April 10, 2025, the SAVE Act passed in the House chamber by a vote of 220 to 208. If passed by the Senate, this legislation would require Americans to present documentation to prove their citizenship status, in person, when registering to vote or changing their registration information. The majority of Americans would be reliant on two types of documentation: their passport and their birth certificate. However, the Center for American Progress (CAP) estimates that over 140 million Americans do not have a passport, and up to 69 million women do not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name, having taken on their spouse’s name. In this case, women would be required to present documentation that tracks their name change. Such a stringent requirement creates unnecessary barriers for women, especially those who have had multiple name changes.

Women taking on the name of their spouse is not a legal requirement in the United States. However, the practice is widespread in many cultures around the globe. Married couples in Japan, for instance, are legally required to have the same surname, which is a tradition rooted in the patriarchal and common law societies of the European Middle Ages. Women feel overwhelmingly inclined to take on their spouse’s last name due to societal expectations and norms, but there are other instances in which a woman may feel forced, rather than simply inclined, to change their last name. While some change their name to join together with their spouse as a family unit, other people and their children may go through name changes to separate themselves both legally and mentally from abusers.

In addition to targeting women who have changed their name to match that of their spouse, the SAVE Act preys upon another population whose legal rights are already restricted: survivors of domestic abuse.

According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, one in four women has experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner. However, the Legal Services Corporation found that in 2022, recent survivors of domestic abuse did not receive any or enough legal assistance for 88 percent of their civil legal problems in the past year, and only 45 percent were confident that they could find and afford a lawyer to assist them. Institutional barriers prevent women from seeking legal assistance after experiencing rape, stalking, or domestic violence, leaving many abusers walking free. With few options for recourse, many women and children who have escaped domestic violence legally change their names and adopt new Social Security Numbers to protect their identities and location from their abusers.

It is difficult to find statistics on the rate of women and children who change their names after escaping domestic abuse. Surveying survivors of domestic abuse is an almost impossible task due to the threats imposed on them by their abusers. In addition, 18 U.S. states have programs that allow sealed name changes for survivors, and while these progressive policies protect their privacy, they create obstacles in data collection on the issue.

Members of my own family are part of that almost-impossible-to-find statistic. Legal name changes for my family members gave them the security and sense of peace that they had been stripped of for almost two decades. And now, what was once a gift of safety is now a threat to their constitutional rights.

Without access to proper legal advocacy, many survivors live in fear that their abusers will find and target them once again. Now, those who have avoided this fearful reality will be introduced to yet another one, where their 19th Amendment rights are restricted and their voice is not heard in elections.

While the SAVE Act will enforce barriers to domestic violence survivors’ voting rights, similar restrictions are already in place but are somewhat hidden. In many states, voter registration records are made public, releasing the name, party affiliation, and voting address of the voter. This poses a specific risk to survivors of domestic violence and stalking, as their abuser can easily access their home address. Many survivors, as a result, will avoid registering to vote due to fears for their personal safety. NO MORE, an organization dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence, and CAP states that additional obstacles include abusers preventing victims from receiving critical information shared on social media or by mail, which leads domestic abuse victims to miss voter registration and election deadlines.

Not only does this infringe upon survivors’ voting rights, but it also contributes to the United States’ long-standing and severe voter turnout issue. According to the Census Bureau, only 65 percent of voting-age Americans cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election. While voter turnout rose since the most recent midterm election in 2022, the Pew Research Center found that young adults comprised a larger percentage of nonvoters in the 2024 election compared to 2020.

Many factors contribute to the rise of young nonvoters, such as a lack of information on elections, financial disparities, or simple dissatisfaction with candidates. But the targeted hurdles placed in front of victims and survivors of domestic abuse, both by their abusers and their government, only exacerbate the problem. As young adults skip the polls, women aged 18-24 and 25-34 experience the highest rates of intimate partner violence. The federal government should be taking down barriers that restrict voting access to women and survivors of domestic violence instead of creating them.

Some states have taken action to combat these pre-existing barriers. In addition to the 18 U.S. states with sealed name changes for survivors, 43 states and Washington D.C. provide survivors substitute mailing addresses for voter registration through their state Attorney General’s office. Programs like Safe at Home or the Address Confidentiality Program protect many domestic abuse survivors’ voting rights on the state level, but the SAVE Act’s federal oversight would eclipse these efforts and introduce unneeded complications and restrictions to these voters.

The SAVE Act not only adds to the already strenuous legal complications that survivors may face, but it also shows that the federal government’s goal is not to increase voter turnout or ‘safeguard’ elections, but to influence who can and cannot vote. Survivors of stalking, rape, and physical partner violence should receive support and assistance from their elected officials, not further abuse.

Nadia Knoblauch (BC ‘28) is a staff writer for CPR from Oviedo, Florida, studying political science and English. She can be reached at nfk2112@barnard.edu.

 
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