Americans have come to rely on the promise that every citizen has the right to have their voice heard. But the U.S. House of Representatives largely erased that promise last week when, in a 220-208 vote, it passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Don’t be fooled by its heroic-sounding name. This legislation aims to disenfranchise millions of voters, many of them people of color and women, and further concentrate power among those who are already powerful.
This legislation aims to disenfranchise millions of voters, many of them people of color and women.
The law would require people looking to register to vote to provide passports or birth certificates — and, for citizens who don’t have those documents at their disposal, acquiring them costs both money and time. Thus, the so-called SAVE Act would undermine voting rights and block some citizens from the ballot box. The Center for American Progress reports that approximately 146 million American citizens don’t own a passport. But that’s not all. The bill would make it harder for the tens of millions of spouses who have changed their last names through marriage to vote because, for example, the name on their birth certificate won’t match the name they use to vote. And the SAVE Act’s in-person registration requirement would force roughly 60 million rural residents to drive far from home to become eligible to vote.
What will be next? Will we soon be forced to take literacy tests to prove our right to vote? Will voters be forced to pay a poll tax to cast their ballots?
Despite the lies that some elected leaders have told, the SAVE Act would do nothing more than legalize voter suppression.
Let’s be clear. Voter fraud is a myth. There is little, if any, credible evidence that widespread voter fraud exists. The justification for the law is rooted in a divisive lie — a dog whistle — that our elections are not secure. They are.
The SAVE Act is the latest in a string of voter suppression efforts that have been growing longer in recent years.
Last-minute polling place changes, polling place closures that result in predictably long lines, and voter roll purges — the kinds of things that the Voting Rights Act used to protect against — are all forms of voter suppression, and those acts of suppression disproportionately affect communities of color. The obvious goal? To deter Black and brown voters from casting their ballots.
All around the country, the NAACP has been fighting attempts to silence voters. We refuse to sit idly by as the House tries to return this country to a time when the right to vote depended on being white, being male, and owning property.
For the last three months, Congress and the Trump-Musk administration have shown the American people it cannot be trusted.
Americans have watched political leaders recklessly gut key jobs from our federal workforce, threaten Social Security and Medicaid and bully our allies around the world. Trump posting “This is a great time to buy,” and then announcing a suspension of certain tariffs that caused the stock market to spike, prompted questions about whether he was manipulating the stock market. Meanwhile, millions of American families are struggling to put food on the table.
The SAVE Act is not being proposed in isolation. It’s part of a larger undoing of our democracy.
So it’s not surprising that the House passed this legislation that, under the pretense of preserving democracy, would have the effect of silencing millions of voters across the country. The SAVE Act is not being proposed in isolation. It’s part of a larger undoing of our democracy.
We cannot allow the right to vote — our means of shaping policies and our future — to be taken away from us. There is still time to protect voting rights. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., has already reintroduced, would ensure American citizens have an equal opportunity to participate in our democracy. And it would prevent states with a history of discriminatory voting practices from implementing new laws or changes that could harm voters. The NAACP calls on Congress to ditch the SAVE Act and pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act instead. The Lewis act aims to restore and strengthen protections against voter discrimination that were eroded by the Supreme Court in 2013. By restoring key elements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and addressing loopholes exploited to undermine fair elections, the act will ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in our democracy instead of blocking American citizens from voting. The SAVE Act would not result in fair elections. But the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, named for the late U.S. representative from Georgia and civil rights activist who put his life on the line in Selma, Ala., for voting rights for all, would. Lewis correctly believed that every citizen — regardless of political party or background — has a voice that deserves to be heard at the ballot box. The right to vote is one of the most sacred principles of our nation. Protecting voting rights is not a partisan issue — it’s an American one. The SAVE Act furthers a partisan lie that voter fraud is threatening our democracy. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, by contrast, recognizes that voter suppression is the threat and promotes the nonpartisan idea that more people voting is the path to more democracy. Rather than passing a bill that pretends to save our democracy, let’s actually do something to save it before it is too late.
Derrick Johnson
Derrick Johnson is president and CEO of the NAACP, a title he has held since October 2017. Under his leadership, the NAACP has undertaken such efforts as the 2018 "Log Out" Facebook Campaign after reports of Russian hackers targeting African Americans; the Jamestown-to-Jamestown Partnership, marking the 400th anniversary of enslaved Africans' touching the shores of America; and 2020's We are Done Dying Campaign, exposing the inequities embedded into the American health care system and the country at large. He is dedicated to advocating on behalf of the Black community and all those who are affected by systemic oppression and prejudice. 
