A new poll tax? How the SAVE Act impacts Black, unhoused and female voters

The SAVE America Act, introduced in January by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, as an updated and expanded version of the 2025 SAVE Act, is believed to make the voting process difficult for many eligible voters across the country. Some say the bill will especially impact Black elders.

The act would require proof of U.S. citizenship to be presented in person to register to vote. A similar law passed at the state level in Kansas prevented 31,000 eligible people from voting before a federal judge struck it down. The bill would also require states to provide private personal data records on all registered voters, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said.

More than 21 million voting-age citizens lack the documents that would be required, including many elders of African heritage born during Jim Crow, because of well-documented barriers to obtaining birth records, according to the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage.

The council, which advises the Minnesota government on the needs of African American, African immigrant, Black American and Black immigrant communities, said more than 140 million Americans lack passports, and 69 million women have names that do not match their birth certificates, creating additional hurdles.

“The SAVE Act… it’s definitely a voter suppression bill, plain and simple,” said Jasmine Russell, chief narrative and data justice officer at the African American Leadership Forum.

“This is another way for them to weed out voters and to suppress the rights that all citizens should have, being able to show up to a poll in Minnesota and have their vote count. And also to register with ease.”

The name and stated purpose of the bill may be misleading, some say.

Nieeta Presley, president of the NAACP St. Paul Roy Wilkins Memorial Branch, said the SAVE Act sounds like supporters want to protect people’s votes, when that is not the case.

“In reality, they’re creating unnecessary layers of barriers and challenges to voting, especially for the most marginalized or vulnerable people like our seniors, like the unhoused, like our ex-offenders who have finished their parole and probation and are eligible to vote now.”

Secretary Simon, who opposes the bill, said he understands why someone who heard the bill requires proof of citizenship might think that sounds reasonable.

“Except, in my view, the more you look, the less you like,” Simon said. “When you really think about how this would be implemented on a day-to-day level, it’s going to be a lot of challenges for a lot of eligible folks, people who have been voting for years or decades. And that is something that I think needs to be considered, and why I have serious concerns.”

An example he gave is the complications it would create for married women. There are 69 million women in America who have a different last name than the one they were born with, Simon said. That is a problem for those among them who don’t have passports.

“They’d have to produce both a birth certificate and a marriage record of some kind, and that’s if they’ve been married once,” Simon said. “If they’ve been married more than once and changed their name more than once, then they’d have to have a third document. … A lot of people will be able to come up with those documents, but a lot of people will not.”

The problem the bill claims to address is noncitizens voting. From 2014 through 2023, three out of 13.4 million people who cast a ballot were not citizens, Simon said.

Though that is three too many, Simon said, the voting system is clean.

“Is it worth shutting out potentially tens of thousands of eligible voters to catch a handful of people?” he asked. “I say the answer to that is ‘no.’ I think that’s lopsided. It’s not a fair balance.”

The Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage agrees the problem the bill targets is virtually nonexistent, as noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Existing systems, including HAVA identity verification, federal database checks and felony penalties, already safeguard election integrity, the council said in a statement to the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

Attorney General Keith Ellison also opposes the act. His office said in a statement that it would reverse three decades of progress made under the National Voter Registration Act, which was designed to remove barriers to voter registration and promote greater participation in the democratic process.

Presley, the council and Russell said the act will especially impact Minnesota’s Black community.

“For African heritage communities, the SAVE Act echoes the logic and impact of poll taxes and other Jim Crow-era barriers: it imposes costs, paperwork, travel and bureaucratic obstacles that fall hardest on those historically excluded from political power. Civil rights and human rights organizations warn that the act would suppress turnout, erode civic participation and weaken the democratic infrastructure that Black communities have built over generations,” the council said.

“The SAVE Act does not strengthen democracy, it restricts it. Protecting the freedom to vote requires strengthening, not dismantling, the civil rights safeguards that ensure every eligible citizen can participate fully and equally in our democracy.”

Presley echoed this, explaining that for many decades there was no formal recording of the existence or births of Black residents.

“So that really puts our elders at risk of being able to vote, because they no longer have the necessary documentation, yet have been voting for decades.”

She continued that a high population of Black people are also part of the unhoused population she mentioned earlier.

The St. Paul NAACP registered 200 residents to vote last year by visiting senior buildings and shelters. The SAVE Act would impact that voter engagement, she said.

Russell said the SAVE Act would unwind much of Minnesota’s strong voting infrastructure.

“Black Minnesotans disproportionately rely on same-day registration, at community voter drives, mail-in registration, and this bill would effectively eliminate all of that. It also criminalizes election workers who might just be trying to help someone who needs to register,” she said.

Minnesota has had same-day registration since 1973, something the state is very proud of, Simon said.

“It would definitely complicate things,” he said. “It would make the process slower in the polling place, because now instead of someone registering at the polling place with, say, a driver’s license, or a neighbor vouching for them, or some other standard identification like a passport… now you have individual cases involving a particular birth certificate or marriage record. I’m imagining that’s going to take more time and might slow things down for some of the election judges.”

Other concerns Simon has include a lack of funding and time to implement the changes and train poll workers.

The state’s 30,000 poll workers would need to be trained to spot fake birth certificates and marriage records from across the country. In the past 30 years, election laws from Congress have come with time and money to implement changes.

“This one comes with no money, and even worse, for me, is it becomes effective the day the president signs the law,” Simon said.

The council is calling on policymakers to reject restrictive voting mandates in favor of a modernized electoral framework that prioritizes access over bureaucracy, including protecting early voting and mail voting options, increasing language and disability access, and funding community-based civic engagement efforts led by trusted Black institutions.

The council also recommends increasing polling locations in Black, immigrant and rural communities to reduce wait times, strengthening vote-by-mail access through prepaid postage, secure drop boxes and ballot-tracking tools, and waiving fees for documents required for voter registration, among other measures.

The bill appears to be stalled in the U.S. Senate, Simon said.

“It looks right now like there are no votes to pass this bill as it is. However, we’re keeping a close eye on things and talking with our congressional representatives, because there’s always the possibility that the boosters of the bill could take pieces of it and attach it to other legislation that is moving. We think that’s less likely, but we’re still watching.”

The African American Leadership Forum has created an action center where people can register to vote now, visit www.aalftc.quorum.us/ for more information.

Damenica Ellis welcomes reader responses at dellis@spokesman-recorder.com.