Dear Senator:
On behalf of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 64 affiliate unions representing 15 million working people across our economy, I urge you to oppose S.1383 the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Congress should be making it easier – not harder – for working people to cast their ballots and participate in their government. This bill does just the opposite. It undermines working people’s ability to vote. By requiring extreme documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote or update an existing registration, this bill will result in the disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens, especially working class and lower income Americans. Federal laws already prohibit non-citizen voting, and there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud to justify the dramatic measures imposed on citizens by this bill.
The SAVE Act requires Americans to obtain and produce documents like passports and certified birth certificates in order to prove their citizenship whenever they register to vote or update their registration. Those with the easiest go of it will be those with a valid passport, but not everyone has a passport. The poorer you are, the less likely you will have one. That’s in part because working class families, rather than jet-setting to the Caribbean or Europe, tend to vacation in the U.S., if they can afford a vacation at all. Only one in four Americans with a high school degree or less has a valid passport, and only one in five Americans with income below $50,000 has a valid passport. Additionally, people of color, rural residents, and seniors are less likely to have a passport than other populations. These working class Americans will have to obtain a passport or a certified copy of their birth certificate along with other documentation in time for registration deadlines. If these workers are married women, the bill imposes still more extra steps to deal with their married name no longer matching their birth certificate. The unjustified bureaucratic hassle of this bill plainly hits working people the hardest.
The bill also requires individuals to present this documentary proof of citizenship in person to an election official, another hassle that will hit those who work full-time or multiple jobs the hardest. In this fashion, the SAVE Act undermines measures like mail and online voter registration intended to benefit working people and their schedules. Workers may not be able to easily request time off from work for this in-person process, and others may lack transportation to get to an election office. This time off will be needed not just when they first register to vote but every time they need to update their registration, such as when they change addresses. Moreover, those who rent or have lower incomes are more likely to change addresses than those who own their homes or have higher incomes. So the bill creates not just bigger hurdles but more frequent hurdles for working class Americans to vote.
The SAVE Act also imposes new burdens on states and state election officials. Because all voter registrations currently collected online, whether through a motor vehicle department, state elections offices, or by mail, would now have to be done in person, states would have to absorb the associated costs. Moreover, election officials would risk civil and criminal penalties under this bill if they accept or process voter registration applications without the required proof of citizenship — even if it is just an administrative mix-up.
All these hurdles to voting are proposed to solve a virtually nonexistent problem. The current system to prevent noncitizens from voting – having registrants sign an affirmation under penalty of perjury that they are a U.S. citizen – works. The penalties for perjury are severe, and the deterrent effect is great. For example, when Georgia audited its voter rolls most recently, officials found that just 20 out of 8,200,000 registered voters were noncitizens, and only 9 of those 20 had any history of actually voting. Incidentally, all 20 – who constituted 0.00024% of people on the voter rolls – were referred to local prosecutors. Those numbers indicate a highly effective system for preventing noncitizen voting. On the other hand, the SAVE Act would create such a bureaucratic trap for working class Georgians that the number of U.S. citizens disenfranchised by the bill would dwarf many times over the tiny fraction of noncitizens who were somehow registered and then prosecuted. A similar dynamic can be expected in the rest of the 50 states and the District. This bill is not just a solution in search of a problem. It is a problem in search of a problem.
For these reasons, I urge you to vote NO on the SAVE America Act and focus on policies that expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, including safeguarding the right to vote for all of us.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs