Attorneys general send letter to congressional leadership opposing SAVE Act

MICHIGAN (WNEM) - Michigan Attorney General (AG) Dana Nessel and 18 other attorneys general sent a letter to congressional leadership opposing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.

Nessel and the coalition say the proposed legislation would create “unnecessary and burdensome” proof-of-citizenship requirements that would “disenfranchise millions of eligible voters across the United States.”

The SAVE Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which was designed to remove barriers to voter registration and promote larger participation in voting. The SAVE Act would require voters to provide documentation of proof of citizenship before they can register to vote, the AG’s office said. The coalition said this would reverse 30 years of progress made under the NVRA.

In the letter, the coalition highlights that non-citizen voting is rare, stating that in jurisdictions with a high population of immigrants, only 0.0001% of votes that were cast were by non-citizens, the AG’s office said. Despite the “negligible” risk, the SAVE Act would force burden upon eligible voters, specifically impacting poor and minority communities.

The coalition warns the SAVE Act would create the following obstacles for eligible voters:

Requiring expensive documentation, such as passports or birth certificates, that perfectly match current names
Mandating in-person presentation of citizenship documents, effectively eliminating online voter registration systems currently available in 42 states
Creating barriers for married women and others whose birth certificates do not match their current names
Jeopardizing the franchise for active-duty service members who cannot return to their local election offices.

“Over 21 million voting-age citizens do not have ready access to a passport, birth record, or naturalization record,” the attorneys general note in their letter. “And 80% of married women would not have a valid birth certificate under the SAVE Act because those women chose to adopt their partner’s last name.”

Other concerns expressed in the letter address the “substantial” administrative and financial burdens the SAVE Act would place on state election systems, the AG’s office said. It would require the restructuring of states’ voter registration processes and the creation of new systems for document verification, while criminalizing mistakes made by election officials with penalties of up to five years in prison.

According to the AG’s office, the coalition urges congressional leadership to oppose the SAVE Act, saying “protecting election integrity shouldn’t come at the cost of disenfranchising legitimate voters.”

The AG’s office said joining Nessel are Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who led the coalition, and the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

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