The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Anna Kellar is the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Maine.
Imagine showing up to vote on Election Day, only to be prohibited from voting because your registration was canceled. This is not a far-fetched scenario. It could very well become a new reality for millions of Americans and thousands of Mainers under the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act is a piece of legislation crafted to purposefully make it harder for everyday Americans to register to vote and make their voices heard. If this bill becomes law, it would strip many eligible voters from accessing their constitutional right to vote by requiring documentary proof of citizenship (such as a passport or birth certificate) to register. This restriction alone would throw total chaos in our election system and further disenfranchise millions of American citizens — including elderly voters, voters of color and married women.
The supposed “problem” that our lawmakers are aiming to solve with the SAVE Act is one that is already virtually nonexistent: noncitizens voting in our elections. To be clear, only U.S. citizens can vote in our elections, and we have numerous checks and balances in place to ensure that our elections are free and fair.
For starters, it’s already illegal for noncitizens to cast a ballot in federal elections, and many states, including Maine, have secure systems in place to prevent noncitizens from voting — including severe penalties for those who violate this law. Election officials also use extensive state and federal data to verify an individual’s eligibility to cast a ballot and all Americans must provide either the last four digits of their Social Security number or driver’s license number when registering to vote to enable officials to verify their identity and eligibility.
In states that have already tried to implement proof-of-citizenship requirements, such as Kansas and New Hampshire, there have been numerous issues with the functionality of this law in practice. For example, in Kansas more than 31,000 U.S. citizens, and otherwise eligible voters, were blocked from registering to vote because they couldn’t provide proof of their citizenship due commonplace issues, such as misplacing their documents, or circumstances out of their control, such as losing their documents in a natural disaster. A few weeks ago in New Hampshire, one woman had to make three trips to the polls in order to prove her citizenship and her married name.
A few years ago, I attended a wedding for two friends who decided to create a new, hyphenated last name as a way to symbolize their marriage and commitment to each other. They were so excited about their new last name but, like so many other married people, I somehow doubt they thought about changing the names on their birth certificates as well — and quite frankly, why would they? With the SAVE Act in place, they may also struggle or lose their right to vote simply because of this absurd technicality.
The SAVE Act’s strict citizenship requirements could also severely impact thousands of other Mainers who live at the border and simply happen to be born in a Canadian hospital. Though their parents are Americans, these individuals can sometimes have difficulty proving their U.S. citizenship even at the BMV. The SAVE Act would just create another exhausting hurdle for these Mainers and others, such as elderly or rural residents, who do not readily have access to their birth certificates or a U.S. passport, or former U.S. military veterans who would no longer be able to use their military IDs when registering to vote.
Our elected leaders, like U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, should be working to make Mainers’ lives easier, not harder. Golden has been a tireless leader on election reform issues in the past, working to weed out corruption issues in Congress, and a relentless advocate in our state Legislature for expanding Mainers’ right to vote. I urge Golden to uphold this legacy and continue to prioritize Mainers’ best interests by voting No on the SAVE Act.
