The SAVE Act and manufactured panic over married women

Every election cycle needs a villain. This time, it is paperwork.

If you have been paying attention to the rhetoric surrounding the SAVE Act, you would think Congress is on the verge of revoking the 19th Amendment. The media is manufacturing a panic. We are being warned that soon, 70 million married women will be unable to vote. That women will show up to the polls only to be turned away in humiliation. I can see the Handmaid’s Tale visuals now. It’s the kind of narrative designed to produce immediate outrage. It’s also completely detached from reality and what the legislation actually does.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act would require documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. Not every time a person votes. Not every election. Voters don’t even need to do this retroactively. If a voter is already registered, nothing changes for them.

We could stop there. If this simple fact were mentioned, it would calm most irrational fears. Yet the activist class and media (but I repeat myself) have left this fact out, and instead have chosen to frame this as a targeted attack on married women, particularly those who changed their last names.

There’s also an unspoken insult here. The implication is that women, especially married women, are uniquely incapable of navigating document requirements. The same side that celebrates female empowerment is also insisting that women cannot manage basic paperwork. This is, of course, laughable to most married couples. Ask most men where their marriage license is, and I would bet a full basket of fries that a large portion of them would immediately look to their wives for the answer. And I love fries.

There’s no spontaneous uprising of confused married women driving the opposition to the SAVE Act. Instead, this manufactured outrage is being amplified by a well-funded network of advocacy nonprofits that have opposed voter identification laws for years.

One of the loudest and most organized voices fighting the SAVE Act is the National Urban League. This historic civil rights nonprofit did not simply issue a neutral critique. It openly denounced the SAVE Act as an “extremist effort to dismantle democracy and disenfranchise millions of American citizens.” National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial accused House Republicans of trying to “undermine the foundation of our democracy, our fundamental right to vote,” claiming that proof-of-citizenship requirements will “make it harder for millions of American citizens to vote” and disproportionately harm Black Americans and women whose paperwork “does not match their name.” But the League did not just stop at rhetoric. It is also actively mobilizing “volunteers, allies, and partners across the country to contact their Congressional representatives” to defeat the legislation.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) did not hesitate to go nuclear after the House passed the SAVE America Act. In its official press release, the ACLU called the bill a “dangerous assault on democracy” and claimed it would “disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.” They warned that requiring documentary proof of citizenship would create “massive barriers to the ballot box,” particularly for women who have changed their names, naturalized citizens, and “communities of color.” That framing is not new. It is the same language the ACLU has used for years whenever a state attempts to implement voter ID or proof-of-citizenship requirements.

Common Cause, a left-leaning government reform advocacy group that frequently opposes voter ID and election integrity laws and has received at least $1.4 million from the Arabella Advisors dark money network, is also actively mobilizing against the SAVE Act. On its website, the organization urges supporters to “Tell Congress: Reject the Anti-Voter SAVE Act,” claiming the bill would “block millions of eligible Americans from voting” through “burdensome and unnecessary documentation requirements.” They warn that married women, naturalized citizens, and working Americans will be harmed. And they are not leaving it to chance. Common Cause has already drafted the message for its 1.5 million members to send directly to their senators. Supporters simply click, add their name, and the prewritten opposition goes out.

It’s not just the couple of groups I’ve mentioned. A broad coalition of nonprofits has mobilized directly against the SAVE Act. The League of Women Voters has issued formal statements condemning the legislation and urging Congress to reject it, and has activated its state affiliates to pressure lawmakers. The Campaign Legal Center has publicly warned that the bill would block eligible voters and has joined coalition letters opposing its passage. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has criticized the SAVE Act as discriminatory against black Americans. Mi Familia Vota and Asian Americans Advancing Justice have similarly denounced the bill and urged their members to contact Congress. In other words, this is not one or two groups raising concerns. It is a coordinated advocacy network, complete with very similar press releases, action alerts, coalition letters, and prewritten scripts, all aimed at stopping proof-of-citizenship requirements at the federal level before they ever become law.

What is notably absent from their fear-mongering response is any serious effort to address the alleged problem. If millions of women genuinely struggle to obtain documentation due to name changes, why is the emphasis not on helping them secure it? Why is the strategy always to block the standard rather than help these poor, non-document-having women with compliance? The answer is uncomfortable but obvious. Solving the documentation issue eliminates the grievance. And grievances are politically useful.

To state the obvious, identification requirements to participate in civic life is not new. You need identification to rent a home, get a job, open a bank account, board an airplane, and drive legally. These requirements are not considered oppressive. They are considered normal features of modern civil society. In fact, some of these same organizations support illegals gaining documentation to stay in this country and even obtaining driver’s licenses. Yet, when the same principle is applied to voter registration, it is reframed as discrimination.

Nor is the United States unusually strict in this regard. Most developed countries require identification to vote. The debate in America is not about whether identification is feasible. It is about whether certain advocacy groups benefit from portraying verification standards as inherently suspect.

As a married woman, I do not find it empowering to be told I cannot handle the same documentation requirements that govern every other area of adult life. The question is not whether married women can vote. The question is: why is a powerful nonprofit network so invested in convincing the country that they cannot?