1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I urge you to vote no on HB22, the SAVE Act, which would impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements on all voter registrations for federal elections. This legislation threatens to disenfranchise eligible American citizens while addressing a problem that essentially does not exist. The SAVE Act amends the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require documents like birth certificates, passports, or naturalization certificates before states can accept any voter registration. This creates substantial barriers for millions of eligible voters who may not possess these documents or face significant difficulty obtaining them. Elderly citizens, low-income individuals, and those born in states with incomplete vital records systems would be disproportionately affected. Naturalized citizens who became Americans decades ago may struggle to locate naturalization records. The bill contains no hardship exceptions or alternative verification methods, creating rigid requirements that could prevent eligible citizens from exercising their fundamental right to vote. Beyond the burden on voters, this legislation imposes a massive unfunded mandate on states. Election officials would need to verify existing voter rolls containing millions of registrations, develop new database systems to cross-reference Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records, train personnel on document authentication, and process substantially more complex registration applications. The bill provides no federal funding for these costs, forcing states to redirect resources from other critical election administration functions. The SAVE Act also establishes a private right of action allowing citizens to sue election officials for alleged non-compliance, inviting extensive litigation that would further strain election administration and create conflicting judicial interpretations across jurisdictions. This provision would overwhelm election officials with legal challenges while they attempt to implement an already complex verification system. The fundamental problem with this legislation is that it imposes substantial burdens on eligible voters to address non-citizen voting, which occurs at statistically negligible rates. The cost to our democracy of preventing eligible citizens from registering far outweighs any theoretical benefit. I ask you to protect voting rights by opposing the SAVE Act.