1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to oppose the SAVE America Act, which passed the House on Wednesday and now threatens to disenfranchise millions of eligible American voters. This legislation creates unnecessary barriers to voter registration and ballot casting that will harm your constituents. The bill requires voters to provide documents proving citizenship at registration, including an unexpired passport or birth certificate. The critical flaw is that birth certificates often do not reflect current legal names after marriage or gender transition. An estimated 69 million American women and 4 million men do not have birth certificates matching their current legal names. This means that millions of eligible voters, including married women and LGBTQ+ individuals, would face significant obstacles to exercising their constitutional right to vote. The immediate implementation timeline makes this even more problematic. As Gréta Bedekovics, director of democracy policy at the Center for American Progress, noted, there is "absolutely no runway for this bill" given that it would take effect immediately, potentially affecting those who have already cast mail-in ballots for primary elections. The bureaucratic burden of obtaining multiple documents showing name changes is expensive and time-consuming, which may discourage eligible citizens from registering altogether. New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, who chairs the Democratic Women's Caucus, correctly identified that this bill would make registration "harder, more expensive" and particularly affect Latinas and others with multiple documents showing different legal names. Even Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has expressed concern, stating that this voter ID push is "not how we build trust" and criticizing the one-size-fits-all federal mandate approach. I urge you to vote against the SAVE America Act when it comes to the Senate floor. Protecting voting rights means ensuring access for all eligible citizens, not creating barriers that disproportionately impact women and marginalized communities.