- United States
- Texas
- Letter
The federal SAVE Act would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, and Texas would be responsible for implementing it. The evidence doesn’t support the problem the bill claims to solve. The Heritage Foundation, which backs the law, found 100 instances of noncitizen voting out of 1.5 billion ballots cast since 2000. A nearly identical Kansas law blocked 31,000 eligible citizens from registering before a federal court struck it down. In Texas, an estimated 2 to 3 million eligible voters lack a current passport or certified birth certificate. Women who changed their names at marriage face additional complications when documents don’t match. Rural Texans, elderly voters, and low-income residents are hit hardest.
Texas already has some of the strictest voter ID laws in the country. Your office controls how new federal requirements get administered, what help is available to affected voters, and how hard the state pushes back on implementation rules that wrongly exclude eligible Texans.
I am asking you to oppose any implementation of proof-of-citizenship requirements without a free, accessible process for voters to establish eligibility. Election integrity means counting every legitimate vote, not building new barriers to cast one.