1. United States
2. Ala.
3. Letter

You adopted your husband’s last name when you married; so did I. I happen to have a current passport, so I will be able to vote even if this absurd SAVE Act passes the Senate, and I’d wager you do too. Many women just like the two of us will not be so fortunate. More of them are likely to be your voters than you think; Republican women are more likely than average to take a husband’s last name and less likely to have passports—a statistic you might want to check for Alabama, which appears to be third from the bottom in terms of percentages of the population with passports (only West Virginia and Mississippi appear to have lower numbers—Thank God for Mississippi, right?). Requiring a passport—which costs at least $130 (more if one needs to request copies of other legal forms to make it possible) and takes months to acquire—is effectively a poll tax, which we as a nation have agreed not to impose. While we can agree that voter fraud should be prevented, this act takes a chainsaw to a problem that needs a scalpel at best. Voter fraud is vanishingly rare. I expect the Senator to vote against the SAVE Act and instead to work toward more measured responses to the concern with voter fraud.