Last week, the House passed the SAVE Act, which requires in-person verification of citizenship like a birth certificate. But many American citizens don’t have access to those documents or have documents that don’t match their current legal name — like, say, the 69 million women who changed their name when they got married.
But we knew all that already. What we didn’t know is that Republican politicians would openly lie about it when called out by their constituents. (Although perhaps we should have…)
We’ve been hearing from Red Wine & Blue members who have been calling their Senators’ offices, only to be told “oh, that won’t affect you” or even “oh, we fixed that part of the bill with an amendment.” But that is a blatant lie.
Representative Maxine Dexter (D-OR) introduced amendments to the bill to protect the voting rights of married women and other groups, but Republicans rejected them. Contrary to what many constituents are being told, no amendments or provisions were included in the SAVE Act that was passed on April 10th. This is voter suppression, plain and simple.
Of course the SAVE Act won’t just affect married women — it’ll affect millions of other Americans too, from former foster youth to transgender people to overseas military members to low-income voters who can’t afford to request the documents they need.
The next step is a vote in the Senate, so we all need to call our Senators and demand they vote “no.” And if they or their staffers try to tell you that the SAVE Act “won’t affect you,” you can tell them to stop lying because you know the truth.
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