Hillary Clinton is claiming that Republican voter legislation will make it harder for married women to vote — an assertion GOP lawmakers and officials already say they’ve debunked.
‘You didn’t have to listen to Trump’s rambling speech last night to know that Republicans are trying to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote—especially married women,’ Clinton posted on X Wednesday. ‘They’ve already made it clear. Time to fight back.’
Clinton was referring to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.
The president called on Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would tighten election rules and require voters to present a photo ID at the polls and proof of U.S. citizenship.
The president said the legislation is critical in order to stop ‘illegal aliens and other unpermitted persons from voting.’
Congressional Democrats have panned the SAVE Act as a tool of voter suppression — saying it’s a bill that allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to monitor Americans’ voter information and create barriers for married women to vote, among several other claims.
The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, mandate states to actively verify and remove noncitizens from voter rolls, expand information sharing with federal agencies, including DHS, to verify citizenship, and create new criminal penalties for registering noncitizens to vote.
But Clinton isn’t alone — other House Democrats earlier in February also similarly claimed that the legislation would leave married women unable to vote unless they changed their birth certificates to match other government-issued ID.
ButRepublicans say they’ve already addressed the claim and debunked it.
‘This is absolute nonsense, and we specifically allow for a provision to make sure that no one can possibly be left behind,’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who led both the SAVE Act and SAVE America Act in the House, said, while arguing Democrats were ‘really reaching’ for criticism.
‘If a woman tried to register to vote with different names on her birth certificate and driver’s license,’ Roy said, ‘we literally put in the statute that all you have to do is sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that, ‘I am that person. This is my birth certificate… and this is my driver’s license that is reflecting my married name.’’
The bill does list a birth certificate as one way voters can confirm their identity. It does not specify a last-name match requirement.
Voters can use ‘a certified birth certificate issued by a state in which the applicant was born… (that) includes the full name, date of birth and place of birth of the applicant’ to supplement other forms of identification.
Among other forms of valid paperwork, voters can also display a passport, a REAL ID or a military identification card to prove their citizenship.
Conservative legal group The Federalist Society presented a breakdown of the bill, which explicitly says that Americans who have changed their names — because of marriage or otherwise — are ‘not prevented from voting.’
‘The bipartisan federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is commanded by the SAVE Act to establish guidelines for states to accept supplementary documents — for instance, a marriage license — to prove citizenship when a voter’s birth certificate and current name do not match,’ the group’s page reads. ‘Those on the Left who claim that the SAVE Act will disenfranchise millions of married women are simply wrong; they ought to read the bill’s text and see that it provides mechanisms to ensure that this does not happen.’
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