The SAVE Act passed the House on Feb. 11, 2026 by a vote of 218-213 and is now in the Senate awaiting a vote. Voting is expected to take place next week, according to Thune. If and when it passes the Senate, it will go to the president for a final signature.

Will SAVE Act Prevent Married Women from Registering to Vote?

By Hadleigh Zinsner

Posted on February 28, 2025

Q: Is it true that under the SAVE Act married women will not be able to register to vote if their married name doesn’t match their birth certificate?

A: The proposed SAVE Act instructs states to establish a process for people whose legal name doesn’t match their birth certificate to provide additional documents. But voting rights advocates say that married women and others who have changed their names may face difficulty when registering because of the ambiguity in the bill over what documents may be accepted.

FULL ANSWER

  • minorkeys@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    They’ll go after each demographic whose voting habits favour democrats: Immigrants, women, educated, non-christian, poor, lbgtq+, young, non-white. Whichever ones you belong to, makes you a potential target of voter disenfranchisement. At he same time making it easier for: old, male, white, Christian, wealthy, uneducated, straight, multi-generational American.

    • tino_408@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      As a non white lol why can’t I vote? I’m a legal citizen I will have no issue. I would like to know what rights the whites have over me?

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Rights? Have you been paying attention?

        They’re blatantly and regularly violating the first, second, fourth, and fifth amendments whenever they feel like it.

        They’re absolutely going to have ICE around harassing anyone they think might vote blue, particularly people of color.

      • galacticbackhoe@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        You don’t know if you won’t have issues or not. Their whole goal is to create issues.

        Live in a black area of a county in GA? Close down the polling station.

        Look Hispanic near a polling station? Maybe ICE tackles you and arrests you for no reason.

        Woman and your name doesn’t match? No vote.

        It’s really not hard to understand what they’re trying to do. Whites don’t have more rights than you on paper. They would love to change that, and they start by bending and then breaking the law.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    20-30% of women keep their maiden name after marriage.

    Liberal women are roughly twice as likely as conservative women to keep their maiden name.

    So yeah, conservative women screwing themselves and also handing a minor edge to liberal women.

    • Rooster326@programming.dev
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      12 days ago

      Yes but who is going to be enforcing this? Where specifically are they going to be enforcing this?

      Because it ain’t gonna be Bumfuck, Alabama who has gone red since the Civil War.

    • GiantChickDicks@lemmy.ml
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      11 days ago

      If I’m understanding this correctly, passports are also a valid form of citizenship. Passports are usually held by people who lean left, so this could be another advantage the left has in this insane proposition.

      I hope passports will remain good enough. I was born to irresponsible teenagers and was legally adopted by one parent, and none of them gave me a copy of my birth certificate. I’m starting to worry that it would be worth tracking it down so I’ll have a copy just in case.

      This is all so insane, getting our papers in order in case we need to show them to avoid getting disappeared.

  • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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    12 days ago

    This is from USA Today. This is where political journalism is:

    Will the SAVE America Act pass the Senate? Odds, predictions

    The odds of the SAVE America Act passing the Senate and signed into law in 2026 are 12% according to the Polymarket betting odds, and the Kalshi market odds show 13.9% confidence that it will become law.

  • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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    12 days ago

    Do the Republicans really think they are going to benefit from a requirement that disenfranchises people who don’t have proof of citizenship like:

    -Women who got married and took their husbands last name
    -People who keep getting divorced over and over again
    -People who have never travelled outside the US

    Bear in mind that the people who are basically guaranteed to have their documents in order are:

    -Recently naturalized citizens
    -People who travel a lot
    -Unmarried women
    -People who graduated college

    So your local lesbian coven of naturalized middle aged Latinas. They are going to have zero problem voting. Joe Bob the cousin fucker from Alabama who has never gotten more than 20 miles from his trailer park and doesn’t believe in “the gummet”, and hasn’t had a job that didn’t pay cash in his whole life? Yeah, that fucker doesn’t have a passport.

    But hey, at least they are going to stop all the undocumented immigrants who already weren’t allowed to register to vote in the first place.

    This is going to be like how they attacked absentee voting without realizing that the majority of absentees were retirees and the military.

    • spencerwi@feddit.org
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      12 days ago

      See, the thing Jim Crow and its “literacy tests” taught us is that you just need a rule that you can enforce on the wrong people, and then you just choose not to enforce it when it’s convenient.

      • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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        12 days ago

        But that’s the thing. YOU know that. But do they? ID verification, unlike literacy tests, is pretty objective. There isn’t much room to target that enforcement apart from the existing biases in who has id and who doesn’t.

        • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
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          12 days ago

          The literacy tests were only given to “specific kinds” of people.
          And the same will be true for ID verification.
          If you look “trustworthy” they won’t ask for your ID.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          As a white guy, I’m aware that there have been times where I’m just accepted at face value when other people would have required ID. Why would voting be any different? It’s not the ID itself necessarily, but who is asked for it and who likely has it in order

          As an older guy I’ve also had occasion to laugh at zero tolerance ID mandates for alcohol. At one point I went out for drinks with co-workers of a variety of ages. I somehow forgot my ID so they refused service despite me obviously being well over the age requirement. Instead of getting frustrated, I was amused at getting a coworker less than half my age to buy my beer. Sometimes you just need to laugh at the ridiculousness. But it would not have been funny if something like this kept me from voting

    • magnetosphere@fedia.io
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      12 days ago

      So your local lesbian coven of naturalized middle aged Latinas.

      Just want to emphasize this hilarious line for anyone who doesn’t feel like reading the entire post. Please carry on.

  • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 days ago

    Looking forward to being a future target for never having married and/or taken a man’s name next!

    None of us are safe until all of us are safe.

  • Ksin@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Not having any form of national ID really does lead to some goofy shit when you need to positivly identify people.

    • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Our elections take place inside the state where we reside. We have state ID with a picture and the voting rolls match our address. It’s a pretty simple process that has worked for the last 40 years or so. I’ve always had to provide proof ID and residence to vote

    • bridgeburner@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Right? Imagine claiming to be the greatest country on earth and then not even have a national ID, something I bet even every third world country has lol. The US is such a circus lol.

      • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        We’ve fought having a national ID for decades, with consideration to an administration similar to the current one taking over. We didn’t want the nazis running around demanding papers 10 years ago. It was trumps voting base that was most opposed to it 😭😅

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        Historically this was actively fought as an anti-fascist concern. Up until recently it was a big human right issue that you should not be required to show identification except in limited circumstances

        And of course now with all the surveillance, tracking, and data collection, it’s more important than ever …… just as we no longer care

  • robocall@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I guess all those blue haired feminists that refused to get married or change their last names still get to vote

  • lonefighter@sh.itjust.works
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    12 days ago

    If your name doesn’t match what’s on your birth certificate, look into whether your state allows you to change your birth certificate and do it before it’s too late. My name is not my birth name or my married name, I had it legally changed. I got tired of hauling around my birth certificate, marriage certificate, divorce paperwork, and legal name change to show the paper trail that I both was who I was and was no longer legally married. Turns out in my state I just had to send in a notarized form, copies of my paperwork and pay small fee and I got my birth certificate updated to my current name. Now I can “prove” who I am by just showing my birth certificate and ignore the fact that I was married and changed my name. It also made updating my passport easier. Granted, I am not trans, but I did it last year and they had the option to change gender on the form.

    • Gathorall@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      How isn’t showing your passport sufficient evidence to tell you are who you tell you are?

      • lonefighter@sh.itjust.works
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        12 days ago

        Not everyone has their passport. If you do, that should be sufficient. It also made updating my passport easier, way less paperwork to send in. I’d never gotten around to updating my passport to the correct name and it was much less paperwork to send in.

    • Wilmo@lemmy.ml
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      12 days ago

      It doesn’t even matter. If only men vote then Republicans win. Women add more votes to Democrats. Removing them from the picture for voting simply helps Republicans.

  • Xenny@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    So hear me out. Conservatives are more likely to take someone’s last name than a liberal couple right? Doesn’t this disproportionately disenfranchise Republican women? Could this potentially actually harm the Republican vote?

    • femtek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      12 days ago

      A lot of states have been banning name changes for trans people, I think this was a dumb attack on trans people.

    • nocturne@slrpnk.net
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      12 days ago

      When my wife and I married she only took my last name because her father abandoned her when she was 6 months old, and she wanted to erase that from her identity.

    • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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      12 days ago

      Yeah. But the hit to potential Democratic voters will make it worth their while.

      Essentially women would need to provide additional paperwork in order to vote. Republican women have that paperwork, or can get it easier.

      • expr@piefed.social
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        12 days ago

        Women aren’t the only people who change their names. I’m a straight white guy and I took my wife’s last name when we got married. So I’m affected by this dumbass shit too.

  • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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    12 days ago

    Wait, this is even dumber then it looks like. Under this crap unmarried women will be unaffected but the more traditional marriage types will be hooped. So this will remove the “trad” wife votes but not touch the ladies in say the local polycule. Gee I wonder if all the single/divorced women will be more or less likely to vote for the red party?

    • Rakudjo@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      “My husband votes conservative for the both of us. A woman’s place is serving God and her husband, not having a right to an opinion.”

      -Conservative women, probably