By ELISA TURNER

In an attempt to increase voting security, the House and Senate passed the Saveguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE)– legislation designed specifically to require proof of citizenship to vote. Though it’s presented as a measure to prevent noncitizen voting, the ramifications are, at best, a horrendous oversight that calls democracy into question– and at worst, voter suppression.

So, what is the SAVE act and why should Beloit students care? The SAVE Act, at its core, requires more documentation to be presented to register to vote. At first glance, this doesn’t seem totally awful. For most of us, we would end up presenting a birth certificate or passport, as a drivers’ license on its own wouldn’t be sufficient documentation.

What’s the problem, then? Well, there’s two. First of all, nearly half of all Americans don’t have a passport. And this is not unprecedented — passports can cost over $100 to acquire, and often take weeks to months to obtain, depending on how crappy your Walgreens photographer is. If we put a price tag and a time buffer on voting, the democratic process is called into question. Registering to vote is supposed to be an easy process that the average American can go through at little to no cost, and even this minimal-effort process makes citizens roll their eyes at the prospect every four years. A more tedious process will only serve to drive away voters who are already pessimistic about American democracy.

Second, when documents are cross-referenced for the sake of security, they must match each other exactly. In the case of birth certificates, this affects people who’ve had any part of their name changed (namely married women and transgender people, but not exclusively these groups). Marriage licenses are not considered valid documentation, which means that married women might, arguably, be turned away from registration under the SAVE Act. Transgender people who have undergone a name change would be affected too, as the name and/or gender on their birth certificate would not align with the one on their drivers’ license. The primary way of getting around this would be to obtain a passport if you don’t already have one. However, as previously stated, this is a pricey option that can take a while. 

“I wouldn’t wanna walk into First Congregational Church with an armful of identifying documents, and I don’t imagine anyone else would either,” says Ezekiel Kingsbury, co-editor in chief of the Round Table newspaper. “I think the pervs who passed this legislation have some sick fetish about watching people carry several papers before getting their right to vote crushed in an instant. Yeah, that’s what I think. I think the House gets real bricked up about that.”

Beloit College is comprised of voter-eligible students who might one day change their first, or last, or middle name — and it will not change a bit of who we are. But fundamental changes to democracy’s accessibility just might.

_{Featured image: Civic Nebraska}