If the SAVE Act Passes, Women Can Be on the Ballot, But We Wouldn’t Be Able to Vote

Many of us married women have a shared experience around the moment we got engaged, spending time daydreaming about our new last name. Would we hyphenate? Would we drop our maiden name entirely? It was a joyful, personal choice, the kind of choice millions of American women have made throughout history.

What we never imagined is that choice could one day be used against us.

Today is the last day of Women’s History Month, and the U.S. Senate is attempting to do exactly that. The SAVE Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act), currently being debated on the Senate floor, forced there by Senate Republicans, would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. Here’s the part that should stop us all cold: some of its provisions would block married women from casting a vote ourselves.

Someone like me could appear on a ballot as a candidate but due to this voter suppression bill, I’d be unable to vote.

An estimated 69 million women in this country changed their name when they got married (Brennan Center for Justice). In American culture, this isn’t fringe behavior; it’s a norm, a tradition, our culture. But under the SAVE Act, if the name on your birth certificate doesn’t match the name on your driver’s license or passport, you could be turned away at the polls.

Add in 4 million men, transgender Americans, adoptees, and others who have legally changed their names, and we’re talking about nearly 75 million Americans who could lose their right to vote.

Seventy-five million. To address a pretend problem. According to the Heritage Foundation’s own 20-year study, they found just 77 documented cases of non-citizens voting. The Brennan Center found similar results studying the 2016 election.

Marc Elias of Democracy Docket, a nationally recognized authority on voting rights, has called this what it is: voter suppression. And, this is another assault on women’s rights. Weaponizing our cultural traditions, our names, our identities to silence our votes.

This is a policy idea in search of a problem. The 2020 election was one of the most secure in American history. There is already a National Voter Registration Act of 1993 in place. Citizenship is already a requirement to vote. What this bill adds are obstacles, deliberately designed.

Women fought for the right to vote. Black Americans fought for it. Japanese Americans fought for it. Native Americans fought for it. We understand what so many in power understood then and understand now: whoever controls the vote, controls the country.

We haven’t forgotten.

Here in Howard County, if you are impacted, here’s what you can do about it:

1. Make sure you have a real ID - it’s not fool proof but it’s a good first start

2. Consider getting a passport book or passport card.

3. Visit the Howard County Board of Elections website to confirm your registration.

4. And we will use our voices, every chance we get, to speak out and fight back.

   
   

It is absurd that in 2025, we could find ourselves in a position where we can appear on a ballot, campaign for office, and ask for your vote, but be turned away when we try to cast one ourselves.

That we should second guess changing our names in cultural compliance.

That’s the America the SAVE Act would create. We refuse to accept it.