A leading voting rights advocate has compared the SAVE Act, a bill requiring Americans to provide paper proof of citizenship to vote, to a poll tax.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, written by Representative Chip Roy, would require Americans to bring a birth certificate, a REAL ID, a passport, or another verified government document proving citizenship to election officials to register to vote. This could prove expensive for people who have lost documents and need to pay to replace them or who do not have a passport and now need to order one.
Genesis Robinson, executive director of the Equal Ground Action Fund in Florida, told Newsweek: “It basically amounts to a poll tax, which I know Black voters know all too well, right? Having currency to access the ballot box. And so obviously there’s a whole host of reasons why this is bad, but that is just obviously another layer, the financial impact that’s standing in the way of folks being able to cast their ballot.”
Newsweek reached out to Roy via email for comment.
Why It Matters
Poll taxes were fees levied at polling places from the Reconstruction Era through the Civil Rights Era. They prevented many Black and low-income voters from voting. Robinson is warning that the SAVE Act could result in similar financial pressures.
The 24th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1964, prohibits federal and state governments from imposing taxes on voters during presidential or congressional elections.
The SAVE Act is an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act. However, under the act, many people would have to pay to get copies of their documents, which could result in a pay-to-vote situation akin to a poll tax.
What To Know
The SAVE Act was introduced to Congress in 2024 and again in 2025. Roy has said his bill was written because “millions of illegal aliens remain in our country illegally and many have been given the opportunity to register to vote in federal elections.”
Citizenship is already required to vote, and people who lie about that face jail time or deportation.
House Republicans have said that noncitizen voting is a serious concern. However, an audit conducted by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2024 found only 20 noncitizens, out of Georgia’s 8.4 million registered voters, were on the voter rolls. That is 0.00024 percent of the state’s voter list.
All 20 were referred to law enforcement and had zero effect on the election.
“[The SAVE Act] would disenfranchise more people than who were allegedly voting without the proper status,” Robinson told Newsweek. “And so that’s the issue that we’re trying to raise here. [The Act is] going to do more harm than good.”
Roy denied that the SAVE Act would impact citizens registering to vote, telling Newsweek: “This bill isn’t being attacked because it’ll exclude citizens from voting—it won’t.”
A June 2024 study from the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement found that 21.3 million people cannot readily access their citizenship documents.
Approximately 146 million Americans do not have a passport, and approximately 69 million married women in the U.S. have a last name that does not match their birth certificate.
Roy told Newsweek that the SAVE Act allows states to make their own rules to provide evidence of a name change. However, the act does not allocate funds for states to set up additional voter registration mechanisms.
Arizona recently had its similar documentary proof-of-citizenship rules overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, citing civil rights violations.
Robinson told Newsweek that the need for paper documentation would especially affect Floridians, who are more likely to be displaced without their documents or have their documents destroyed due to Florida’s natural disasters.
Many older Black Americans also do not have birth certificates as they were denied hospital births due to segregation. This would mean that to register to vote, they would have to pay for a passport or another document proving their citizenship.
Proponents of the SAVE Act and other voter ID laws have pointed out that Americans need proof of ID to get a driver’s license or to open a bank account. While these are crucial components of most American lives, they are not constitutional rights like voting is.
“You have to ask yourself, why is it that they are coming after what should be the tool that we give everyone in a representative democracy?” Robinson said.
“The right to vote is the most fundamental thing that we have to ensure that we get the results that we want, that we elect the leaders that we need, and that we move our country and community in the direction that we desire. And so if that is the goal of a representative democracy, we should be empowering people to participate.”
The SAVE Act would demand proof of citizenship for voter registration, not voting at the polls. It also calls for voter roll purges to catch undocumented voters. I
n the past, many of these purges have resulted in American citizens being taken off the rolls and having to re-register. If the SAVE Act were passed, many Americans already registered to vote may have to re-register using paper proof of citizenship.
What People Are Saying
Genesis Robinson, executive director of the Equal Ground Action Fund in Florida, told Newsweek: “We should want all voices at the table. We should want varying viewpoints because we know that when everybody’s at the table and has input and shared opinion, that’s typically what produces the best result of public policy.
“And so I think people should ask themselves, whether it’s married women, whether it’s low income or disenfranchised voters, whether it’s folks who come from certain communities, ‘Why is it that my right to vote is under attack? Why isn’t my elected leader doing more to protect that and to ensure that I have access?'”
Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at Campaign Legal Center, previously told Newsweek: “The top line is that the SAVE Act would create really significant new burdens on Americans to register to vote. It would make it harder for most eligible American citizens to register and cast a ballot.
“It would completely upend mail and online voter registration systems…especially in smaller and more rural counties. They don’t have the money and the resources to do this without appropriations from Congress, which the bill doesn’t provide for.”
Representative Chip Roy previously told Newsweek: “This bill isn’t being attacked because it’ll exclude citizens from voting—it won’t. It’s being attacked because the policy is wildly popular with the American people, its opponents want and need illegals to vote, and they’ll use anything they can to attack it.”
What Happens Next
Some political observers online have stated that the SAVE Act passed Congress. This is not true. They are referencing the 2024 SAVE Act, which passed Congress but did not pass the Senate. The current SAVE Act is still being debated in the House Committee on House Administration.
A Democratic Senate stopped the 2024 SAVE Act. Now that the Senate has a Republican majority, it is more likely to pass.
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