Sydney Martinez, Campus Carrier news editor
Local election officials of Floyd County believe the SAVE America Act (SAA), which would require proof of citizenship when voting, will likely not impact voter turnout, while an associate professor of political science of Berry says it could impose restrictions on certain groups of Americans.
Chip Roy, a Republican representative from Texas, reintroduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act under its new name, “SAA,” on Jan. 30, ahead of the midterm elections. The SAA is meant to introduce national voting eligibility rules, ensuring non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections.
“It’s a piece of legislation designed to minimize voter corruption and better protect voter integrity,” Associate Professor of Political Science Michael Bailey said. “It emerges from the fact that we have a federal system where you have these 50 separate states, each of which have their own voting system, and it’s an attempt to standardize criteria for voting.”
While non-citizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections, this act requires voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. Acceptable forms of proof include a Real ID — an ID card that meets federal security standards with a gold or black star in the top right corner — a birth certificate or a U.S. passport. All proofs must be up to date, including recent changes in address or names, such as name changes for married women.
In his State of the Union address on Feb. 24, President Donald Trump urged Congress to pass the legislation quickly because he believes it will prevent voter fraud at the polls by requiring photo identification on-site. Republicans support the legislation because they believe it will prevent voter fraud by non-citizens, while Democrats think it will restrict millions of Americans’ right to vote.
The rate of noncitizens voting in federal elections is low. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, federal data show that 0.04% of voter verification cases involve noncitizens. The Heritage Foundation cites 68 cases of non-citizens voting from 1980 until now.
Jerry Marshall Lee, chairman of the Board of Elections and Registration for Floyd County, said that currently, each state oversees the laws regarding what form of identification is needed at registration and polls.
“Under the Constitution, each state has to run their own election,” Lee said. “They are responsible for their laws associated with that election.”
In Georgia, a valid driver’s license or Real ID is required to register to vote online and at check-in before voting. Nationwide, while only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, non-citizens are allowed to vote in some local elections.
“There might be a local community here and there that might make an exception for local officials, but that’s exceptionally rare,” Bailey said. “For national federal elections, it’s already a rule [that only citizens can vote]. The difference is, how states implement that rule varies between states.”
Lee said he does not see it impacting Georgia voters the SAA upcoming elections if it were to pass congress.
“I don’t see it impacting the state of Georgia or Floyd County at all,” Lee said. “The state of Georgia already requires voter ID. In getting that voter ID, you have to prove that you’re a
U.S. citizen.”
More specifically, Lee does not see the SAA heavily impacting the number of voters in Floyd County because voter turnout is already relatively low in local elections. According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, 45,089 ballots were cast in Floyd County in the 2024 presidential election.
“Unfortunately, the turnout has been so small that I wish we could get more people out there to vote,” Lee said. “We’ve only had a little over 4,000 votes so far in the two and a half weeks [since early voting for the special election began] in Floyd County. And I understand that as a percentage of registered voters, we’re one of the leading counties, if not the leading county, getting out to vote.”
According to PBS.com, one in 10 Americans lack the proper paperwork to prove they are U.S. citizens. That means the SAVE Act could prevent roughly 23.8 million people from voting, especially those who are recently married or those who would have trouble acquiring the proper documents.
“There’s millions of people who probably would struggle to come up with [a birth certificate],” Bailey said. “Most states have a rule, but what’s being implemented is a more difficult standard to demonstrate citizenship.”
Bailey said the bill could be in conflict with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, imposing different rules for women than men.
“There are other elements of it that may affect, for example, women who have been recently married because there has to be a perfect congruence between your birth certificate and your name,” Bailey said. “So, you have to get documentation showing that your name, though different while married, [shows] you’re the same person.”
Bailey said that a democracy ideally wants to collect as many votes as possible to gain an accurate understanding of what the country wants.
However, Bailey said that the United States’ policies in recent and distant history haven’t followed that standard.
“All of this is complicated by the United States’ particular history of taking any manner of measures, some legal, some just for intimidation, to prevent certain groups from voting,” Bailey said. “This move is put in the context of a history of voter suppression, which is very real and within recent memory of lots and lots of people.”
Bailey said that the right to vote should only be restricted if evidence shows that voter fraud is out of hand and rigging election results.
“We start with the presumption of freedom,” Bailey said. “If there is evidence that this is problematic, then you restrict that freedom. There is going to be, realistically, a kind of restriction on the ease of which even citizens are going to have access to the polls is justified, and I haven’t seen empirical evidence that there are sufficient levels of fraud or corruption to warrant this additional burden given to American citizens.”
Bailey has looked at studies on voter fraud done by both left and right-leaning think tanks. He said that both studies found that voting fraud is extremely rare. Bailey thinks that Republicans are using claims of voting fraud to justify restricting Americans’ right to vote and tilting elections in their favor.
“Voting fraud is a key point of a lot of political rhetoric,” Bailey said. “[They’re] using the rhetoric of something that doesn’t exist to essentially make it more difficult for some people to vote, and I think that’s because the Republican Party sees their chances of being benefited by restricting them.”
Bailey believes President Trump intends to stir up Americans’ distrust in the current electoral system to play to his advantage.
“President Trump has never indicated that he believes that our electoral system is fundamentally sound,” Bailey said. “He’s done really nothing but almost 10 years of this kind of rhetorical drum beat to get Americans to distrust the results of their elections, and this is done very intentionally for his own political favor.”