The 69 Million Women: When a Simple Solution Becomes a Political War

Let’s start with the number. Sixty-nine million. That is not a rounding error. That is not a fringe case. That is not a hypothetical problem that only affects a few people in unusual circumstances. That is nearly half the adult women in the United States. That is your mother, your sister, your wife, your daughter, your neighbor, your coworker. That is sixty-nine million Americans who could be blocked from registering to vote under the SAVE Act.

Hillary Scholten said it plainly. Nancy Pelosi repeated it. The message is consistent: this bill does not solve a real problem. It creates one. It creates a problem for the very people who are supposed to be protected by the right to vote. It creates a problem for the women who changed their names when they got married. It creates a problem for the busy working moms who are already juggling jobs and kids and everything else life throws at them. It creates a problem for anyone who does not have a passport.

The SAVE Act sounds simple. Only citizens should vote. That is the premise. That is the promise. That is the thing that no one can argue with. Of course only citizens should vote. Of course non-citizens should not be deciding our elections. Of course the integrity of the ballot box must be protected.

But the devil is in the details. And the details of the SAVE Act are devastating.

The Name Change Problem

A woman gets married. She changes her last name. It is a tradition. It is a choice. It is something that millions of American women have done for generations. She updates her driver’s license. She updates her Social Security card. She updates her bank accounts. She updates everything except her birth certificate. Because you cannot change your birth certificate. Your birth certificate is a record of your birth. It has your name as it was given to you at birth. It does not change when you get married.

Under the SAVE Act, that woman could be blocked from registering to vote. Because the name on her birth certificate does not match the name on her driver’s license. The bill requires an exact match. No exceptions. No accommodations. No recognition that people change their names for perfectly legitimate reasons.

She can solve the problem by getting a passport. A passport costs $130. That is not nothing. For a busy working mom juggling a job and kids and everything else, $130 is a week of groceries. $130 is a utility bill. $130 is a pair of shoes for a growing child. $130 is a barrier. And barriers are exactly what this bill is designed to create.

Scholten is right. The SAVE Act does not solve a real problem. Non-citizen voting is already illegal. It is already a crime. It is already punishable by fines, imprisonment, and deportation. There is no evidence that it is happening in significant numbers. There is no evidence that it is affecting election outcomes. There is no evidence that the SAVE Act is needed to stop something that is already against the law.

What the SAVE Act does is create a problem. It creates a problem for sixty-nine million women. It creates a problem for anyone who has ever changed their name. It creates a problem for anyone who does not have a passport. It creates a problem for the very people who are supposed to be the backbone of our democracy.

The Working Mom

Scholten invoked the busy working mom. The woman who is juggling a job and kids and everything else. The woman who does not have time to navigate bureaucratic hoops. The woman who is already stretched thin, already exhausted, already doing everything she can to keep her family afloat. That woman should not have to jump through extra hoops to exercise her fundamental right to vote.

She should not have to dig out her birth certificate. She should not have to locate her marriage license. She should not have to pay $130 for a passport. She should not have to take time off work to visit a passport office. She should not have to wait weeks or months for the documents to arrive. She should not have to worry that something might go wrong, that the names might not match, that she might be turned away.

She should be able to vote. That is the fundamental right. That is the thing that the SAVE Act is supposed to protect. Instead, the SAVE Act makes it harder for her to vote. It adds steps. It adds costs. It adds uncertainty. It adds barriers. And barriers are exactly what the people who wrote this bill intended.

Scholten is right to call it what it is. Voter suppression. Not election security. Not integrity. Not protection. Suppression. The deliberate, calculated, intentional effort to make it harder for certain people to vote.

The Real Problem

The SAVE Act is sold as a solution to a problem that does not exist. Non-citizen voting is not a crisis. It is not a widespread issue. It is not something that requires a federal law with draconian consequences. The real problem is something else entirely. The real problem is that the people who wrote this bill do not trust the American people. The real problem is that they believe the only way to win elections is to make it harder for the other side to vote. The real problem is that they have decided that voter suppression is a legitimate political strategy.

Scholten is not naive. She knows what the SAVE Act is really about. She knows that it is not about election security. She knows that it is about making it harder for women, for young people, for people of color, for poor people, for anyone who might vote against the party that wrote the bill. She knows that the sixty-nine million women who could be impacted are not an accident. They are the target.

The Republicans who are selling the SAVE Act will deny this. They will say it is about integrity. They will say it is about security. They will say it is about protecting the vote. They will say anything except the truth. The truth is that they are afraid. They are afraid of the changing demographics of the country. They are afraid of the growing power of women. They are afraid of the people who do not look like them, think like them, vote like them. And they are willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto power, even if it means disenfranchising sixty-nine million women.

The Passport Barrier

The passport is the solution. That is what the supporters of the SAVE Act will say. If you have a passport, you are fine. If you do not have a passport, you can get one. It only costs $130. It only takes a few weeks. It is not that hard.

But $130 is a lot of money for millions of Americans. For a working mom, $130 is not spare change. It is a decision. It is a trade-off. It is something that has to be budgeted, saved for, prioritized. It is a barrier. And barriers are exactly what this bill is designed to create.

Not everyone has a passport. In fact, most Americans do not have a passport. Only about forty percent of Americans have a valid passport. The other sixty percent do not. They have never needed one. They have never traveled internationally. They have never had the money or the time or the opportunity. They are not going to get a passport just to vote. They should not have to.

The SAVE Act makes the passport a prerequisite for voting for anyone who has ever changed their name. That is not election security. That is a poll tax. That is the same kind of barrier that was used to disenfranchise Black voters in the Jim Crow South. It looks different. It sounds different. But it is the same. It is a cost. It is a barrier. It is a way of saying that some people’s votes matter less than others.

The Bureaucratic Hoops

Scholten talked about bureaucratic hoops. She is right. The SAVE Act creates hoops. It creates hoops that people have to jump through. Hoops that take time. Hoops that take money. Hoops that take energy. Hoops that some people will not be able to clear.

The woman who changed her name when she got married will need her birth certificate and her marriage license. That is two documents. Two documents that she has to find, to copy, to submit. Two documents that could be lost, damaged, or destroyed. Two documents that she might not have easy access to. Two documents that create a barrier.

The woman who does not have a birth certificate will need to get one. That takes time. That takes money. That takes effort. The woman who cannot find her marriage license will need to request a copy. That takes time. That takes money. That takes effort. The woman who has done everything right, who has followed the rules, who has lived her life as a citizen, will suddenly find herself unable to vote because her documents do not match.

That is not election security. That is voter suppression. That is the intentional creation of barriers. That is the deliberate effort to make it harder for certain people to vote. And the people who wrote the SAVE Act know exactly what they are doing.

The Last Word

Hillary Scholten is right. The SAVE Act does not solve a real problem. It creates one. It creates a problem for sixty-nine million women. It creates a problem for anyone who has ever changed their name. It creates a problem for the busy working moms who are already juggling too much. It creates a problem for anyone who does not have a passport.

The SAVE Act is sold as election security. It is not. It is voter suppression. It is the latest in a long line of efforts to make it harder for certain people to vote. It is the same playbook that has been used for generations. Change the rules. Add the barriers. Create the hoops. And then claim that you are protecting the integrity of the vote.

Scholten is not fooled. She knows that only citizens should vote. She knows that non-citizen voting is already illegal. She knows that the SAVE Act is not needed to stop something that is already a crime. She knows that the real purpose of the bill is to suppress the vote. And she is saying so. She is saying it clearly. She is saying it loudly. She is saying it for the sixty-nine million women who could be impacted.

The SAVE Act will be debated. It will be voted on. It may even become law. But if it does, it will be challenged. It will be fought. It will be taken to court. And the women who are impacted by it will not go quietly. They will not accept barriers. They will not accept hoops. They will not accept a system that makes it harder for them to vote.

Because voting is a fundamental right. It is the right that protects all other rights. It is the thing that makes democracy possible. It is the thing that the SAVE Act is supposed to protect. Instead, the SAVE Act attacks it. The SAVE Act undermines it. The SAVE Act makes it harder for sixty-nine million women to exercise it.

Scholten is right. The SAVE Act is not election security. It is voter suppression. And the women of America will not forget who voted for it.