02/18/2026
I've been listening to all the talk about the save america act and there was a ton of misleading and confusing rhetoric coming from all sides so I decided to do a little digging to see if I could suss out the points that seem important or relevant and share them with interested folks.
I looked up the language of the Save Act and found that:
A. You need Proof of citizenship to register to vote
B. You need Valid State ID that matches your Proof of citizenship at the time of voting.
I dont have a problem with those 2 things as it stands but there are some easy to forsee problems with WHEN they want to roll this out. The Timing is the issue and here is why.
An estimated 69 million American women and 4 million men have a birth certificate that does not match their current legal name on their ID, largely due to marriage-related name changes.
Hmm, that's no good. The faster this is rolled out the more likely that a whole lot of women won't be able to get their paperwork right in time to vote.....or will they, so I did some more googling.
The US State Department had this to say on their site:
As of early 2026, routine U.S. passport processing takes 4-6 weeks, while expedited service takes 2-3 weeks, excluding mailing times which can add several weeks. For urgent international travel within 14 days, specialized, in-person appointments are required.
Ok, if you have everything ready to go youre looking at 2 months, unless its peak season or there are a large number of folks applying.
Hmmm, 70 million folks applying might slow that process down to a much longer time, could even break things depending on how bad the initial rush swamps the system.
The goal, to me, seems to be to keep non-citizens from voting, right? If we rush into passing the Save act, this might exclude a ton of women voters from having a say and that is very bad. Unacceptable.
With a little deeper digging close to a million transgender citizens also have ID different than their birth certificates.
This is also a problem and unacceptable.
The goal is to have only citizens be able to vote not to exclude vast numbers of demographics you dont like or approve of, right? Right?
So I looked at the upcoming federal election schedule and what did I find, starting in a few weeks there are a f**kton of midterm elections coming up. Too soon for folks to even get their updated documentation ready in time.
And thats the catch. If we rush this, we will likely exclude folks who have a right to vote from voting.
If we roll this out in a way that allows time and grace for 70 million folks to get their s**t in alignment I think it would better serve our country.
I'm a cis male and my documents are in order but I can't imagine the frustration of having my name changed due to marriage and that being a reason I can't vote in time. That would be a huge redaction of equity in equality, IMHO.
As always, do your own research, listen to folks but verify facts and be open to not having all the info relevant to the discussion.
Addendum: when I wrote this I didnt consider REALID, and so I did some more digging and REALID does count as Proof of Citizenship if the Save Act passess.
To get a REALID if your name differes requires additional documents such as a marriage certificate.
