With 51 Senators now declaring support of the SAVE America Act, the Senate could pass the bill into law if it gets to the floor. But Republicans will need to break the filibuster first if they want to pass it. They could do that; 51 votes is enough, if it’s really that important to them.
Maybe they’ll do it. They are all seeing clear signs of an electoral disaster for them this fall. If they are desperate enough, they might decide it’s worth throwing away their most valuable tool of obstruction to suppress the vote at a scale not seen in decades, in the hope that it will keep Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents away from the polls in November. And maybe it will survive judicial challenges to its constitutional problems … after all, who knows what the SCOTUS Six will do when it lands in front of them?
But if the SAVE America Act passes, it might not work the way its supporters think.
It might blow up in their faces.
From a Republican election-rigging perspective, it might suppress the wrong votes.
Famously, the SAVE America Act will disenfranchise numerous married women and trans people, by requiring voters to produce a birth certificate that matches their current name when they register or re-register to vote. Attacking trans people in every conceivable way is the Republicans’ current bizarre obsession, but disenfranchising less than 1% of the population won’t have much of an impact outside of virtually tied races.
However, married women are a much larger target than trans people: over half of American women are (or were) married. According to a 2024 Pew poll, men lean Republican (52R-46D), while women lean Democratic (51D-44R). I don’t doubt that well-known “gender gap” was a major consideration for Republicans in creating a law that targets women. But when broken down by marital status, married women are more likely to vote Republican than Democratic (50R-45D) while never-married women lean heavily Democratic (72D-24R). In addition, a 2023 Pew Poll reveals that among married women, about 20% of Democratic-leaning women kept their own last name when they married, as opposed to 10% of Republican-leaning women. (Furthermore, 25% of liberal Democratic women did so, while only 7% of conservative Republican women did.) By singling out married women who change their names, the Republicans have drawn a bead on the women most likely to vote Republican, if allowed to vote.
The obvious way around the birth certificate obstacle is a passport. Passports require time and money to secure, and only about half of Americans already have one. But those numbers aren’t even across demographic groups. A 2023 YouGov poll surveyed passport ownership by age, race, and education, and showed that 42% of white Americans and 34% of Black Americans reported they have passports. I expect those numbers were high in Republicans’ minds when they conceived this abomination of a bill. However, the same poll also reports that 55% of Hispanic Americans are passport holders. The significance of those numbers will vary based on state-level demographics, of course, but given the way Hispanic Americans are swinging hard against Republicans right now, that fact could be devastating to Republicans in places like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Florida for years to come.
The same YouGov poll broke down reported passport ownership by age. 53% of adults under 30 have a current U.S. passport, as compared to 46% of 30-to 44-year-olds, 33% of 45- to 64-year-olds (33%), and 46% percent of people 65 and older. In 2024, Pew reported that Democrats had a 32-point edge among voters under 30, and a 13-point edge among voters 30-39. Republicans dominated among voters over 50. Looking only at voter age, Republicans may be creating voter registration problems for their own base.
The urban/rural divide also matters. The American Communities Project tracks demographic information at the county level across the United States. They classify the nation’s counties into fifteen broad community types based on a variety of demographic data. In 2023, they published an analysis of “Who Owns A Passport in America” that reflected the prevalence of passports in each community type. The highest rates of passport ownership were in urban suburbs (64% passport ownership), big cities (62%) and exurbs (58%). What jumps out at me is that the lowest rate of passport ownership is in Evangelical hubs, at 38% (even lower than the African-American South, at 39%). While it’s pretty obvious that Republicans are targeting Black voters for suppression (because they always target Black voters), they might have just put their core demographic (white Evangelicals) squarely in the SAVE Act’s crosshairs. Meanwhile, Democrats have their strongest base in big cities, where passport ownership is high, and suburbs tend to lean Democratic these days as well.
Another way to look at passport-ownership split is based on education. According to the YouGov poll, 64% of college grads (and 71% of postgraduates) have passports. Only 39% of people with “some college” and 24% of people with no college do so. Around 35% of the US adult population have a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree; 65% fall into the “some college” or “no college” groups. According to Pew:
- The Republican Party now holds a 6 percentage point advantage over the Democratic Party (51% to 45%) among voters who do not have a bachelor’s degree. Voters who do not have a four-year degree make up a 60% majority of all registered voters.
- By comparison, the Democratic Party has a 13-point advantage (55% vs. 42%) among those with a bachelor’s degree or more formal education.
The Pew poll further notes that voters with a bachelor’s degree but no graduate degree lean Democrat 51-46, while voters with postgraduate degrees lean Democrat 61-37. Given the recent shift of more-educated people to the Democratic party and less-educated to the Republicans, the Republicans are once again trying hard to suppress their own base.
Another filter to look at is political leanings. As Emily Singer previously noted,
A study published by NBC News in 2019 found that liberals were much more likely to hold valid passports than conservatives. According to the study, 57% of people who identified as liberal said they held a valid passport, while 48% who identified as conservative said they had one.
The SAVE America Act throws up roadblocks to voters across the political spectrum … but there’s a chance the net effect of those roadblocks will fall harder on Republican-leaning voters.
An additional problem for Republicans: the enthusiasm gap. The Independent reports a recent (paywalled) Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos survey that finds “79 percent of registered Democrats say they are certain to cast their ballots this fall, compared with just 65 percent of Republicans.” That already gives Democrats a 14-point edge in likely turnout, and that’s not taking into account the full effect of the Iran war and any other Trump disasters in the months ahead. The enthusiasm gap may also show up in the way voters respond to the SAVE America Act’s disenfranchisement. I’m guessing that irate Democrats who really want to vote will be more willing to put in the effort to get the necessary ID by November, as compared to dispirited Republicans and Republican-leaners. (Yes, a lot of Republicans will suck it up and get whatever they need to vote. I just expect even more Democrats will do it.)
All told, Republicans are lining up behind a voter suppression measure that likely will hit unmotivated voters harder than motivated voters, married women harder than unmarried women, older voters harder than younger voters, rural voters harder than urban voters, non-college voters harder than college voters, conservative voters harder than liberal voters, white voters harder than Hispanic voters, and white Evangelical communities harder than nearly anyone else. I obviously don’t have a crystal ball here, but it’s entirely possible that if the SAVE America Act were to pass and survive a court challenge, it’d just contribute to an even larger blue wave in November, with disproportionate impacts to Republican voters going forward.
Which would be a good reason for Republican senators to want to kill this monstrosity of a bill, even if it’s through behind-the-scenes obstruction or just letting procedural nonsense run the clock. They’re already facing a potential electoral wipeout in the fall. Why risk making things even harder on themselves?
