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Women’s Equality Day 2025, The SAVE Act, And Protecting Voting Rights

If we look at the history of the passage of the 19th Amendment, it helps illustrate the real-world impact that voting rights can have on policy. “When the 19th Amendment was first passed in 1920, lawmakers immediately responded by trying to pass laws that they thought would appeal to this large group of women that were now eligible to vote… If we’re going to be competitive and win votes, then we need to respond to the voters’ needs,” says Alison Gill, director for nominations and democracy at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC).

Gill says some examples of ways that lawmakers tried to appeal to women voters after the passage of the 19th Amendment was when Congress passed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921, which provided federal funding for maternity and childcare and was among the first significant piece of social welfare legislation, as well as the U.S. Department of Labor establishing a Women’s Bureau in 1920 to protect women’s labor and citizenship rights. The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed just a few years later in 1923 to guarantee equal rights regardless of sex (but is still not officially incorporated into the U.S. Constitution).

… Unlike many European democracies, U.S. lawmakers can draw their own districts, sometimes “gerrymandering” to help boost the odds of their party’s hold on power. Gill says the rapid evolution of data technology and voting records allows for unprecedented precision, making it “very, very secure for [one party’s] lawmakers…and very hard to dislodge them from that seat unless there’s a massive change.” Such practices can dilute the power of individual votes—undermining representation and reducing government accountability. Gill says tactics such as redistricting (gerrymandering), and legislative acts such as the SAVE Act can be used to “suppress voting rights and to keep people from voting, to make voting more difficult, and to make it so that when you do vote, your vote matters less.”

The SAVE Act, in particular, would require people registering to vote or updating their voter registration to show documents in person proving American citizenship, which sounds reasonable but may be a big barrier for millions of eligible voters to cast their ballots, particularly for married women who have changed their last name. Many Americans don’t have easy access to documents like birth certificates or passports, and the SAVE Act does not allow for alternative documentation, such as marriage certificates, to prove name changes.

The House has already passed the SAVE Act and if it also passes in the Senate, it would make it harder for millions of Americans with the legal right to vote to do so. Gill notes that “numerous states are considering and pushing forward state equivalents of the SAVE act… At least 17 of these bills have been introduced this year in different states around the country.” Then there is President Trump’s executive order, which echoes the SAVE Act as it calls for passports and REAL IDs, many of which alone won’t serve as proof of citizenship, in order to register to vote.