A DIFFICULT TRUTH: The United States has never fully lived up to the ideals in its founding documents. Throughout our history, our country’s fate has always been bitterly contested. Will we privilege whiteness, maleness, straightness, ability, and wealth? Or will we aspire to an inclusive future that equally values all God’s children?
Voting rights have often been the front line in the struggle for an inclusive democracy where people choose their leaders and can hold them accountable at the ballot box. This includes ensuring that elections are free, fair, and safe. We made great progress in the past 60 years through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting, and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which made it easier for all eligible citizens to register to vote. Though we all have different roles to play in building a radically more just society, defending, strengthening, and ultimately transforming our democracy makes so much other justice work possible.
That’s why the SAVE Act is so alarming. If passed, it would shift the burden of verifying voters’ U.S. citizenship from election administrators to individual voters who would be required to provide, in most cases, a passport or birth certificate. Millions of Americans don’t have a passport. And people who have legally changed their name, including for marriage (69 million of whom are women) or a gender transition, do not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name. The SAVE Act would disproportionately disenfranchise married women, elderly registrants, young voters, Latine voters, lower-income voters, and active-duty military personnel and their families, according to the Institute for Responsive Government.
Proponents of the SAVE Act promote the lie that voter fraud, especially voting by noncitizens, is widespread, when in fact it is exceedingly rare: A Brennan Center for Justice study of 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election, with 23.5 million votes, found just 0.0001% of votes suspected to include noncitizens attempting to vote — 30 incidents altogether.
As I write, the SAVE Act passed the House of Representatives and thankfully faces an uphill climb in the Senate. But at the end of March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order attempting to sidestep the legislative process, implementing several of the SAVE Act measures along with a ban on municipalities counting mail-in ballots that arrive after election day. A federal district judge has blocked some of these harmful provisions for now, but the Trump administration can appeal this decision to higher courts.
This political maneuvering can feel distant from our daily lives or just another reason for alarm. But I also see it as a source of encouragement: These debates are happening in Congress, the courts, and in the court of public opinion. This reveals, in my view, a system that is still a representative democracy — albeit a flawed one that is a work in progress. As we look ahead to significant gubernatorial elections in some states this fall and the midterm elections next year, which could dramatically reshape Congress, we must continue to channel our advocacy, our protests, and our votes into protecting and improving that democracy. That’s how we’ll not only get through this cruel and chaotic administration, but in the process build a radically more just and inclusive future that brings God’s reign closer to earth.
Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community. Follow him on Bluesky @revadamtaylor.
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