Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Claims SAVE Act Could Deny Voter Registration Based on Hispanic Last Names

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Claims SAVE Act Could Deny Voter Registration Based on Hispanic Last Names​

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) claimed the SAVE Act could be used to deny voter registration to people with Hispanic last names.

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Gillibrand criticized a provision she said would require states to send their voter rolls to the federal government for review. She questioned how the government would decide who is eligible to vote and suggested people with Hispanic surnames could be unfairly targeted.

Gillibrand claimed the SAVE Act would require Americans to present a passport to register to vote, arguing that driver’s licenses and REAL IDs would not be sufficient under the proposal.
“Well, what the SAVE Act does — don’t let him fool you — it’s not about having ID. The IDs that are in our wallet today are not sufficient for the SAVE Act,” Gillibrand argued. “So you couldn’t use a driver’s license, you couldn’t even use a real ID driver’s license, you would need to have a passport. If you had to register to vote today, I think only 50 percent of Americans have passports.”
“If your passport doesn’t match your birth certificate because you got married, you don’t get to register to vote, you have to go change your birth certificate to your new married name. So that’s going to disenfranchise a lot of women. So many things, and so, and military IDs don’t count,” Gillibrand continued. “So all those veterans, all those military members serving all across the world, they couldn’t register to vote either. So it was written intentionally to subvert access to the ballot, written intentionally so less people will vote.”