The United States House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act on April 10 that would require voters to show documentation of their United States citizenship if they want to vote if passed through the Senate.
The SAVE Act will affect many communities across the country according to the National Public Radio.
This includes transgender people who may not have identification that matches with their birth certificate, according to Joy Ellison, assistant professor in gender and women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island.
“The SAVE Act, if it’s passed as it’s currently written, will be a form of mass disenfranchisement for trans people as well as other communities,” Ellison said.
This act does not specifically target transgender people but it adds onto the targeted federal orders and actions taken by the government to restrict transgender people’s freedom, according to Ellison.
These actions include defunding of gender-affirming medical care for youth under 19, recognizing only two “unchangeable sexes: female and male” and denying passport gender marker changes, according to PBS News.
“When the government won’t give [transgender people] IDs that are appropriate to our genders we are shut out of public life in all sorts of different ways,” Ellison said. “It’s really dangerous being in the world without an ID that reflects what people expect.”
Having an incongruent ID could result in transgender people interrogated by transport authorities when traveling and turned away at polling stations, according to Ellison.
“This is a case where I actually think we are not the primary target,” Ellison said. “The Republican party has been trying to reverse the progress of the Civil Rights Movement for decades and it’s been quietly dismantling voter protections for a long time.”
Zoey Evora is a transgender first-year student who feels the SAVE Act is discriminatory, and hurting U.S. citizens who are just trying to cast their ballot.
“As an individual who could possibly be impacted by this, I feel like my rights as a U.S. citizen are being violated,” Evora said.
Laws like the SAVE Act will hit poor communities of color the hardest, according to Ellison. When stricter voter ID laws were passed on a state level, for example in South Carolina, the racial turnout gap grew in the 2016 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Restrictions on Sunday voting, a popular day for black voters in Georgia to go to the polls and longer wait times for polling stations in neighborhoods with more racial and ethnic minorities, are other examples cited by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Ellison has also seen voter suppression in student communities.
“Many students lost access to the ballot [in the 2024 presidential election], because they would accept only particular forms of student ID,” Ellison said. “So this is really an issue that should be of critical importance to students as well.”
Promoting voter registration through voter registration drives and lobbying against laws like the SAVE Act by contacting officials are critical ways students can get involved, according to Ellison.
“I can tell you all of our Rhode Island senators on the federal level are moveable on this issue,” Ellison said.
Their contact information is public knowledge and people with concerns can reach out to their offices according to Ellison.
“College campuses are a great place for voter registration efforts and get out the vote efforts because people from all over the country are here,” Ellison said. “We could have an impact beyond Rhode Island.”
For transgender people specifically, Ellison said getting involved with LGBTQ+ organizations and other activism projects to help fight against the SAVE Act.
“We need to get involved in broad based coalitions of everyone that is being impacted by the SAVE Act,” Ellison said. “We need to pressure trans organizations to make this a priority and we need to pressure non-trans organizations to include us in their analysis.”
Evora feels that one of the best ways for students to help their transgender peers at URI is to be a supportive listener.
“During these difficult times it’s easy to feel hopeless,” Evora said. “But with support from allies and our friends, it makes us feel a lot better.”
To register to vote in Rhode Island and to learn more information, students can visit vote.sos.ri.gov for the Rhode Island Voter Information Center.
