Republicans could make it a lot harder for Native Americans to vote [View all]

(Salon) Lawmakers in the House are expected to vote as early as this month on the SAVE Act, a bill that would require eligible voters to provide documents proving their citizenship in order to register to cast a ballot. Experts and voting rights groups argue that the bill threatens to disenfranchise millions of Americans should it be enacted. But for Indigenous voters, a key voting bloc in 2020, it would stand to weaken their communities' already suppressed voting power and silence their voices, according to Allie Young, a Diné activist working to expand voter participation in the Navajo Nation.

"With the SAVE Act and how that will discourage engagement by Native people — we're not going to be electing leaders who will be advocates for our communities," Young told Salon in a phone interview. "And that's what is my worry."

Ostensibly aimed at curbing noncitizen voting — an already illegal act that experts previously told Salon rarely, if ever, happens — the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act would amend federal law to require proof of citizenship for voter registration. Accepted documentation to prove one's citizenship under the act would include an ID that fulfills the 2005 REAL ID Act's requirements, a valid U.S. passport and a valid government-issued ID card from a federal, state or tribal government showing the applicant was born in the U.S. The bill also requires that eligible voters register at their nearest, designated county elections offices.

The bill raises a voting access issue for the some 21.3 million Americans of voting age who lack ready access to citizenship documents and creates a hurdle for the more than 146 million American citizens who, per a Center for American Progress report, don't have a passport. Those most impacted by the documentation requirement would include Americans in rural and red states, low-income voters and Republicans, who are less likely to have a passport and more likely to take their spouses' last names than Democrats. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/30/could-make-it-a-lot-harder-for-native-americans-to-vote/