OPINION: The SAVE Act: A modern-day poll tax for Indian Country

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act is being framed as a common sense measure to protect elections, but in reality it risks disenfranchising eligible voters, particularly Native Americans, while claiming to solve a problem that mounting evidence shows is already extremely rare.

Despite claims by supporters and the White House that the SAVE Act will protect our elections, we all know the true goal: limit the number of people who have access to the ballot box in this year’s midterm elections and beyond. While half of Congress seems content in letting this second coming of this new era of disenfranchisement wash over the country, leaders like Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., are standing up for communities that are most vulnerable to these senseless attacks. Vasquez’s "no" vote shows his commitment to giving Native American voices the power they need to have a seat at the table in New Mexico and across the country.

The SAVE Act is not a minor election reform, it is a sweeping federal mandate that would fundamentally change who can register to vote and who gets left behind. Passed off as an “election integrity” bill, the actual text makes clear that it would impose some of the most restrictive voter registration requirements since the poll tax was legal in the United States. It was just a handful of decades ago, in 1965, when Native Americans were given the right to vote across the country. In those 61 years, Indigenous voters have been forced to travel distances up to 100 miles one way to vote, have been told their tribal IDs are not good enough for the polls and that their addresses don’t meet the constantly changing standards.

The SAVE Act picks up right where we left off in the 1960s, but instead of charging American citizens $1 or $2 to vote, Congress is trying to force voters to obtain passports or other proof of citizenship documents that often cost money — further disenfranchising hard-working folks who simply want to have their voice heard, all disguised as voter protection.

Above all, many Native voters live in rural areas far from government offices where certified birth certificates or passports can be obtained. Transportation barriers, limited broadband access and unreliable mail service already complicate voter registration on reservations. Requiring in-person documentary proof adds another hurdle that disproportionately affects tribal citizens.

Documentation itself is a major barrier. Native Americans are less likely to have passports and may face difficulties obtaining birth records due to a historic lack of documentation, name variations, or records held by tribal and federal systems. When the law demands specific documents before registration is even processed, it effectively shuts the door on voters who cannot easily retrieve them.

All of this is aimed at a problem that already has a solution. Voting by noncitizens in federal elections is already illegal today, and there is no evidence of widespread fraud.

The SAVE Act is not about protecting democracy; it is about narrowing it and is another desperate attempt by a select few trying to cling onto what little power they have left. For Native Americans, whose voting rights were only fully secured in the last century and remain tied to issues of sovereignty and representation, the consequences would be profound. This bill would not just make voting harder. It would push many Native voters out of the democratic process altogether.

Keaton Sunchild is the federal director of government and political relations at Western Native Voice.