The SAVE Act passed the House on Feb. 11, 2026 by a vote of 218-213 and is now in the Senate awaiting a vote. Voting is expected to take place next week, according to Thune. If and when it passes the Senate, it will go to the president for a final signature.
Will SAVE Act Prevent Married Women from Registering to Vote?
Posted on February 28, 2025
Q: Is it true that under the SAVE Act married women will not be able to register to vote if their married name doesn’t match their birth certificate?
A: The proposed SAVE Act instructs states to establish a process for people whose legal name doesn’t match their birth certificate to provide additional documents. But voting rights advocates say that married women and others who have changed their names may face difficulty when registering because of the ambiguity in the bill over what documents may be accepted.
You can change your name with the
IRSSSA. That should be more than sufficient proof.What does the IRS have to do with anything? Read the actual bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22/text
Section 2(b) is the relevant bit regarding what counts as documentary proof of US citizenship.
The
IRSSSA is a federal agency that you provide documentation to for a name change. Most places won’t hire you without doing this.The fact that you’ve changed your name and the corroborating documentation is already in the federal government’s possession.
But that’s not proof of citizenship, which is what the bill requires.
I realize now that I said IRS instead of SSA.
To change your name with the SSA you have to have an established proof of citizenship or immigration status, or provide the supporting documents.
Again, read SAVE instead of making assumptions based on practices of other agencies that are tangentially related.
That’s still not proof of citizenship. The SSA is not in charge of tracking citizenship, so a document from them doesn’t work for that purpose.
As you said yourself, non-citizens can get social security cards. Changing your name in that circumstance is hardly proof of citizenship.
You clearly didn’t read my comment because the SSA knows your citizenship status. To make a name change that status has to be already known to the SSA, or you have to prove it.
And this is all ignoring the fact that you already had to prove it to get a Real ID.
And you’re missing the point that other people are making: the SSA is not responsible for knowing your citizenship status, and so documents from them don’t establish citizenship.
That they know it has nothing to do with anything. They’re not an authoritative source, so they can’t be used for that purpose.
You’re thinking like it’s an evidentiary chain. A requires B, therefore proof of A implies B.
It’s not though: it’s a list of valid documents from a list of valid sources.
And all that’s moot because you can get an SSA name change or a real id without meeting the criteria to vote, so even if it was a proof A wouldn’t imply B.
The SSA is responsible for knowing your citizenship status. It’s something they have to verify before processing the name change.
If the SSA has applied your name change then the name change should be accepted by all federal agencies and you should be able to vote if your legal name doesn’t match your birth certificate.