Married women in Georgia could face up to $75 in administrative and processing fees and wait more than three months to obtain the documents necessary to register to vote if the SAVE America Act becomes law, according to a new report released Thursday by Senator Raphael Warnock. The analysis examined eight Georgia counties and found the proposed federal legislation would create substantial financial and logistical barriers for women who changed their names after marriage. Warnock characterized the measure as a "poll tax on married women" that would disproportionately harm those who've changed their legal names.
The report details that the SAVE America Act would force women who changed their last names to present both their birth and marriage certificates to satisfy voter verification requirements. Beyond married women, the legislation would affect more than 5.4 million Georgians who lack a valid passport, requiring them to bring their birth certificate or another federally issued identification document alongside their photo ID to register. Overall, the proposed bill would disenfranchise over 760,000 Georgians and millions more nationally through what the report describes as onerous requirements. While the legislation hits married women hardest, men and unmarried women would also face voter suppression under the proposed rules.
Senator Warnock stated the legislation's true aim on MSNBC's Deadline White House: "They're not trying to save our democracy. They're not trying to save our elections. They're trying to save Donald Trump's power." The report notes that the SAVE America Act claims to protect election integrity but instead creates unnecessary restrictions. The findings point out that a Republican-led audit of the 2024 election identified just nine non-U.S. citizens out of 8.2 million registered voters in Georgia who had cast a ballot in a previous election, with most having voted before 2012.
The report frames the legislation as part of escalating attacks on voting access that contradict the scale of actual fraud. Despite what the analysis calls "sensationalized and baseless claims of widespread voter fraud" from the Trump administration, evidence shows negligible instances of illegal voting in Georgia. The barriers created by document fees and waiting periods would affect women who don't have birth and marriage certificates readily available, creating what Warnock and congressional Republicans describe as a "Marriage Tax" on millions of American women. The senator, a leading voting rights advocate, has called for voting rights legislation to be the top priority when Democrats regain the Senate majority, particularly following a Supreme Court decision in April that weakened the Voting Rights Act. The report concludes that the proposed requirements would impose a costly and time-intensive process that solves a virtually nonexistent problem while blocking legitimate voters from exercising their constitutional right.