This February, the White House website published “The SAVE America Act: Voter ID is Popular with Everyone,” advocating for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility America Act. At first glance, that argument works. Americans consistently say they support requiring photo ID to vote. That being said, this widespread support rests on the assumption that obtaining an acceptable photo ID is simple and universal. In reality, the steps behind obtaining a photo ID operate as a barrier that will make millions of eligible Americans effectively ineligible to vote on a scale not seen since Jim Crow.

There are numerous objections to the SAVE Act beyond voter ID requirements. One major issue is the requirement to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, that matches the name on a government ID, which 69 million American women who changed their last name through marriage would be unable to provide. Additionally, the SAVE Act would functionally gut online voter registration because it requires proof-of-citizenship documents to be physically shown or submitted in order to register. Of the 80 million Americans who registered to vote in 2022, only 5.9% did so in person. As a result, the SAVE Act would cause an unprecedented overflow of election offices, forcing tens of millions of Americans to go in person to update their voter registration information.

Additionally, under the SAVE Act, all 50 states would be required to hand over their entire voter registration list, including voters’ sensitive personal information, to the federal government — a violation of privacy that has never been done before. All of these reasons are likely to generate more opposition to the SAVE Act than the seemingly uncontroversial photo ID requirement. This potential opposition is obvious to the White House as the main pushing point for the SAVE Act has been its photo ID requirement; as of press time, the aforementioned article is the only WhiteHouse.gov article referencing the SAVE Act, arguing based on the widespread support for photo ID.

To support the claim, the White House cites an August 2025 Pew Research Center survey in which 83% of Americans support requiring photo ID to vote, and an October 2024 Gallup survey in which 84% of Americans support requiring photo ID to vote. These statistics do not represent  a new phenomenon. The White House could have cited a wide range of survey results, such as a 2012 Pew poll showing 77% support or a 2006 Pew poll showing a stable 80% support. This begs the question: How could a policy that a supermajority of the American public consistently supports across various political administrations and through electoral turmoil be akin to Jim Crow racism?

The best answer to this question is to look at the practical steps someone must go through to obtain the photo ID necessary to vote. While the statutory language can vary between the House-passed version and a final version signed by the president, the currently specified acceptable forms of voter ID are a U.S. passport (book or card), a state-issued driver’s license, a state-issued non-driver identification card, a military identification card, a tribal government-issued photo ID, a federal government-issued photo ID, a state government-issued photo ID and a U.S. territory-issued photo ID.

Looking at this wide list of acceptable IDs, most people may think they would already have one, almost by default, if they’ve ever left the country for vacation, driven a car to work or opened a bank account. However, as likely as that may seem, it is not the reality for millions of voting-age Americans. In actuality, as of a 2023 survey, 52% of Americans lack a passport, 29 million lack a driver’s license, and there are 5.9 million unbanked households, with 5.7% of Americans being paid in cash according to the FDIC. This is the reality many Americans live in. A 2023 University of Maryland research study found that 7 million voting-age U.S. citizens lacked any form of non-expired government-issued photo identification. With 260 million voting-age Americans, that makes up 2.7% of the entire population. For reference, a sum of 311,257 votes across the six major battleground states won Joe Biden the 2020 election. So, for the 7 million Americans who would become ineligible to vote if the SAVE Act is passed, what exactly is the process for getting one of the above photo IDs?

To start, military, tribal, federal government and U.S. territory IDs are, by definition, unattainable for the general public and reserved for specific sectors of Americans. From there, the remaining options are a U.S. passport, a state-issued driver’s license or a state-issued non-driver identification card. Of the three, passports cost $165 on the low end and driver’s licenses are tied to a physical driving test that 35% of Americans fail on their first try. The most practical option left is to obtain a non-driver identification card. 

For reference, I’ll use the process of getting a non-driver identification card for Pennsylvania, as it’s my home state — go Birds — and was regarded as the “top prize” by CBS News leading up to the 2024 election, ultimately won by Donald Trump by only 171,000 votes, handing him the state’s 19 Electoral College votes. The Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles website provides three steps to obtain the ID: “Complete the application,” “Go to a Photo License Center” and “Take your photo and get your photo ID.”

At face value, the first issue arises with “Go to a Photo License Center.” Where I live, in the middle-class suburb of West Grove, PA, the closest Photo License Center is 10 miles away at the Oxford Photo License Center. That is a notable hurdle for anyone who doesn’t have a driver’s license to drive those ten miles, let alone for anyone living in a more rural or underdeveloped location with little public transport or voluntary transportation services, like ones where volunteers drive seniors to vote. Additionally, once you access the application itself, the most glaring issue appears: a $43.50 fee to submit the form. In Pennsylvania, that’s six hours of pre-tax minimum-wage work, an inconvenience that can easily outweigh the pursuit of a single vote in one's mind. Put in historical terms, Louisiana’s Constitution of 1898, Article 197, imposed a one-dollar poll tax equivalent to $35 to $40 in 2026. The effect was monstrous: Louisiana went from 130,000 registered Black voters in 1896 to 1,342 in 1904, a 99% nosedive.

This nosedive is the core problem with the SAVE Act’s mask. It turns the constitutional right of voting into a conditional privilege that must be earned through time, money, paperwork, transportation and institutional navigation, even when the voter is already a citizen and already eligible. When the White House claims Americans support the SAVE Act, what they actually endorse is a concept, not the administrative obstacle course the concept becomes once it is written into law and pushed onto the people least equipped to absorb its costs. A right that depends on spare cash, access to a car, proximity to a licensing center and possession of legacy documents is not a neutral rule but a sorting mechanism that predictably filters out the poor first. When the state creates a prerequisite that millions statistically cannot meet, and then treats their absence from the ballot as proof of “integrity,” it is not protecting democracy — it is choosing the electorate and calling it security.