Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, joined all but one Democrat on Wednesday in voting against the Republicans’ latest version of the election reform legislation known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, America Act.
The House passed the SAVE America Act by a vote of 218-213. Every Republican voted for the bill, while every Democrat, with the exception of Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, voted against it.
The SAVE America Act legislation would restrict mail-in registration, require photocopies of a voter’s photo ID when casting a mail-in ballot and would require official photo identification for in-person voting.
Supporters of the election reform bill say its provisions requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote, photo identification when voting via mail or at the polls, and turning over state voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security are necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
Opponents, including the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters have warned that the GOP’s trio of election reform bills — the original SAVE Act that passed the House in April but stalled in the Senate, along with the newer SAVE America Act and the Make Elections Great Again Act — would jeopardize mail-in voting and disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, including married women whose identification may not match the name on their birth certificate.
“All of us in Southwest Washington agree that only U.S. citizens should determine the outcome of U.S. elections, but this bill is more concerned with duct-taping together a government-run photocopying service than actually advancing the serious goal of ensuring free and fair elections,” Perez said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. “Vote-by-mail is the gold standard in election security, and the SAVE America Act would undermine our state’s long-standing elections process by forcing Washingtonians to jump through nonsensical bureaucratic hoops in order to mail in their ballot.”
The SAVE America Act would require people to prove U.S. citizenship when they register to vote or change their voter registration. Driver’s licenses would not count as official proof of citizenship. Instead, eligible voters would need to show a valid U.S. passport, birth certificate and photo identification with a matching name, military identification and service record showing a member was born in the U.S. or government identification showing the voter’s place of birth.
Fewer than half of all U.S. residents possess a valid U.S. passport. According to the Center for American Progress, as of 2024, nearly 40 percent of Washington residents do not have a valid U.S. passport. SAVE America Act opponents have also cited the cost of acquiring a passport, which is about $130, as an illegal poll tax.
“They claim massive numbers of noncitizens are voting, swaying elections, and that rampant voter fraud is changing results, but every single one of those claims … has been investigated again and again by Republican governors, Republican secretaries of state, by journalists, by academic researchers, by President (Donald) Trump himself, whose own voter fraud commission was disbanded because he couldn’t find enough evidence to warrant the absurd allegations he was making,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said Wednesday on the House floor.
It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, McGovern pointed out. And instances of fraudulent voting by undocumented immigrants are extremely rare, with research by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice showing the rate of noncitizen voting is about 0.0001 percent nationwide.
The SAVE America Act will now head to the Senate, where its passage will require 60 “yes” votes to defeat a filibuster.
Backlash at home
Perez was one of four Democrats who voted in favor of the original SAVE Act in April.
She defended her vote, saying in an emailed statement she does not support noncitizens voting in American elections.
“And that’s common sense to folks in Southwest Washington,” Perez said. “Voting in our nation’s elections is a sacred right belonging only to American citizens, and my vote for the SAVE Act reflects that principle.”
She later faced backlash in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District for her vote.
At town halls held in Vancouver and across the district, voters who had backed her during her 2022 and 2024 campaigns expressed frustration and anger over her pro-SAVE Act vote.
Perez’s tendency to vote with Republicans has often caused consternation with her Democratic base in Southwest Washington. In late January, several Vancouver area constituents gathered outside Perez’s Vancouver office to protest her Jan. 22 vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration enforcement officers. Several said they also felt disappointed by Perez’s SAVE Act vote in April.
The ire has even crossed the Columbia River into Oregon, with The Oregonian reporting Wednesday that Dean’s Car Care, the Portland auto repair shop owned by Perez’s husband, Dean Gluesenkamp, was the target of recent vandalism, with the words “Dean’s Wife Funds ICE” spray painted on the side of the building.
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