On Tuesday, April 22, 2025, CHANGE Illinois Action Fund Policy Director Eli Brottman testified before the Illinois House Ethics and Elections committee regarding consequences of the federal SAVE Act. His testimony is below.
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To: Ethics and Elections committee Chairperson Maurice West, Vice Chairperson Katie Stuart, Minority Spokesperson Patrick Windhorst, and members of the committee
From: Eli Brottman, Policy Director, CHANGE Illinois Action Fund
Testimony on consequences of the federal SAVE Act
Thank you chairperson West, vice chair Stuart, minority spokesperson Windhorst, and members of the committee for the opportunity to provide testimony today.
My name is Eli Brottman, the Policy Director for the CHANGE Illinois Action Fund. We are a non-partisan organization that champions equitable democracy and ethics in government.
I am here today to express grave concerns about the passage of the federal SAVE Act and its implications across our state. According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy and law institute, this legislation will disenfranchise over 21 million Americans, or more than 10% of voters1. This equates to potentially disenfranchising millions of Illinois voters, all while addressing a non-issue: the notion of voter fraud. Study after study has proven it does not exist. Furthermore, the SAVE Act does absolutely nothing to improve the integrity of our elections.
As Brennan Center for Justice research points out, it is a federal crime to even register to vote as a noncitizen. Penalties include up to 5 years in prison, and it is a deportable offense. No one will risk everything they have to register to vote. Brennan Center analyzed 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election, and found just 30 instances of noncitizens voting2. Similarly, Bipartisan Policy Center analyzed the Heritage Foundation’s election fraud cases database and found 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 20233, with no more than 10 instances in Illinois4. The evidence is abundantly clear: there is no widespread voter fraud being committed by noncitizens. The notion that such fraud is taking place is a falsehood designed to incite fear and undermine the integrity of our elections through voter suppression tactics.
Furthermore, this legislation will disenfranchise millions of voters through the cumbersome ID requirements. Specifically, registrants will have to show documentary proof of citizenship in person. This will be difficult for many who are caregivers for children and other family members or work hourly jobs, as well as voters living in rural areas and Native American voters who live far from their local election authority’s offices. Additionally, requiring proof of citizenship in person would undermine many key voting access laws such as automatic voter registration and online or mail-in voter registration.
Typically, this identification will take the form of a passport or a birth certificate; a Real ID does not establish citizenship with the exception of five states*, so that will not suffice5. For a birth certificate to be valid under the Act, the name on it must exactly match the name on the voter registration. For the 84% of married women who changed their surnames6, transgender individuals, and others, this will present a problem. Women who changed their surnames tend to skew older and more conservative than the general population.
Furthermore, the alternative of having a passport does not solve the problem; in fact, it actually furthers the disparities in voting access. About half of Americans do not possess a passport, and those who do are disproportionately young (under 30), wealthy, college educated, and liberal7.
Along with these already cumbersome impacts, the SAVE Act will also lead to unnecessary purges of voters from voter rolls, which will further marginalize voters of color8.
Finally, these new processes for proving citizenship will put considerable strain on election authorities, who will require additional personnel and resources to complete the verification process in person with additional and unnecessary documentation. This will come at a cost to taxpayers, as well as just slow the process, thereby lessening participation by making it inconvenient to vote.
The SAVE Act is an overreach of power that sets us backward several decades. I urge members of this committee and all Illinois elected officials to act swiftly to warn the Illinois congressional delegation and our state’s U.S. Senators of the harm that the SAVE Act will inflict on voters in every district across the state. We must educate Illinoisans about the effects of this legislation and take steps to safeguard their voting rights.
Thank you for your time and your work to protect Illinoisans amidst this national crisis. I welcome any questions.
*Correction: In the original version, the testimony stated that no state’s REAL ID laws meet citizenship requirements. This testimony has been amended to reflect that there are five states (Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington) that have a citizen-only version of the REAL ID that would satisfy the requirements.
- https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/save-act-would-hurt-americans-who-actively-participate-elections
↩︎ - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/noncitizens-are-not-voting-federal-or-state-elections-heres-why
↩︎ - https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/
↩︎ - https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?combine=citizen&state=All&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=All
↩︎ - https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-overview-and-facts/
↩︎ - https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-overview-and-facts/
↩︎ - https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-overview-and-facts/ ↩︎
- https://unidosus.org/publications/how-the-save-act-disproportionately-harms-latino-voters-and-american-democracy/
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