Let’s revisit the ways to prove citizenship under the SAVE Act
I see there’s some disagreement in the comments today about how hard it is to prove citizenship under the proposed SAVE Act.
From commenter “Betsybounds”:
This is an interesting read: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/five-things-to-know-about-the-save-act/
Among the interesting information it presents, there is this:
“Although at least one of these documents are in theory available to most citizens, not all voters have them readily available. According to recent studies:
… 11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate.”
From commenter “Niketas Choniates”:
I’m sorry, your source is completely lying here. I followed the link in your link which goes to a Substack and it did not say this.
What it said was 89% of people in the survey said they had their birth certificate. It did not say they “do not have access” to their birth certificate or cannot get it. It is very, very easy to get a copy of your birth certificate, and you can get 100 copies if you want.
I did the same as Niketas, just to make sure. While it’s true that the article Betsybounds linked to did say “11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate,” it included a link to this piece as the source of that information. That latter article makes it clear the reference is to people not actually having copies of their birth certificates in their possession, and not to people not having access to birth certificates. The latter group is nothing remotely like 11%.
Some sources I’ve seen use the term “readily available,” which is also misleading. No, the birth certificate might not already be in the person’s nightstand, but the document is ordinarily available with a modicum of effort. Fees are usually minimal, and can sometimes be waived entirely for various forms of financial hardship.
Some people who find it hard to get birth certificates are naturalized citizens who were born in war-torn countries where records have been destroyed, but those people would have naturalization papers and those can be used to prove citizenship.
Plus, most people discussing this issue completely ignore another alternate means of proving citizenship under the law:
Subject to any relevant guidance adopted by the Election Assistance Commission, each State shall establish a process under which an applicant who cannot provide documentary proof of United States citizenship under paragraph (1) may, if the applicant signs an attestation under penalty of perjury that the applicant is a citizen of the United States and eligible to vote in elections for Federal office, submit such other evidence to the appropriate State or local official demonstrating that the applicant is a citizen of the United States and such official shall make a determination as to whether the applicant has sufficiently established United States citizenship for purposes of registering to vote in elections for Federal office in the State.
“(ii) AFFIDAVIT REQUIREMENT.—If a State or local official makes a determination under clause (i) that an applicant has sufficiently established United States citizenship for purposes of registering to vote in elections for Federal office in the State, such determination shall be accompanied by an affidavit developed under clause (iii) signed by the official swearing or affirming the applicant sufficiently established United States citizenship for purposes of registering to vote.
There’s an awful lot of propaganda floating around about this and so many other things. When in doubt, best to go to the source, the original material if possible.
If a State or local official makes a determination under clause (i) that an applicant has sufficiently established United States citizenship for purposes of registering to vote…
I’d propose that there will promptly appear platoons and brigades and mobs of ‘State or local officials’, delighted to make determinations for all the wandering pobrecitos who are eager to obtain voting rights in addition to all the free stuff that is already theirs for the asking.
I just took a look at my 1984 certified copy of my 1948, City of Chicago birth certificate. I don’t recall obtaining it, but I’d probably remember if it had been difficult.
But then, what’s to stop anyone else from getting a copy of my birth certificate? And then using it for nefarious purpose?
Further, I’d thought I remembered that the birth certificate had my footprint and/or handprint at birth. Nope. And even if the print(s) were there, how do you make any connection now between the adult me and that 1948 infant? I think it’s just be my say-so! (I expect those prints would be useless for the purpose.)
Perhaps soon DNA will be collected from infants along with the name and parents’ names, and the file of all that will become the fundamental identity document. That seems waaaay more robust for establishing identity and citizenship than birth certificates — at least ones from mid-20th-century America — but also maybe Brave-New-World-ish.
@Paul Nachman:But then, what’s to stop anyone else from getting a copy of my birth certificate? And then using it for nefarious purpose?
Here is the list of people in Washington State who are allowed to get a copy of my birth certificate. If ordering one and using it for “nefarious purposes” was at all common or easy to do, you’d no doubt have been hearing about the risks and been aware of them for some time now, and it would not be something that occurred to you just now. It would be something we all knew about and were cautious of, like sharing our SSNs (which are completely useless as identifiers in any case).
Note the last two: government agencies and courts. That covers a hell of a lot of strangers.
Interesting list, NC. I wonder if the state verifies the identity of the person claiming to be the relative of the person for whom the certificate is being requested.
@Mongo:I wonder if the state verifies the identity of the person claiming to be the relative of the person for whom the certificate is being requested.
They do, info at the link, which is why I linked it.
Considering the bold lie that women who have married and changed their names will not be able to register all the other stuff pales in comparison.
Since married women vote more Republican than unmarried women and I would guess that if you remove women who didn’t take their husbands name that number moves more toward Republicans why would Republicans want to disenfranchise a demographic they are winning?
@martin:Considering the bold lie that women who have married and changed their names will not be able to register all the other stuff pales in comparison.
Consider that married women taking their husbands’ names are underrepresented in the demographic spreading this lie, it makes sense. A lot of them probably just don’t know that women who have changed their names when they married have been navigating this from the beginning and that our legal system knows how to cope with it.
@Paul Nachman: I was born in Chicago in 1949. The birth certificate which my parents gave to me was a photocopy on paper and equipment no longer in use by the 1980s. I had used that document to acquire my first passport. When I moved to Connecticut in the ’80s, the state wouldn’t accept the old document for a driver’s license. I had to write to Cook County to get a new one, with a raised embossed seal. I’d have to go look at the old one, in my safe deposit box, to see if it had a footprint or some other print, but I think not.
And when I went as a corporate wife to India, I had to provide a copy of my marriage certificate. They didn’t give resident visas to scarlet women. Those documents are also readily available from the place where the marriage was registered.
To Kate and Niketas: My basic point was that the connection between my birth certificate and the adult me is no more than my testimony. As proof of identity or citizenship, that strikes me as pretty tenuous.
And in response to Niketas, this didn’t “occur to me just now.” It’s been obvious to me for more than a decade, at least from the time I was having discussions with the friend who actually wrote the RealID Act as a House staffer.
Chain of custody does have its uses.
Paul Nachman: the connection between my birth certificate and the adult me is no more than my testimony.
To get certified copy of my California birth certificate, good for identification, I had to sign that testimony (the BC request form) in the presence of a notary, and present my ID, a RealID drivers license, to her so she could certify that (the named person) had signed.
Without that testimony and the notary, the copies would have been marked “Not for Identification.” (I’ve gotten those too, to document genealogy.)
Paul Nachman on February 26, 2026 at 3:28 pm:
“My basic point was that the connection between my birth certificate and the adult me is no more than my testimony. As proof of identity or citizenship, that strikes me as pretty tenuous.”
At one level it could be even more tenuous, as you probably have that initial BC copy in part because your parents (or your “parents”) told you that you were their child… and you had no reason not to believe them*. Thus DNA really does or will end up being the core ID source eventually – but even that has to reply on the proper identification of the people supplying the DNA sample as being well established (along with om’s chain of custody).
But at the other end the reliance is really on the “full faith and credit” of the city or state organization/ institution obtaining and recording and storing that data. If they want to count us as citizens and tax us and pass laws that we are expected to follow, then they better also be sufficiently rigorous in maintaining a reliable source of birth identity.
*In my case I am pretty sure I am not a bastard or adopted because after a 7th grade parent-teacher conference, my teacher told me she could recognize my father because I resembled him so closely.
@Paul Nachman:My basic point was that the connection between my birth certificate and the adult me is no more than my testimony. As proof of identity or citizenship, that strikes me as pretty tenuous.
Equally true of your driver’s license, unless the person you present it to is the same one who issued it to you and has known you the whole time. But no one takes just a birth certificate as an identity document, so this is a straw man.
Have you ever been employed? The I-9 requires proof of identity and proof of work eligibility. The US birth certificate is listed as a document that proves work eligibility but you need a different document for identity. The SAVE Act, for that reason, requires something else to prove identity if you use a birth certificate for citizenship.