COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Joshua Bogdan was born and raised in the United States. The only time the New Hampshire resident has left the country was for a day and a half in seventh grade, when he went to Canada to see Niagara Falls.<\/p>\n
Even so, that did not mean proving his U.S. citizenship in last fall\u2019s local elections was easy.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old arrived at his voting place in Portsmouth and handed the poll worker his driver\u2019s license, just as he had done in other towns when arriving to vote. She said that would no longer do.<\/p>\n
The poll worker said that under the state\u2019s new proof-of-citizenship law<\/a>, which took effect for the first time during town elections in 2025, Bogdan would need a passport or his birth certificate because he had moved and needed to reregister at his new address. A scramble ensued, turning the voting process that he had always found fun and invigorating into a nerve-wracking game of beat the clock.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know that anything had officially changed walking in there,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then being told that I had to provide a passport that I\u2019ve never had or a birth certificate that\u2019s usually tucked away somewhere safe just to cast my vote \u2014 which I\u2019ve done before \u2014 it was frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n A national push, despite noncitizen voting being rare <\/p>\n Bogdan\u2019s experience in New Hampshire is a glimpse into the future for potentially millions of voters across the country. That is if Republican voting legislation being pushed aggressively<\/a> by President Donald Trump passes Congress and a \u201cshow your papers\u201d law is put in place in time for the November elections.<\/p>\n The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, cleared the U.S. House<\/a> last month on a mostly party-line basis. Republicans say it would improve election integrity. Trump has called its safeguards common sense. The bill is scheduled to come up in the U.S. Senate<\/a> next week for voting and debate.<\/p>\n Republican messaging has mostly highlighted a less divisive provision in the bill that would require voters to show a photo ID, but the mandate for people to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections is likely to have the most wide-ranging consequences. Noncitizens already are prohibited from voting in federal elections, and it is not allowed<\/a> by any state. Cases<\/a> where it occurs are rare.<\/a><\/p>\n Obtaining the necessary documents under the SAVE Act is not as easy as it might sound. A similar effort was tried in Kansas<\/a> a decade ago and turned into a debacle that eventually was blocked by the courts after more than 30,000 eligible citizens were prevented from registering.<\/p>\n A long list of documents to use, but with caveats <\/p>\n Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO at the Fair Elections Center, said the legislation\u2019s strict documentation requirements could move the U.S. \u201cin the opposite direction\u201d of representative democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this bill passes, it would deny millions of eligible Americans their fundamental freedom to vote,\u201d she said in an email. \u201cThis includes millions of people who make up your communities, including married women, people of color and voters who live in rural areas.\u201d<\/p>\n The list of qualifying documents in the SAVE Act for proving citizenship appears long, but many of them come with qualifiers.<\/p>\n Under the bill, a REAL ID<\/a> -compliant driver\u2019s license would have to indicate that \u201cthe applicant is a citizen,\u201d but not all do. Only five states \u2014 Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington \u2014 offer the type of enhanced REAL IDs that explicitly indicate U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n Standard driver\u2019s licenses, generally available to both citizens and noncitizens, often do not include a citizenship indicator. Some states, including Ohio, have recently added them.<\/p>\n The stipulations continue, buried in the fine print<\/a>. <\/p>\n While military ID cards are listed as qualifying documents under the act, they will not suffice on their own. The bill says a military ID must be accompanied by a military \u201crecord of service\u201d that indicates the person\u2019s birthplace was in the U.S.<\/p>\n A DD214, the current standard-issue certificate of release or discharge for all military service branches, does not currently fulfill that requirement. According to the Pentagon, that document only lists where someone lived at points of entry and discharge and a person\u2019s current home of record. It does not list where someone was born.<\/p>\n Obtaining a passport requires time and money<\/p>\n For most provisions, the SAVE Act contains no phase-in period that would give voters and local election offices time to adjust. If passed by Congress and signed by Trump, its documentary proof-of-citizenship mandate would apply immediately, meaning it would be in place for this year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n That could lead to a rush to obtain documents by those who want to register or need to reregister. A 2025 University of Maryland study estimates that 21.3 million Americans<\/a> who are eligible to vote do not have or have easy access to documents to prove their citizenship, including nearly 10% of Democrats, 7% of Republicans and 14% of people unaffiliated with either major party.<\/p>\n A passport would most effectively meet the requirement, but only about half of American adults have one, according to the State Department, and the SAVE Act requires the passport to be current. An expired one does not count.<\/p>\n Obtaining a passport in time for a looming voter registration deadline is another potential hurdle.<\/p>\n Workers who process passports had layoffs at the State Department<\/a> reversed, but just last month the department forbid passport processing at certain public libraries<\/a> that had long helped relieve pressure at the department. Government libraries, post offices, county clerks and others still provide the service.<\/p>\n It takes four weeks to six weeks to get a passport, according to the department\u2019s website, excluding mailing time. A new passport costs $165 for adults while renewals cost $130, and the photo costs $10 or $20 more. The turnaround time can be sped up to two weeks or three weeks for an additional $60 \u2014 and for even faster processing, add $22 more. The fully expedited process for a new passport would cost at least $257.<\/p>\n Birth and marriage certificates<\/p>\n A birth certificate may be a quicker and cheaper choice for most people, but there are twists.<\/p>\n The SAVE Act requires a certified birth certificate issued by a state, local government or tribal government. What does not appear to qualify is the certificate signed by the doctor that many new parents are given in the hospital when their child is born. It provides information similar to a certified birth certificate, but would not meet the letter of the federal legislation. <\/p>\n Like passports, birth certificates can sometimes take weeks to obtain. Those who live near their birthplaces can visit the local vital statistics office, but staffing shortages and escalating demand for REAL IDs have caused significant backlogs in some states. In New York, the waiting period for certified copies is four months, the state said. Average processing times for online certificate requests vary widely by state, from as few as three days to 12 weeks or longer.<\/p>\n People whose birth certificates don\u2019t match their current IDs \u2014 mostly women who changed their names when they married \u2014 would likely need additional documentation to register to vote under the bill. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found about 80% of women in opposite-sex marriages in the U.S. take their husband\u2019s last name.<\/p>\n A major change to the voting process, but with no extra money<\/p>\n Notably, the SAVE Act does not provide any money to help states and local governments implement the changes or promote them to voters.<\/p>\n For Bogdan, that was part of the problem when New Hampshire\u2019s proof-of-citizenship law took effect. People who have voted elsewhere in the state are not required to show proof of citizenship in their new towns if poll workers confirm their registration history, but Bogdan said workers at his polling place did not seem to know that or try to look up the information.<\/p>\n He eventually was able to cast his ballot because, by luck, he had recently retrieved his birth certificate from his parents\u2019 house more than an hour away so he could apply for a REAL ID. But he said government notices to voters would help prevent possible disenfranchisement.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung voters like myself don\u2019t always carry around our birth certificate, Social Security card, all that important stuff, because it\u2019s not used ever or very often,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so all those young kids who are going to go out and try and vote will be held back from that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Joshua Bogdan was born and raised in the United States. 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