By Tevon Blair ·Updated March 31, 2026 < /> Getting your Trinity Audio player ready… United States Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware stands firm in her decision to not support the passing of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act as new requirements would create barriers for millions of American citizens’ access to register to vote.
If the SAVE Act becomes federal law, it would enforce a stricter voter registration process that would eliminate widely used online and mail-in voter registration systems.
Americans looking to register to vote would be required to provide in-person proof of citizen documentation such as a birth certificate or U.S. passport. However, today more than 21 million Americans are without access to available citizenship documentation with roughly half of the country without a passport.
“We should be expanding the opportunity to vote, not shrinking it,” said the senator, in an exclusive interview with ESSENCE. “The point of this bill is trying to solve a problem that’s not there, and in doing so, it moves the goalposts for people who want to vote. It will squeeze people out of the democratic process by finding ways to cost you money and cost you time if you want to vote.”
Previously serving in the House of Representatives, Rochester has been a long-time advocate in Congress protecting voting rights for Delaware residents. Now as senator, she describes the SAVE Act as “dangerous and unethical,” comparing it to Jim-Crow era poll taxes.
Reflecting on America’s history on restrictive voting laws, Rochester speaks to the significance of her role as a U.S senator to protect the rights of all Americans to vote, regardless of party affiliation. While she is part of a small group of elected leaders who have served in the senate, she connects her >remarks on the senate floor on the SAVE Act with a rendering of a 1867 Returns of Qualified Voters and Reconstruction Oath document from her great-great-great-grandfather that granted him access to vote.
“This document is a window into our nation’s and my family’s history,” said Rochester. “I’ve been reflecting on this document and how it relates to the moment that we are in as a nation, how it’s a physical manifestation of our democracy’s ability to expand and contract. How we can bring people together and how we can separate. It’s a part of the American experiment.”
Rochester made history in 2025 being sworn in as Delaware’s first woman and first African American to be elected to serve in the state’s senate seat next to Maryland’s Senator Angela D. Alsobrooks. It is the first time in the history of the country where two Black women are serving in the U.S. Senate at the exact same moment.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 03: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a ceremonial swearing-in with Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) (L) as her mother Alice Blunt (2nd L) looks on at the U.S. Capitol on January 3, 2025 in Washington, DC. The 119th Congress begins its term on Capitol Hill today. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) America has seen both expansive and restrictive voting rights legislations that have largely impacted the experiences of Black people being elected to public office and participating in elections across the country.
In 1870, U.S. Senator Hiram R. Revels became the first African American member of Congress, representing Mississippi, after the 15th Amendment was passed and expanded the right to vote for Black men. The amendment led to 20 Black representatives and two Black senators elected to serve in Congress between 1870 and 1901.
However, for Black people across the South, the progress established during Reconstruction did not last long after restrictive Jim Crow laws were introduced, limiting the number of Black people elected to congress and preventing many from voting due to literary tests, poll taxes and other voter suppression tactics. Restrictive voting laws in Louisiana dropped Black male voter registration from 130,000 to just 1,000 within six years with lawmakers at the time expressing the need to “purify the electorate.”
A century after Revels was elected to the senate, students at Prairie View A&M University saw a need for their right to vote to be represented as college students after the passing of the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. Students’ residency concerns at the historically Black campus led to the 1979 Supreme Court decision in Symm v. United States, expanding access to college students as eligible voters.
“The SAVE Act points to the fact that voting and representation matters,” said Rochester. “We are now in the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country and having our Republican colleagues, a president and a Supreme Court that are trying to roll back the gains we’ve gotten is sobering – and it should motivate us to act.”
Now, more than 61 years after the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which expanded voting access for Black voters after decades of Jim Crow laws, Rochester calls the SAVE Act a “contradiction of our democracy.”
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, many of the country’s most vulnerable communities are at risk of being impacted by the SAVE Act, if passed and signed into law. People of all racial backgrounds and eligible voting groups will be impacted by this legislation. This includes specific groups like college students, people living with disabilities and married women who have changed their name.
“69 million is the number of women who have changed their names,” said Rochester. “Not only will they have to provide proof of citizenship, but under this bill, they also would have to bring their marriage certificate to a voting booth, or maybe a signed affidavit from a judge proving their name change.”
President Donald Trump continues to call on Republican and Democratic lawmakers to pass the bill. He hopes to strengthen voter I.D. laws in an effort to restrict voting to only American citizens. However, research has shown that voter fraud is extremely rare in U.S. elections.
While Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees continue to be impacted by the partial government shutdown, Trump said, in a social media post, that passing the SAVE Act was “far more important than anything else” lawmakers were doing in the senate. He suggested that senate republicans should avoid any deals with democrats until the bill was passed.
The larger question that the senator continues to ask is what is the SAVE Act saving Americans from? As the bill has already passed in the Republican-led House, the decision is left to U.S. senators on whether this legislation, backed by Trump, will become law. Rochester confirmed that Democratic senators plan to stand in the path against the restrictive bill and urged her Republican colleagues to join.
As voters prepare for the 2026 midterms, Rochester reminds the American people that the power of the ballot is connected to every part of their lives and “it’s worth fighting for.”
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