SAVE Act impact measured for El Paso County
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More than 5 million voting-age Americans would have to drive an estimated hour or more to present their citizenship documents to register to vote under the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
Why it matters: President Trump is pushing the SAVE Act as necessary to secure future elections, but critics say it could complicate voting for millions of eligible American citizens.
Catch up quick: The SAVE Act would require people to present proof of citizenship in person to an "appropriate elections official" — effectively eliminating online and mail-in registration.
- Supporters say the added documentation is needed to protect election integrity and keep voter rolls accurate.
The big picture: The average American lives about 20 minutes by car from their nearest election office, per an Axios analysis.
- For rural Americans in western states like Colorado, that more than doubles to 49 minutes.
- Drive times on the Western Slope and in southeast Colorado are especially lengthy, even before factoring in traffic.
Zoom in: Nearly 9% of voting-age Coloradans lack the documents needed to register to vote under the SAVE Act — such as a birth certificate or passport — per an estimate from the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy nonprofit.
Reality check: If it passes, the impact might be limited in El Paso County.
- That's according to County Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker in a KKTV interview this month.
- Colorado is an all-mail-in ballot state, and El Paso County's 11 voting centers could help reduce travel burdens.
What they're saying: "For anything to change here in the state of Colorado in regards to how we vote, that would have to go through the state legislature," Schleiker told KKTV. There isn't "a unilateral federal directive."
- Schleiker also told county commissioners last year that implementing the SAVE Act requirements in Colorado could cost El Paso County millions of dollars and lower voter turnout.
The other side: "President Trump's SAVE America Act is commonsense legislation … to ensure our elections are secure and that only American citizens vote in American elections," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios in a statement.
Context: Most Colorado voters register at the DMV or online using various forms of government-issued ID, and must attest under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens.
Zoom out: From 2014 to 2024, the county found just 18 noncitizens on the voter registry in El Paso County, Schleiker told commissioners.
- All were later removed from the voter rolls, he added.
What's next: The SAVE Act is stuck in the Senate — but several Republican-led states are advancing similar measures.
Methodology: To find the average driving time, we divided the country into a grid of 5-mile-wide cells. For each cell, we identified the closest elections office in the same state (as the crow flies), then used OSRM to calculate driving directions from the center of that cell to that office.
To estimate each cell's population, we identified the overlapping census tracts, and calculated what share of each tract's area fell within the cell. We assumed an evenly distributed population within each tract, then multiplied each tract's total population by that area's share. We then summed the results to get a population estimate for the cell. Population numbers were taken from the 2024 American Community Survey.
Finally, we used each cell's population estimate to weight its driving distance, producing population-weighted average driving distances.