The SAVE Act: America’s Voter ID Debate

SUMMARY The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE Act, would require documentary proof of United States citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. The House passed the latest version (now called the SAVE America Act) on February 11, 2026 by a vote of 218-213, with Republicans unanimously voting in favor and all but one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, voting against it. The bill now faces an uphill battle in the Senate where it needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

What the Law Would Do

The bill requires anyone registering to vote in federal elections to present documentary proof of citizenship such as a passport, birth certificate or naturalization certificate. State-issued driver’s licenses and REAL IDs do not satisfy the requirements because no state’s REAL ID actually indicates citizenship status. The revised version also requires voters to show photo identification when casting ballots in person or by mail, a provision absent from the earlier iterationthat passed the House in April 2025 but was never taken up in the Senate.

States would be required to establish systems for identifying and removing noncitizens from voter rolls, including quarterly submissions of voter registration lists to the Department of Homeland Security for verification through the SAVE program. The legislation creates criminal penalties for election officials who register voters without proper documentation and allows private citizens to sue officials who fail to comply.

The bill would also effectively curtail automatic voter registration programs and online voter registration, as it requires that documentary proof of citizenship be presented “in person.” For those who register by mail, the law would prohibit their registration from being processed unless they subsequently appear in person with citizenship documentation.

Historical Context

Modern voter ID requirements emerged in the early 2000s, with Indiana’s 2005 strict photo ID law becoming the template for similar efforts across the country. The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s law in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), finding that states have a legitimate interest in preventing fraud, modernizing elections and safeguarding voter confidence, even absent evidence of widespread fraud. Justice Stevens, writing for the plurality, concluded that requiring photo ID imposed only “a limited burden on voters’ rights” that was justified by state interests.

The SAVE Act represents something different from these state-level efforts. Rather than simply requiring identification at the polls, it would mandate documentary proof of citizenship at the registration stage for federal elections. This approach has been tried only once at the state level, when Kansas implemented a similar requirement in 2013 under then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Federal courts struck down that law in 2018 in Fish v. Kobach, finding it violated the National Voter Registration Act and blocked tens of thousands of eligible citizens from registering. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed that ruling in 2020 and the Supreme Court declined to hear Kansas’s appeal.

Arguments in Favor

Supporters argue the law strengthens election integrity by ensuring only citizens participate in federal elections. Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who introduced the bill, calls it “commonsense legislation” that simply requires citizenship to register and voter ID at the polls. Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that Americans already need ID to drive, open a bank account or buy cold medicine, asking “why would voting be any different than that?”

Proponents point to polls showing 83% of Americans support requiring some form of voter ID, suggesting broad public backing for verification requirements. That support cuts across partisan lines, with 95% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats favoring photo ID requirements. A separate Gallup poll found 83% support requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote for the first time.

They argue that Americans already must prove citizenship for passports, employment eligibility through I-9 verification, Social Security benefits and other government interactions. Many democracies worldwide, including Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Mexico, require identification to vote.

The Bipartisan Policy Center acknowledges that both parties agree voter registration should permit all eligible citizens and only eligible citizens to register and vote, calling the goal of ensuring only citizens can register “important” even while questioning the specific approach.

Supporters also argue that the status quo creates opportunities for exploitation even if current fraud rates are low. They note that several states and localities have extended voting rights to noncitizens in local elections, creating administrative complexity that could lead to confusion. The proliferation of motor voter registration and automatic voter registration programs, they contend, increases the risk that noncitizens could be inadvertently added to federal voter rolls.

Arguments Against

Critics contend the law addresses a problem that barely exists. Research consistently shows noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare. A 2017 Brennan Center analysis of 42 jurisdictions covering 23.5 million votes found only about 30 cases referred for investigation. The libertarian Cato Institute has similarly confirmed that noncitizens do not illegally vote in detectable numbers.

Recent state audits have reinforced these findings. Michigan’s 2025 audit found just 16 credible cases of noncitizen voting out of 5.7 million ballots cast in the 2024 general election, representing 0.00028% of votes. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the findings confirm that “this illegal activity is very rare” and that “this tiny fraction of potential cases in Michigan and at the national level do not justify recent efforts to pass laws we know would block tens of thousands of Michigan citizens from voting in future elections.”

Utah’s Republican-led review of more than 2 million registered voters identified only one confirmed noncitizen registration and zero instances of noncitizen voting. Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, the state’s chief election officer, stated bluntly that “there is not a widespread problem” and cautioned that the federal SAVE database used to verify citizenship is “notoriously inaccurate” and “frequently flags individuals who are, in fact, citizens.”

The documentation requirements create significant barriers for eligible citizens. Approximately 146 million Americans lack valid passports. The Brennan Center estimates 21.3 million voting-age citizens lack ready access to proof-of-citizenship documents, with at least 3.8 million lacking these documents entirely. The Center for American Progress notes that 84% of married women change their surnames, meaning roughly 69 million women have birth certificates that do not match their current legal names. The Brennan Center survey also found racial disparities: while just over 8% of white American citizens lack readily available citizenship documents, 11% of American citizens of color face the same barrier.

The League of Women Voters points to Kansas, where a similar law blocked more than 31,000 eligible voters from registering before federal courts declared it unconstitutional. That state’s records showed only 39 noncitizens had successfully registered over the preceding two decades — meaning the law prevented approximately 795 eligible citizens from registering for every noncitizen it might have blocked. Federal District Judge Julie Robinson found that the state had presented no credible evidence of widespread noncitizen voting and instead had “erected substantial obstacles to voter registration by people eligible to vote”.

Alex Ault, policy counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Axios that “the threat level is grave” and called the bill “a game changer in terms of what any state would need to run an election.” Todd Belt, a professor at George Washington University who researches campaigns and elections, warned that if the SAVE Act passes, “people without a government-issued ID will no longer be able to vote” and that political analysis demonstrates “a lower turnout rate among Blacks, Latinos and low-income voters.”

Constitutional Questions

The Constitution divides authority over elections between federal and state governments in ways that remain contested. Article I, Section 4 gives Congress power to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner” of federal elections, while Article I, Section 2 and the Seventeenth Amendment tie voter qualifications for federal offices to state-determined eligibility.

Supporters argue that requiring proof of citizenship falls within Congress’s authority to regulate the “manner” of elections. Critics counter that voter qualifications remain exclusively within state authority and that Congress cannot impose substantive eligibility requirements under the guise of procedural regulations.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has reminded her GOP colleagues that Republicans were unanimous in opposing Democratic election reform legislation in 2021 because it would have “federalized elections, something we have long opposed.” Even Michael Fragoso, former counsel to Senator Mitch McConnell, has expressed concern that the bill “federalizes elections in a way that Republicans have long opposed.”

Implementation Challenges

Beyond constitutional questions, the SAVE Act presents formidable practical challenges. Birth certificates in the United States are issued by approximately 6,000 different jurisdictions, each with its own formats, security features and record-keeping systems. Many older Americans were born at home and lack formal birth certificates entirely. A Michigan town clerk told NPR that verifying birth certificates would be nearly impossible since formats vary dramatically: “How am I supposed to know if you forged that birth certificate?”

The experience of Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Henderson illustrates the risks of aggressive citizenship verification. During the 2022 primary election, Henderson, the state’s chief election officer, was removed from the voter rollsbecause she was born overseas while her father served in the U.S. Air Force. Her county clerk had marked her as a noncitizen simply because of her foreign birthplace. “If my county clerk could misidentify me as a noncitizen and improperly purge me from the voter rolls — while I was lieutenant governor and chief election officer of the state — who else might be wrongly caught in such an overzealous dragnet?” she wrote.

Henderson also warned that the federal SAVE database is unreliable. When Utah submitted more than 71,000 voter records for verification, it flagged 8,836 for further analysis. The vast majority of whom turned out to be citizens upon manual review.

New Hampshire’s experience offers another preview of potential problems. After implementing its own documentation requirement in 2024, more than 240 people were turned away at the polls in a non-presidential election year because they did not have citizenship papers on hand.

The Road Ahead

The SAVE Act faces long odds in the Senate. A spokesperson for Senator Susan Collins said that while she “supports the law and constitutional interpretation that only American citizens are eligible to vote” and “supports voter ID,” there were “problems with the SAVE America Act because it went much broader than these original principles.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune has acknowledged there “aren’t anywhere close to the votes, not even close, to nuking the filibuster.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has declared the proposal “dead on arrival in the Senate,” calling it legislation that “would impose Jim Crow type laws to the entire country.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argued that “the so-called SAVE Act is not about voter identification, it is about voter suppression.”

President Trump has indicated he may issue an executive order requiring proof of citizenship if the Senate does not act, writing on Truth Social that “there will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!”

If the bill somehow passes, legal challenges are virtually certain. Voting rights organizations have signaled their intention to sue, arguing the law violates the National Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution itself. Courts would likely issue preliminary injunctions blocking implementation while litigation proceeds.

The Bottom Line

The SAVE Act represents a fundamental shift in how Americans would register to vote for federal offices. Whether you view it as a common-sense protection of election integrity or an unnecessary obstacle that would disenfranchise millions depends largely on how you weigh two competing concerns: the risk of noncitizen voting against the risk of preventing eligible citizens from exercising the franchise.

The available evidence suggests that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare under current law, while significant numbers of eligible citizens lack ready access to the documents the SAVE Act would require. At the same time, supporters argue that preventing even small numbers of ineligible votes is important as a matter of principle and that verification requirements are appropriate given the stakes involved in federal elections. The strong public support for voter ID requirements suggests many Americans find these arguments persuasive.

These are ultimately questions of values and priorities that each citizen must weigh for themselves. The debate over voter identification and election security will remain contentious for years to come, with the SAVE Act representing only the latest chapter in America’s long struggle to define and protect the right to vote.