Washington — A new Republican push to pass an elections-related bill known as the SAVE America Act is underway in Congress, as Democrats warn the proposal could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.
Titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, the bill would require Americans to show proof of citizenship in person to register to vote in federal elections, and implement photo ID requirements for voting.
Though the legislation is aimed at preventing noncitizens from casting ballots, some experts have argued that the bill would have implications for millions of Americans who don’t have access to certain documents, like a passport or their birth certificate, or who have changed their names.
Republicans in Congress have tried to get iterations of the measure passed through both chambers for years. The House has passed earlier versions of the SAVE America Act twice, but the effort hasn’t gone anywhere in the Senate — where a 60-vote threshold for advancing most legislation makes passing partisan bills much more difficult.
“As much as this bill seeks to protect against a nearly non-existent problem (non-citizen voting), in service of conspiracy theories, what’s truly ironic is that the bill could have a far more detrimental effect on Republican voters, who often lack the multiple documents (particularly passports) at much higher rates than Democrats,” said David Becker, a CBS News election law contributor and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Here’s what to know about the SAVE America Act:
What is the SAVE America Act?
The SAVE America Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
The legislation would require documentation that shows an individual was born in the U.S., including either:
- An ID that complies with the REAL ID Act and indicates the holder is a citizen;
- A passport;
- A military ID card and military record of service that shows a person was born in the U.S.;
- A government-issued photo ID that shows the person’s place of birth was in the U.S.;
- Other forms of government-issued photo ID, if they’re accompanied by a birth certificate, comparable document or naturalization certificate.
The legislation would also require those who submit voter registration forms by mail to present proof of citizenship in person.
It directs states to establish a process for individuals who cannot provide proof of citizenship, including a signed attestation under penalty of perjury that the individual is a citizen and eligible to vote, alongside other evidence to demonstrate citizenship. A state or local official would then be required to sign an affidavit affirming that the person has sufficiently established U.S. citizenship.
The bill requires states to take steps to ensure only U.S. citizens are registered to vote, including by establishing a program in which the state will identify individuals who are not U.S. citizens using data from the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, state agencies or other sources.
The latest version of the bill would also implement a requirement that voters show photo ID to cast a ballot, a change from earlier iterations. Absentee ballots would need to be accompanied by a copy of a photo ID. If the ID does not indicate the person is a citizen, they would need proof of citizenship documents to vote, unless a state has submitted its voter registration list to DHS and has indicated that the voter has been verified as a citizen.
“This is a show-your-papers policy that would require something like a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote for the vast majority of people,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program.
The Trump administration has demanded complete voter registration lists from nearly every state and the District of Columbia. The lists include sensitive information like voters’ addresses, birth dates and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 11 states have either turned over the voter rolls or said they intend to provide the information to the government, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against 24 states and the District of Columbia, which have refused to hand over the information. Courts in California and Oregon have rejected the administration’s bids for sensitive voter information from those states.
Can noncitizens vote in federal elections?
Not legally, and instances of noncitizens voting are rare.
In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which tightened federal immigration laws and made it illegal for any noncitizen to vote in federal elections. Violators face up to one year in prison.
A handful of municipalities in three states — California, Maryland and Vermont — and the District of Columbia allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
Some states in recent years have examined the scope of voting by noncitizens. A citizenship audit of Georgia’s voter rolls conducted in 2024 found that 20 of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters were not citizens, according to its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. An additional 156 people required further investigation into their citizenship status.
In Ohio, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in 2024 that a citizenship verification audit identified 597 noncitizens who were registered to vote in Ohio. Of those, 138 people appeared to have cast ballots and were referred to the state’s attorney general, he said. There were more than 8.1 million voters in Ohio as of the 2024 presidential election, according to state data.
Texas identified 2,724 potential noncitizens who were registered to vote in the state after conducting citizenship verifications last October. There were more than 18.6 million registered voters in the state as of the 2024 presidential election, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Democrats warn of voter suppression, while Republicans see common-sense bill
Democrats have decried the legislation and said that it has no chance of being approved in the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called the SAVE Act “dead on arrival” in the upper chamber, saying “Democrats have been clear for months we will never in a million years consider this deeply restrictive and overreaching piece of legislation.”
“It has nothing to do with protecting our elections and everything to do with federalizing voter suppression,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. “The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0.”
Schumer echoed concerns from Democrats that if the SAVE Act becomes law, online voter registration, registration by mail and registration drives would “become a thing of the past” due to in-person requirements to provide proof of citizenship. He said the law would make it “impossible” for Americans who don’t have access to birth certificates or passports to vote. And he warned that it would lead to “massive purges that inevitably remove legitimate American citizens” from voter rolls, including, potentially, those who change their last name after getting married.
“This is just an outrageous piece of legislation,” Schumer said. “It’s turning the clock back 100 years.”
At least 3.8 million Americans do not have proof of citizenship documents, according to a survey conducted in part by the Brennan Center in 2023. In 2025, the State Department said the number of valid passports in circulation stood at nearly 170 million, just under half of the U.S. population.
Republicans have defended the bill as a common-sense solution to secure elections. House Speaker Mike Johnson said there is broad public support for policies like voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements. A poll from Pew Research Center published last August found 83% of Americans favor requiring voters to show government-issued photo ID to vote. An October 2024 poll from Gallup found the same number, 83%, back a policy to require people who are registering to vote for the first time to provide proof of citizenship.
“These are very important things to ensure that our elections are free and fair and safe, and that’s a critical component of maintaining the constitutional republic,” Johnson said Tuesday.
Sweren-Becker, from the Brennan Center, told CBS News that the legislation would be “catastrophic for American voters” and would be “chaos for election officials to implement.” She called it a “five-alarm fire for American voters and a five-alarm fire for election administration and election administrators throughout the country.”
“There is nothing common sense or sensible about the SAVE Act at all,” she said.
Where does Trump stand?
For years, Mr. Trump has claimed without evidence that there is widespread voter fraud. He continues to falsely assert that he won the 2020 presidential election and has repeatedly accused states led by Democrats of allowing noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, even though it is prohibited under federal law.
In a podcast interview this week with Dan Bongino, the former deputy director of the FBI, Mr. Trump said Republicans should “nationalize” voting and claimed they would never win another election if they didn’t work to deport undocumented immigrants.
“The Republicans should say, ‘we want to take over,'” he said. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. And then we have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes.”
The Constitution’s Elections Clause gives states the authority to set the rules for federal elections and allows Congress to pass legislation regulating them.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Mr. Trump had been referring to the legislative proposals in Congress in his comments on Bongino’s show. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, asked about the president’s remarks, said the president had “clarified what he meant by that and that is that he supports the SAVE Act.”
“So with respect to whether or not that signifies ensuring that only citizens of this country vote in our elections, that’s something I think we all agree with,” Thune said.
But the president doubled down on his comments about federalizing elections.
Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday that he wants “honest” elections and said states are “agents of the federal government.”
“If a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it,” he said, referring to members of Congress.
The president backs the elections-related proposal and signed an executive order last March that sought to overhaul U.S. elections. Under the directive, documentary proof of citizenship would be required to register to vote.
But voting rights groups, Democratic campaign committees and 19 states filed lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s executive order. Portions of the executive order have since been blocked by federal judges.
“Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 110-page decision last week.
What comes next?
Though some House Republicans had hoped to attach the legislation to a funding package this week, the move threatened to stall the effort to reopen the government, and Mr. Trump urged lawmakers to move forward without changes.
But the president suggested that the issue can be addressed at a later date.
GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who had led the push to attach the SAVE Act to the funding package in the House, claimed after meeting with the president that she had received assurances about moving the bill forward in the Senate by forcing Democrats to oppose it on the floor through what’s known as a talking filibuster. The maneuver would sidestep the need for 60 votes to close out debate and advance the legislation.
Thune cast doubt on that plan, saying it would “entail a tremendous amount of effort, work and cooperation at the expense of the other things that we might be doing in the Senate.” Still, Thune said the GOP conference would discuss it to “see where everyone is.”
Thune said “we will get a vote on the SAVE Act at some point,” while noting that it could come as part of the discussions around funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
Johnson also suggested that the SAVE Act could be part of the negotiations over DHS funding.
“House Republicans have already passed the SAVE Act twice,” Johnson said. “We will continue to try to advance that because we believe that is critically important to the American people and to our elections.”