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The Latest Ploy to Help Republicans Win Elections

The SAVE Act, which would require that voters prove they are citizens, is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
By David A. Graham

Any legislation titled with a backronym is automatically suspect, and the SAVE America Act—that’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility—is no exception. A version of the bill languished last year, but President Trump is now pressuring Senate Republicans to pass it, among his other attempts to subvert the midterm elections. Although the bill seems unlikely to become a law, it could still create chaos and confusion about the race.

The SAVE Act is relatively simple to understand: It requires that anyone wishing to vote provide documentation to prove they are a U.S. citizen. On an intuitive level, this might make sense, because noncitizens aren’t permitted to vote. But the bill is a solution in search of a problem. States already have methods of verifying citizenship, and illegal voting by noncitizens is very rare. The bill also threatens to disenfranchise eligible voters. Although some of the bill’s supporters may be sincere, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem committed a classic Kinsley gaffe on Friday, inadvertently revealing the truth of the administration’s push: It’s a ploy to help Republicans win elections.

“When it gets to Election Day,” she said at an event boosting the bill in Arizona, “we’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”

Many states have enacted laws that require photo identification for voting. (Most election laws are made at the state level, though Congress has occasionally passed nationwide laws, such as the 2002 Help America Vote Act.) Studies have found that voter-ID laws have a relatively minor effect on turnout; they are generally popular with voters, but they also disproportionately affect older voters, poorer voters, and minority voters. Politicians who support them like to point out that people need ID to board a plane or buy alcohol—but neither of those is a constitutional right, and violations of alcohol laws are very common. The SAVE Act would go a step further, not only by mandating ID at the federal level but by requiring voters to present proof of citizenship, most likely a passport or a birth certificate. Noncitizen voting simply isn’t a major threat to election integrity, and it’s already punishable under existing laws. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that supports the law, maintains a very helpful database of election fraud. The database contains 99 instances of ineligible voting by noncitizens since 1982. For comparison, more than 150 million votes were cast for president in 2024 alone.

Experts warn that requiring proof of citizenship would shut many Americans out of the polls. Only about half of the population holds a passport. Not all Americans have access to their birth certificate, and even that would not be sufficient for, say, a woman who changed her name at marriage, who would also have to produce proof of marriage. The congressional scholar Norm Ornstein argues that given the cost of establishing proof, the SAVE Act is in effect “a poll tax, a parallel to what Jim Crow laws used to suppress black votes, which the Supreme Court ultimately outlawed.”

All that said, the bill seems unlikely to pass. Republican Susan Collins of Maine last week became the 50th senator to back the bill, but because Democrats will filibuster, passing the bill requires 60 votes, which it doesn’t have.

Yet Trump doesn’t seem ready to accept defeat. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday. The president promised to issue an executive order, but he has no power to mandate voter-ID requirements—indeed, he has no control over elections, and a previous order requiring proof of citizenship to register has been partially blocked by federal courts.

The president may just be posturing, trying to get Republicans in the Senate to act. But he has shown little interest in stopping where his legal limitations end. And he’s testing other methods of subversion: He has tried to tell states when they can accept ballots and dictate what machines they use, and he recently called for Republicans to “nationalize” elections. Many of his actions seem motivated by a cynical calculus: Even if he loses the battle to enact the SAVE Act or put it into effect via executive order, he may be able to sow doubt about the results of the elections, which he can use if his party fares poorly in November. For his purposes of subverting elections, creating uncertainty may be nearly as effective as a real policy change.