Rigorous checks and balances in our election system ensured the 2024 election was free and fair – leading to a significant uptick in trust in our election system across the political spectrum. Despite high confidence in the accuracy of the election results, however, the new majority of the 119th Congress has made the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (“SAVE”) Act a high priority. The proposed legislation threatens to inject chaos in our elections and block millions of eligible Americans from voting by requiring documentary proof of citizenship (such as a passport or birth certificate) to register.
The bill is wholly based on the extremely dubious – and repeatedly disproven – narrative that undocumented immigrants are voting in our elections. These assertions defy basic commonsense. Not only is it practically infeasible for an undocumented immigrant to register to vote, it is also difficult to imagine an undocumented immigrant would risk government scrutiny, arrest, and deportation — all to cast just one vote.
This post explores the SAVE Act’s consequences for citizens and state election systems, while highlighting the robust checks and balances already in place that ensure only U.S. citizens can vote in federal and statewide elections.
What is the SAVE Act?
While federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting, the SAVE Act would require voting-eligible citizens to present documentary proof of their citizenship to register or re-register (after a move, a name change, or a party switch) to vote in federal elections. Driver’s licenses, including REAL IDs, would not be sufficient – nor would military or Tribal IDs.
Instead, the law would mandate that voters prove their citizenship by presenting local election officials with either a birth certificate (one that includes their full name — something many voters cannot provide if they have changed their name due to marriage or other reasons) or a U.S. passport.
If enacted, not only would this bill place new burdens on state election administrators, but it would prevent tens of thousands of eligible Americans from registering to vote and lead to eligible voters being purged from the voter rolls.
The SAVE Act Would Block Eligible Citizens From Exercising Their Freedom to Vote
Imagine showing up to vote on Election Day, only to be prohibited from voting because your registration was cancelled. This is not a far-fetched scenario — it will be a reality for many Americans under the SAVE Act when you consider that less than half of American adults possess a valid passport, and millions lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. In fact, this is why federal courts ruled a substantially similar state law in Kansas an unconstitutional violation of the equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment (notably, the Supreme Court declined to review that case in 2020).
In fact, we’ve already seen the harmful effects of documentary proof of citizenship requirements in states that have implemented similar policies:
- Arizona struggled with the implementation of Proposition 200 (passed in 2004), which created a two-tiered voter registration system. Under this “tiered” system, voters who do not present proof of citizenship at registration are barred from voting in state and local races. The new requirements for state elections created an administrative disaster, jeopardizing the eligibility of over 200,000 eligible voters in the 2024 elections.
- Texas used outdated DMV records to check its voter list for citizenship status and mistakenly flagged tens of thousands of eligible naturalized citizens for removal in 2019.
- Kansas enacted a documentary proof of citizenship law that blocked over 30,000 eligible voters from registering in the three years it was in effect. As aforementioned, the law was later struck down as unconstitutional by a federal appellate court.
Robust Checks and Balances Already Ensure Only U.S. Citizens Can Vote
Federal and state laws make it explicitly illegal for noncitizens to vote, and multiple checks and balances are in place at every step of the election process to detect and prevent fraudulent voting:
- For over 20 years, Americans have been required to provide either a Social Security number or a state-issued ID (such as a driver’s license), which election officials use to verify citizenship status, when registering or voting for the very first time.
- Officials regularly verify and cross-check state and federal voter databases to ensure records are accurate and up-to-date.
- During the vote-counting process, bipartisan teams of election officials work together to ensure all ballots are cast by eligible citizens and counted accurately.
These processes are regularly reviewed and updated after each election cycle to maintain their effectiveness and prevent errors.
These laws are working – and we have the data to prove it. The claim that noncitizens are voting in large numbers is unsupported by any credible evidence. Studies, audits, and data from multiple elections consistently show that noncitizen registration is rare and noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare. In October 2024, in advance of the general election, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state reviewed 8.2 million registered voters and found just 20 noncitizens were initially erroneously included on the rolls before being removed. And during a recent Republican National Committee training session, an election integrity specialist told Pennsylvania poll watchers that noncitizen voting is “close to impossible” due to the robust safeguards already in place.
The SAVE Act Would Cause Chaos and Confusion in the States
In addition to disenfranchising eligible citizens, the SAVE Act would place significant new administrative burdens on state and local election offices – without offering any additional funding to assist with training or implementation.
Busy election offices would be tasked with obtaining information from applicants that may be difficult or impossible to access. Long-time registered voters who change their addresses would be forced to scramble to find birth certificates they may have long since misplaced. Eligible voters who may have changed their name since birth could be left with no recourse. Depending on how states need to implement the requirement for existing voters, election officials could face months of intensive effort to update registration records with newly-required information, interfering with other essential tasks to prepare for upcoming elections.
Chaos and confusion is inevitable. For example, the bill includes a vague provision that states should establish a process for allowing voters without the required documentation to submit other evidence that they are a citizen. At the same time, it imposes new criminal and civil penalties for election officials who provide undefined “material assistance” to any noncitizen who is attempting to register to vote. When faced with this contradictory language – not to mention the threat of criminal prosecution – many election officials may reasonably opt to deny registration to eligible citizens altogether.
Moreover, the fear of criminal charges will likely worsen the already high turnover and staffing shortages among election officials, who have left the field in droves due to growing safety concerns.
Furthermore, the SAVE Act would place additional burdens on federal agencies for state voter list maintenance. For example, it requires the Department of Homeland Security to respond to citizenship inquiries from state governments within a 24-hour window. With millions of registrations every year, the sheer volume and speed of these requests would put immense strain on federal agencies.
Lawmakers Should Instead Seize Momentum to Modernize Our Election Systems
By serving as the latest in a growing list of deeply unpopular and likely unconstitutional actions advanced by the new administration and Congress, the SAVE Act – and similar recent state-level legislation – would divide Americans at a time when they are, at long last, united once again in support for our election systems. Rather than impose redundant and damaging new laws, lawmakers should seize this support to make our election systems more secure and transparent.