President Donald Trump has ramped up pressure on Republicans in recent weeks to pass the Save America Act, a bill that would require people to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote and to show photo identification at the polls, among other voting restrictions.
Trump has gone so far as to declare that he will not sign any other legislation until Congress passes the bill, and vowed Tuesday never to endorse anyone who voted against what he dubbed “one of the most IMPORTANT & CONSEQUENTIAL pieces of legislation in the history of Congress.” He promised Republican lawmakers last week that passing the bill would “guarantee the midterms” for the GOP.
But the bill might not help Republicans as much as Trump thinks. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Requiring Americans to prove they are citizens when they register to vote, in an effort to root out the extremely rare cases of noncitizen voting, would throw up roadblocks to the polls for millions of eligible voters across the political spectrum, and in some cases could hurt Republicans more.
What would the bill do?
The version of the bill the Senate is considering this week would require people to provide proof of citizenship — such as a passport, birth certificate or naturalization documents — to register to vote. People would also need to show certain government-issued photo IDs at the polls. In addition, the bill would all but eliminate mail-in voter registration and voting.
The bill also instructs states to hand over their voting rolls to the Department of Homeland Security, raising privacy and surveillance concerns. States would be required to check their voting rolls against DHS’s SAVE database, and those voters flagged as ineligible would be removed from the rolls every 30 days.
Beyond the voting-related aspects, Trump has demanded Congress pass an expanded version of the legislation that would bar transgender women from participating in women’s sports and restrict gender transition care for children. If passed, requirements in the Save America Act would go into effect immediately.
How would the Save America Act affect voting?
Everyone would need to present a photo ID to cast a ballot. But the bill would have the greatest impact on the registration process. While the bill does not explicitly require everyone to reregister to vote, a significant number of currently registered voters could be asked to provide documentation to remain on the rolls. Others may have to reregister because of a move or a name change. And this registration would need to take place in person.
An analysis by The Washington Post found that a greater number of Republican-held congressional districts have at least 5 percent of residents who would need to reregister to vote because they are considered “inactive voters.” That means they failed to verify their address with election officials, haven’t voted in two or more consecutive federal elections, or have no valid or current address on file. In about 54 percent of Republican-held congressional districts, at least 5 percent of residents would have to reregister to vote, more than the 36 percent of Democratic-held congressional districts in which at least 5 percent of residents would need to reregister.
About 21 million U.S. citizens of voting age (9 percent) do not have or lack easy access to documents proving their citizenship, according to a 2023 survey conducted by the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, VoteRiders and the Brennan Center for Justice.
About 2.6 million Americans of voting age (1 percent) do not have any government-issued photo ID, while 34.5 million (15 percent) do not have a driver’s license or official state ID card that has their current name and address, according to the survey. Under the Save America Act, student IDs and other state licenses or ID cards would not be accepted.
As many as 69 million married women in the United States do not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name, according to the Center for American Progress, and they could face additional hurdles if they need to register to vote.
Much of the real-world impact would ultimately depend on how states implement the verification requirements — whether they already collect proof of citizenship from voters, for example.
“We would likely see significant variations in implementation across the 50 states,” said Michael Pomante, a research fellow at Claremont Graduate University who has studied state election policy and voter behavior.
Would this hurt Republicans or Democrats more?
Trump claimed last week that Democrats, who have been opposed to the Save America Act, were “doing everything possible” to fight it “because they know if we get this, they probably won’t win an election for 50 years.”
The president’s assumption is partly rooted in his long-held false claim that widespread voter fraud, particularly by “millions” of undocumented immigrants, cost him the 2020 election. Again, noncitizen voting is extremely rare — it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal and state elections — and courts have struck down or dismissed dozens of legal challenges by Trump and his allies that alleged widespread election fraud.
The 21 million Americans who lack easy access to proof of citizenship are disproportionately younger and people of color, demographic groups that tend to vote more for Democrats than Republicans, according to the University of Maryland survey. But “these things don’t all line up perfectly” according to party, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program.
Overall, the survey found slightly more Democrats (10 percent) than Republicans (7 percent) lack easy access to documents proving their citizenship, rising to 14 percent among political independents.
“This is going to impact people from all walks of life, from every demographic group,” Morales-Doyle said. “And it may be that it disproportionately impacts Democrats, big picture, because of certain skews in the in the population, but it very easily could be that it disproportionately impacts Republicans in some parts of the country.”
This unpredictability is especially relevant as Republicans attract more male, working-class and first-time voters, who tend to have lower education levels and less access to documentation. Rural voters, a group Trump won by a 30-point margin in 2024, could also face a significant barrier if they need to reregister to vote, as voters who live in less populous areas have some of the longest round-trip driving times to get to their nearest election office.
Indeed, certain slices of the data show that citizenship requirements would negatively affect men, who supported Trump by a 13-point margin in 2024, and younger voters, who also moved toward Trump in the last election. According to the survey, 11 percent of men did not have or could not easily access documentary proof of citizenship, which was slightly more than the 8 percent of women who said the same. Young men between the ages of 18 and 29 were particularly likely to lack easy access to those documents, the survey found.
In subsequent surveys of adults in Georgia and Texas, the groups found that ready access to those documents varied. In Georgia, Democrats and Republicans lacked easy access to documentary proof of citizenship at the same rate. In Texas, Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to lack easy access to documentary proof of citizenship.
The surveys also tracked which adults lacked any kind of government-issued photo ID, as well as precisely how many people were affected by state-specific laws that required voters to present ID at the polls. In Georgia, Republicans were more likely to report not having a copy of their birth certificate at all. And in both Georgia and Texas, Democrats were more likely to have multiple documents they could use as voter ID.
Republicans have long pushed to require voters to present photo ID at the polls, but only in recent years has a similar campaign for proof of citizenship “exploded onto the voting policy scene,” said Sam Novey, chief strategist at the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.
Novey cautioned that the partisan effects of election reforms are difficult to predict, because so many other factors matter, including turnout, voter experience and how the restrictions are implemented. But in general, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote tends to negatively affect Republicans more than requiring voters to present photo ID at the polls hurts them, he said.
In January, Michael Fragoso, former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), warned Republicans that adding restrictions to voter registration would not necessarily favor their party.
“Decades ago, when the Republican base was suburban, upper-middle-class, high-propensity voters, making voter registration more time and resource intensive made sense,” Fragoso wrote in the National Review. “In recent years, though, these high-propensity voters have flipped their party allegiance. Republicans are accordingly more and more reliant on a multiethnic coalition of low-propensity voters in order to build majorities.”
Those voters, Fragoso argued, have tended to sit out off-year and special elections, and would likely not go the extra step of confirming their citizenship to go to the polls.
“What if they don’t have passports? (Who has passports? People with strong business, leisure, and familial connections overseas. Do we think they’re eager to make America great again?) Are they going to take the time and effort to attest to their citizenship?” Fragoso wrote.
What are the Save America Act’s chances of passing?
As it stands now, the bill has little chance of passing, even with Trump’s pressure. Democrats oppose the bill, and the fact that Trump is making an explicit argument that Republicans can only win if they pass the Save America Act has only further alarmed voting-rights advocates.
It would take 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, allowing Senate Democrats to block it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) brought the bill to the floor for debate Tuesday but has cautioned that it does not have the votes to pass.
Some Republicans had pressed Thune to evade the filibuster by forcing Democrats to hold the Senate floor through continuous speeches to block the bill, betting that Republicans could outlast them. But Thune said he did not believe such a strategy could succeed because some Senate Republicans did not support it.
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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