President Trump has deemed a bill to tighten voter identification and registration rules to be essential to his agenda and the future of the Republican Party, prompting a prolonged and bitter back and forth.
But the debate over the measure, known as the SAVE America Act, has been marred by inaccurate claims.
Republicans have repeatedly cited noncitizens voting, which is exceedingly rare, as justification for its passage. And they have sought to characterize the legislation as a simple voter identification bill by comparing it to existing laws. Democrats, for their part, have warned that the bill could disenfranchise large swaths of eligible voters.
Here’s a fact-check.
What Was Said
“I think the minority leader is opposed because — in his words — he says it ‘allows ICE to kick tens of millions of people off the voter rolls.’ That is who the Democrats are fighting for: illegal immigrant voting. Not for American citizens, not for the rights of the American people to govern our own nation — no, he is talking about tens of millions of people off the voter rolls.” — Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, on the Senate floor on March 17
This is misleading. Mr. Barrasso referred to comments Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, made on March 10 expressing concerns about removing people from voter rolls. But Mr. Schumer was not talking about unauthorized immigrants, as Mr. Barrasso suggested, but rather American citizens and eligible voters. There is no evidence that the states have registered tens of millions of unauthorized immigrants to vote.
During a news conference on March 10, Mr. Schumer said that the bill “allows ICE to kick tens of millions of people off the rolls, off the rolls and they don’t tell them until Election Day.”
He continued, “And you show up and you say, you’re not registered anymore, you’re not registered here, you’re not on the rolls.”
This was a reference to a provision in the measure that requires states to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, an immigration verification tool run out of the Department of Homeland Security. In 2025, the agency began allowing states and local governments to use the SAVE system to verify voter eligibility, but it has mistakenly flagged American citizens as noncitizens in several states that already use it to examine voter rolls. In recent weeks, Mr. Schumer has repeatedly warned that the bill’s provision requiring use of the system “could purge millions of American citizens from the voter rolls.”
There is no evidence that states have registered millions of unauthorized immigrants to vote. The Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, recently noted that often “claims of large numbers of possible noncitizens on voter records are revised significantly downward after proper investigation and scrutiny.”
For example, Iowa revised an initial estimate of more than 2,100 potential noncitizens on its voter rolls to 277 after further review. Of those cases, 35 noncitizens cast a ballot that was counted in the 2024 general election of more than 1.6 million ballots across the state.
Of 49.5 million voter registrations run through the SAVE system since last year, state officials have referred 10,000 cases for further investigation, or about 0.02 percent. It is unclear how many of these cases involve people who are confirmed to be noncitizens and how many of those voted. A database by the conservative Heritage Foundation has documented 1,620 cases of voter fraud from 1982 to 2025, including 100 cases of noncitizens voting. That is about 0.000008 percent of more than 1.3 billion votes cast in presidential elections during that time.
What Was Said
“Now, critics of the SAVE America Act say such cases are rare, but in 2024, two — two — of the five swing state Senate races were decided by less than 0.3 of a percentage point, and the other three races were decided by 2 percentage points or less. The key point here is it doesn’t take that many illegal votes to swing an election and, by doing so, to change the course of history.” — Senator Dave McCormick, Republican of Pennsylvania, on the Senate floor on Sunday
This is misleading. Mr. McCormick raised examples of three noncitizens voting in the 2024 election in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Texas. While he is correct that such cases exist, they represent far tinier proportions of counted votes. There is no documented example of ineligible votes cast by noncitizens that have swung an election or even come close to it.
Mr. McCormick was most likely referring to his own 2024 Senate race in Pennsylvania (which he won by a margin of 0.22 percentage points, or about 15,000 votes) and the one in Wisconsin (which the Democratic incumbent, Tammy Baldwin, won by a margin of 0.85 percentage points, or nearly 29,000 votes).
For comparison, credible cases of noncitizen votes made up 0.002 percent of all votes cast in Iowa in 2024 (35 out of more than 1.6 million) and 0.00028 percent of all votes cast in Michigan in 2024 (15 out of more than 5.7 million).
It is true that a handful of congressional races in recent history have been decided by razor-thin margins. For example, the margin of victory in a 1975 Senate race came down to two votes, a 1984 race for a House seat in Indiana came down to four votes and a 2020 race for a House seat in Iowa was decided by six votes. But the tightness of those races incited monthslong recount and review processes. None involved allegations of votes cast improperly by noncitizens.
What Was Said
“There are 36 states that already have some kind of requirement for ID to be able to vote. This has got to be the most noncontroversial proposal sitting out there to say: How can we disagree when 36 states already do this?” — Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, on the Senate floor on Monday
This needs context. It is true that 36 states require voters to present some form of identification at the polls, but the legislation’s identification requirements are more stringent than most of those states.
Maria Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Mr. Lankford, said that the senator was not claiming that the bill’s requirements were the same as those 36 states, but simply that most states had a similar “concept” of voter ID in place. And Mr. Lankford also noted later in his speech that some states had stricter requirements than others.
The bill mandates what is known as “strict” photo ID requirements. The forms of photo identification considered acceptable include a valid state-issued driver’s license, a valid nondriver ID issued by a state motor vehicle authority, a valid U.S. passport, a valid military ID or a valid tribal ID. Voters who do not present one of these IDs must vote on a provisional ballot and present identification to an election official within three days, or sign an affidavit confirming they do not have the document because of “a religious objection to being photographed.”
In comparison, among the 36 states that have some sort of ID requirement, 13 accept nonphoto identification like a bank statement and 13 have “nonstrict” photo requirements that allow voters who do not have an ID to cast a ballot without taking further action, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan group. (Such actions include having another voter or poll worker sign an affidavit or prompting election officials to perform a signature check or other verification.)
Just 10 states have “strict” photo ID laws, nine of which actually accept more types of ID than the SAVE America Act. For example, many states (Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin) also accept IDs issued by an in-state college or university, some states (Kansas and Tennessee) accept weapons permits, others accept state employee badges or public assistance cards, and Indiana accepts IDs that have expired after the last general election.
Only one state, Ohio, has the same limited list of accepted photo IDs as the SAVE America Act.
What Was Said
“It would force Americans to register only in person, something only 5 percent of Americans do.” — Mr. Schumer, in a news conference on March 17
This is exaggerated. It is true that the bill requires voters to register in person, but that is a more common form of registration than Mr. Schumer claimed.
The bill requires people registering to vote to present proof of citizenship “in person to the office of the appropriate election official” by the state’s registration deadline or, for states that allow same-day registration, by Election Day.
Because the bill does not specify who counts as an election official, the locations where people can register to vote may vary from state to state, said Eliza Sweren-Becker, the deputy director for the voting rights and election program at the Brennan Center for Justice. In some states, that may lead to registrations occurring only at election offices. But in other states, polling locations and motor vehicle agencies — one of the most common places of registration — may still count.
“Whether a D.M.V. official or clerk qualifies as an election official under the language of the bill is a bit ambiguous, but probably would depend on the particular state and the laws of the state and the designations of the state,” Ms. Sweren-Becker said.
About 6.4 percent of voter registrations processed between the 2022 and 2024 elections occurred in person at election offices, according to the latest Election Administration and Voting Survey, a biennial analysis of state data about elections collected by the federal Election Assistance Commission.
But people also registered to vote in person at a variety of government agencies such as public assistance offices (1 percent), disability services offices (0.3 percent), armed services recruiting offices (0.1 percent), other state agencies like libraries (2.4 percent) and polling locations and voting sites (3.4 percent). Another 37.7 percent of registrations occurred at a Department of Motor Vehicles, but it is unclear how many of those were in person or online.
What Was Said
“146 million Americans do not have a valid passport. I know because I would have been one of them. That is nearly half of all American adults. The 69 million women who have changed their names after marriage and lack an updated birth certificate, they are out. Sorry. Oh, you — that is not the same name. You must have gotten married. Sorry, can’t vote today. Just using your maiden name here? I am sorry. Can’t vote.” — Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, on the Senate floor on Monday
This is exaggerated. Mr. Markey’s figures are accurate, but the bill gives non-passport holders and people who have changed their last name other avenues to attest to their citizenship and identity.
As Mr. Markey said, roughly half of Americans do not have a passport (about 183 million valid American passports are currently in circulation out of about 340 million citizens). But the bill also accepts birth certificates, naturalization certificates and other forms of identification as proof of citizenship. When these documents are included, far fewer people would lack a way of proving citizenship.
About 21 million eligible voters do not have easy access to these documents, according to a 2023 survey by the Brennan Center, the University of Maryland and VoteRiders, a voting rights nonprofit. About 3.8 million people do not have these documents at all. That is a sizable number of eligible voters, but nowhere close to 150 million.
Similarly, 69 million women have changed their name after marriage and thus do not have a birth certificate matching their name, according to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that analyzed census data and surveys. But the bill also allows people who have changed their name to furnish additional documents (like a marriage certificate) or sign an affidavit attesting to their name change.
So it is clear that the bill creates additional requirements for voters to prove their citizenship and identity, barriers that for some would incur additional costs or be insurmountable.
Because the bill is vague on many details and would leave states to interpret and adopt some of its provisions, it is difficult to estimate the exact effect, Ms. Sweren-Becker said.
But she added, “It’s certainly safe to say that the SAVE America Act would block millions of eligible American citizens from voting.”
Linda Qiu is a Times reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade.
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