The SAVE Act: Separating truth from fiction.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Our latest.

Today we are covering the SAVE Act, which is one of the most requested topics for a Friday edition we've had in some time. Friday editions are typically for members only, but we are sending today’s post to everyone for free. 

We also wanted to make sure you knew about our latest video on our YouTube channel, where Isaac shares his thoughts on “ringing the alarm” about how the Trump administration is navigating court orders: 

The SAVE Act.

On April 10, the House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill requiring proof of citizenship for voters to register for federal elections. The bill passed the House 220–208, with all Republicans and four Democrats in favor. House Republicans attempted to pass the SAVE Act in September 2024 as part of a government-funding bill, but the chamber voted 220–202 against that version of the bill. 

We covered a previous iteration of the SAVE Act in September. 

Currently, federal law prohibits election officials from requiring “notarization or other formal authentication” from registrants to prove their citizenship; applicants instead attest their citizenship by checking a box on the registration form. However, state election officials conduct regular “list maintenance” that cross-references their voter rolls against government databases that contain citizenship information, such as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements and DMV records. The National Voting Registration Act (NVRA) also requires states to regularly clean their voter rolls to remove those who have died or moved residences.

Additionally, some states require proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections. For example, Arizona has a “federal only” registration for voters who do not provide documentary proof of citizenship or residency and a “full ballot” registration for voters who do provide this proof. 

The SAVE Act would make significant changes to the existing system, prohibiting states from accepting and processing a voter-registration application for federal elections unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship — such as a passport, or a birth certificate accompanied by a government-issued photo ID. It also directs states to establish an “affirmative” process for removing noncitizens from their official lists of eligible voters, though it does not specify whether states must change their existing systems for doing so. Finally, the bill requires states to provide an “alternative process” for applicants to prove their citizenship, though it also does not specify this process. 

Concerns over election security have prompted similar efforts at all levels of government. President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order on March 25 that mirrors some elements of the SAVE Act but includes several additional provisions, including new ballot-deadline rules that multiple nonprofits and the Democratic National Committee have sued to challenge. Separately, state lawmakers have introduced bills to establish new state-level restrictions on noncitizen voting. 

Democrats and progressive voting-rights groups have criticized the bill as voter suppression, arguing that it would erect unnecessary barriers to registration. In particular, some critics have suggested that women who have changed their last names when they married — and thus have a birth certificate that does not match their legal name — could be disenfranchised. Republicans, however, dismiss these complaints and argue the bill is an important measure to address vulnerabilities in the U.S. election system. 

The SAVE Act must secure at least 60 votes in the Senate to meet the filibuster threshold, meaning seven Democrats would have to join all Republicans to pass it. So far, Democratic leaders have urged members to vote against the bill. 

In today’s Friday edition, we’ll explore the key questions undergirding the debate over the SAVE Act. In typical Tangle style, we’ll share a range of arguments about the bill from the right and left, in addition to commentary from experts we interviewed for this piece. Then, we’ll give our analysis of the bill.

The arguments. 

The right and left fundamentally disagree on the purpose and necessity of the SAVE Act. 

On the right, many commentators see the bill as a common-sense step to bolster election security, and they question Democrats’ opposition to this effort. Others argue that the current laws governing voter registration are insufficient to ensure that only citizens register to vote, touting the SAVE Act as an effective remedy. 

Many on the right also refute the idea that the SAVE Act would make voter registration burdensome, adding that the bill mirrors laws on the books in other Western democracies. Others reject the notion that married women would be disenfranchised by the bill, saying that women who have changed their names should already be familiar with the required documentation. 

The left views the SAVE Act as a solution in search of a problem that could significantly deflate voter turnout in future elections. Commentators overwhelmingly characterize the bill as anti-democratic and worry that it could disenfranchise millions of voters. Many also point out that election officials aren’t equipped to take on the additional duties the bill requires. 

Other critics of the bill on the left say Republicans are dismissing real hurdles that the proof-of-citizenship requirement would create for millions of Americans. Some legal scholars add that the bill violates states’ rights to administer elections by setting voter-eligibility requirements at the federal level. 

Finally, others suggest that Republicans would be hurting their own constituents if the bill becomes law because Republican voters disproportionately lack the documentation to prove citizenship. 

We spoke to policy experts on both sides of this issue to get a better understanding of the potential risks and benefits of the bill. 

Joe Burns, an elections lawyer and the former deputy director of election operations at the New York State Board of Elections, said the bill is a common-sense step to ensure voter eligibility.

The current voter registration form has a question that says, "Are you a citizen, yes or no?” That's the only check. That's the only safeguard that's currently in place. Given the many controversies with voting and elections in recent years, supporters of the bill like myself see it as an extra safeguard — something that a large majority of Americans support — to make sure that only citizens can register to vote and do vote.

I used to be in the election administrator business, and some of my closest friends to this day are people who do that. By and large, they do a great job. But are we totally confident that they're getting every instance where someone who is not qualified is registering? The way I see it, the SAVE Act will help provide that extra safeguard. 

Chris McIsaac, a resident fellow at R Street, pushed back on the argument that the bill would disenfranchise large numbers of potential voters. 

It’s been reported that upwards of 20 million people wouldn't have the documents available to satisfy the requirements. But it’s important to distinguish the population of individuals who would have a legitimate issue with presenting a document and those who simply don’t have it in their pocket or available the next day. The vast majority of people are in the second camp — they have the documents, they're just not available tomorrow. So I think that issue could largely be addressed by educating people that you need to acquire it. 

The other pool of people is a more legitimate challenge, but there are ways to work around it based on the individual situation. For example, if someone doesn't have the money to obtain a replacement document, the government can facilitate obtaining the documents that would allow them to register. For people whose name is different from their birth certificate — often because of marriage — states have the leeway to implement a process where individuals could simply present the marriage certificate or some other legal document indicating the name change, and that would be sufficient proof.

Sarah Gonski, a senior policy advisor at the Institute for Responsive Government, told us the SAVE Act is just one possible approach to verifying citizenship for voters — and one of the most disruptive approaches. 

Verifying citizenship is one big policy bucket that I think is not particularly controversial. The SAVE Act is one specific way of doing that, but if you think about the types of ways that proof of citizenship could be done on a continuum of least disruptive to most disruptive, the SAVE Act is pretty far over on the most disruptive side of the continuum.

There are two primary models in general for verifying proof of citizenship. The first is a database verification model where the government takes the information that it already knows about you and looks into its databases the same way it would as if you were applying for Medicaid or other types of government services. Election officials use those databases to confirm you are eligible to vote.

The SAVE Act is the second model. It requires voters to locate and provide physical documents to election officials in person, who then are in the business of verifying and authenticating these documents, which is not something they're typically trained to do. This model places an enormous burden on election officials, who don’t have the facilities or the equipment to be customer-facing agencies like this bill would essentially require. 

Last year, Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote that the bill “starts with a couple of reasonable ideas and then runs aground on the details.” We asked him where he thought the bill fell short. 

The bill has a combination of terrifying penalties — felony convictions for sort of ordinary human behavior — and stringent penalties of the sort that might cause people to just quit being an election administrator for fear of making a mistake. Those features are also combined with completely unrealistic timelines. Last year, of course, they were trying to somehow put it in place for the November election, and I think anyone could have warned them, “Folks, this is a big change; you've got to phase it in. You've got to give these officials time to train their people.

They're talking about this as a crisis that needs to be solved immediately. That's not a good recipe for producing practical change in election procedures. Most of the evidence is that even when things work well, it's because election officials were given a few years' lead time for all that training, new equipment, and new procedures to make a major change.

Alix Fraser, vice president of advocacy programs at Issue One, said the biggest threat posed by the SAVE Act is undermining trust in our elections. 

It's trying to stop non-citizen voting, which is basically non-existent. There are very, very few cases of this happening over the course of our history, and when it has happened, it's so minimal that it has not moved any election in any meaningful way. The vast majority of those cases are immigrants who believe they have a right to vote and then are told they don't. 

That’s the bottom line here — there really is not a major problem that they're trying to address. This is a Trojan horse to try to undermine faith in elections. We have tremendously successful election processes, we have nonpartisan election workers who do this day in and day out just for the sake of our democracy and for the country. And this bill is trying to plant seeds that would sow doubt in the minds of Americans about the efficacy of our election process.

Your questions, answered.

How common is noncitizen voting?

Decades of investigations across the U.S. show that the documented percentage of votes successfully cast by noncitizens is exceedingly small, with no evidence that these votes have ever influenced the outcome of any election. This has been affirmed by sources from both sides and counters allegations of widespread voter fraud among noncitizens, a group prohibited from voting in presidential and congressional elections and who face fines, felony charges, and deportation if caught voting. 

A study conducted by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice analyzing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election found 30 suspected cases of noncitizen voting, or 0.0001% of the votes in those jurisdictions. In October, the Bipartisan Policy Center scraped a Heritage Foundation election-fraud database for ballots successfully cast by noncitizens and found 77 instances from 1999–2023 (the Heritage Foundation has since argued that this database is only a “sampling” of proven fraud cases). Additionally, the Cato Institute has published reports rejecting any widespread, noncitizen voter fraud. Cato’s Walter Olson, whom we interviewed for this piece, told us that noncitizen voting is not a threat to U.S. election integrity. “There isn't very much of it and there doesn't seem to have been enough of it to change the results of any federal races,” he said.

In October 2024, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) initiated an audit that identified 20 registered noncitizens among the state’s 8.2 million voters, only nine of whom had ever voted in an election (none voted in November). Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) referred 653 alleged noncitizens to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who was able to secure indictments against six individuals for voting without U.S. citizenship. Following the audit, LaRose said that “investigations like these are key to keeping voter fraud exceedingly rare and give voters greater confidence in the integrity of our elections.” 

One of the noncitizens indicted in Larose’s audit was Canadian-born Nick Fontaine, who said he assumed he could vote because he could sign up for the draft. The Ohio investigation revealed another potential problem: Recently naturalized citizens can register to vote immediately after their naturalization ceremonies; however, citizenship proceedings are documented on the federal level, while voter registration processes rely on information from county or state agencies. Jen Miller, Executive Director of Ohio’s League of Women Voters, said, “It’s very possible that the board of elections is processing correct voter registration materials, but that the database that the Secretary State is using is not updated as quickly.”

Investigations conducted by Arizona, Alabama, Texas, and Virginia have appeared to yield higher numbers of noncitizen registered voters (50,000, 3,251, 6,500 and 7,603, respectively), but these numbers have since come under scrutiny. Arizona has 50,000 registered voters without proof of citizenship on file, but they haven’t been shown to be noncitizens. Alabama’s secretary of state admitted that thousands of those suspected noncitizens had managed to prove their citizenship, and a federal judge halted their removal from the state’s voter roll less than a month before the election. Texas revealed its total had come from Governor Greg Abbott combining a list of 581 people whom the secretary of state’s office confirmed to be noncitizens with a “verbally” provided list of names purged for not responding to letters concerning their citizenship. 

In Virginia, the state had given those whose citizenship was challenged in an audit 14 days to prove their citizenship before removing them from voter rolls during a federally protected 90-day period before the election. Virginia held that the individuals did not qualify for this protection because they were likely noncitizen voters, which the Biden administration challenged to the Supreme Court on behalf of immigrants-rights groups. The court sided with the state but did not provide a detailed justification for their decision, as is common with emergency appeals, although at least some of the 1,600 people affected by the order were U.S. citizens.

So while there have been instances of noncitizens casting ballots, our current safeguards seem to do a relatively good job at deterring them from voting at the point of registration and at the polls. The cases where noncitizens have registered and voted have not revealed any coordinated effort and largely stem from misunderstandings, administrative errors, and a lack of data sharing between states and election agencies. 

Have we tried this before?

If passed, the SAVE Act would implement the first federal proof-of-citizenship requirement in order to register to vote in U.S. history. However, the federal government has passed other voter identification requirements over the past decades. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which required first-time voters to present identification either upon registration or arriving at their polling place. The law did not require photo identification and instead provided an expansive list of options to prove identification, including utility bills. The law was not strictly about voter ID regulations but a holistic set of provisions aimed at streamlining elections following the issues with the 2000 election in Florida. Along with the voter ID requirements, HAVA included provisions to help improve absentee voting, overseas military voting, and voting access for those with disabilities. HAVA has a mixed legacy, with scholars believing it proposed reforms on an aggressive timeline that created administrative errors but also helped to improve voting technology.

Individual states have also introduced requirements that voters show some form of identification at the polls in order to vote, starting in 1950 with South Carolina. Hawaii (1970), Texas (1971), Florida (1977), and Alaska (1980) then followed suit. In 1999, Virginia attempted a pilot program requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, but it was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court after a lawsuit from the NAACP alleging that the law disproportionately and illegally impacted black voters.

In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder to strike down section 4(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That section contained a formula based on historical racial discrimination to identify states that were required to seek preclearance to implement voting laws. As a result of the court’s decision, states like Texas that had introduced voter ID laws that had been blocked by section 4(b) immediately took effect. However, voter ID laws enacted in North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin would be struck down throughout the rest of the year.

As of 2024, 35 states had implemented some form of voter-identification requirements, though only three states passed some form of proof-of-citizenship requirement: Kansas, Arizona, and Tennessee. Kansas’s law was ruled unconstitutional in 2018, while Arizona’s and Tennessee’s are still in effect but apply only to state elections.

In our interview, Sarah Gonski from the Institute for Responsive Government (IRG) highlighted Kansas’s proof-of-citizenship law as most analogous to the SAVE Act. According to an analysis by the IRG, the Kansas law “blocked over 30,000 potential registrants in just two years — approximately 12% of all voter registrations during the period — and Kansas officials conceded in court that over 99% of affected voters were U.S. citizens.”

Both Arizona’s and Tennessee’s laws were passed relatively recently and their long-term impacts have yet to be seen. Tennessee has yet to hold an election under its new law, but its requirements differ from those put forward by the SAVE Act — whereas Tennessee allows for a Real ID driver’s license as proof of citizenship, the Save Act does not. Meanwhile, Arizona has created some errors impacting hundreds of thousands of voters.

Who might be impacted by this bill?

The bill requires that every first-time voter or registered voter who is changing their status to re-register in person with documents that the SAVE Act specifies as sufficient to prove citizenship: a passport, a military identification card, or a photo ID paired with another form of government ID such as a birth certificate (similar to the documents required when filing an I-9 at a place of employment).The provisions in the bill therefore impact the following groups of people:

All voters who are changing their status. First and foremost, the bill requires anyone who is registering to vote for the first time to prove their citizenship in person at the time of their registration. This SAVE Act would also require any voter who is moving, changing their name, or otherwise updating their voting status to physically go to their local government with documentation to prove their citizenship. Currently, the process to register to vote for the first time or change voting status can be done online or by mail.

Noncitizens. Any noncitizen will not be able to register to vote. Several municipalities have laws allowing residents who are not U.S. citizens to participate in local elections; this law could supersede those provisions. Any other noncitizen attempting to illegally cast a vote in an election would have to present fraudulent documents and register in advance in order to do so.

Those with changed names. This group includes roughly 69 million married women who have changed their surnames, as well as likely hundreds of thousands of transgender citizens and others. When re-registering, any voter whose name as it appears on their proof of citizenship ID does not match their name in the voter roll — or whose name on their birth certificate does not match the name on another government ID — will have to present additional documentation (such as a marriage license) in order to prove their citizenship. However, no action is required of registered voters who have already changed their names and are not making a change to their voting information. 

Town clerks. Municipal offices responsible for maintaining voter rolls will need to verify every citizen who wishes to register to vote. “This creates an extremely complex administrative burden,” according to a letter signed by secretaries of state, administrators, and election officials from 15 states. 

People without passports. Over half of all U.S. citizens do not have passports, meaning that over 140 million U.S. adults will need to supply an alternative photo ID along with supporting documentation, which many Americans do not have on hand and can present an additional burden, in order to register to vote.

Disproportionately affected subgroups. Only one in four Americans with a high school degree or less, and only one in five Americans with under $50,000 in annual income, have a passport. Voters with lower levels of education and women who have changed their name for marriage are more likely to support Republicans, though low-income voters are more likely to support Democrats, so it is unclear which group faces a larger administrative hurdle to register to vote.

Are the states set up to deal with this? Will the federal government help?

The simple answer is no, states and municipalities are not prepared to deal with the changes that the SAVE Act is proposing they institute in a short period of time. We quoted a joint letter from election officials and secretaries of state above making that point, and it’s worth reading their letter in full. “Most election officials or registration agencies would undoubtedly need to extend their office hours to accommodate evenings and weekend hours, as well as staff for increased in-person voter registration transactions,” the officials said. “In states that allow Election Day registration, voters have up until the time they appear at the polling place to present the proof of citizenship, further complicating the job of Election Day workers.”

That’s not just a partisan talking point from Democratic politicians, either. The experts we interviewed also all agreed that the SAVE Act was creating administrative hurdles for state and local governments and not providing resources for them to help. R Street’s Chris McIsaac, who supports the bill, acknowledged these “significant implementation challenges” in the current version of the bill, saying it would create “additional red tape for both citizens and election officials.” 

However real those challenges are, they may still be manageable. Joe Burns, the former New York election administrator, suggested that while the bill might create some initial hurdles for election offices, it also provides “considerable leeway” for them to adapt these new requirements to their existing systems, which could be a strength in the long run. 

Would the SAVE Act affect mail-in or absentee voting?

Since the SAVE Act is a voter registration bill, it does not affect mail-in or absentee voting. However, it would impact those seeking to register by mail or online. Anyone updating their registration or registering for the first time would now be required to submit their proof of citizenship in person at their local election office. The text of the bill specifically addresses this by saying that anyone who submits an otherwise valid form by mail (via the National Mail Voter Registration Form) will not be eligible to vote unless they meet this in-person requirement. 

In our interview with Gonski, she noted that this provision could create an additional challenge for voters who live in rural areas. “Many rural voters live several hours from the county seat, and under the SAVE Act, they would have to make an appointment, get in a car, drive all the way there,” Gonski said. “These rural offices often have one or two staff members who aren’t equipped to handle a high volume of customer service issues that might arise with this new requirement.”

My take.

This is one of the more bizarre takes I’ve ever had to write, largely because I am totally aligned with the goals of this bill and simultaneously extremely skeptical of the ways in which it gets us there.

Consider this: I have already written about my opposition to noncitizens voting — even in local municipal elections. I think the idea is, frankly, ridiculous. Noncitizens in the U.S. are afforded (or should be afforded) many of the same rights as citizens, and get access to many of the same benefits. That is all well and good. But voting, for obvious reasons, should be a key part of the benefits package for being an American citizen. I’m aware of the counterarguments — particularly, that noncitizens contribute to their communities in a litany of ways and should have some say in local affairs — but I don’t find them compelling. If the leaders and laws that govern the citizenry are not determined by the citizenry, then I’m unsure what the purpose of citizenship even is. It really, truly makes no sense to me, and I've been a little bit shocked by even the small pockets of Democratic political groups spending capital on passing laws that allow noncitizens to vote.

I’ve also written about my support for voter ID laws, which is a position I’ve come to recently. That’s relevant here, because I’m perfectly comfortable with the government requiring some kind of identification for people to vote as a front-line protection against voter fraud. Many studies have found that the impact voter ID laws have on “suppressing” the vote is wildly exaggerated, while the requirement is commonplace across the Western world. 

I also care a great deal about something else: The trust Americans have in our elections — so much so that I've dedicated literally hundreds of thousands of words to it. I want people to trust our system, and poll after poll shows that voter ID requirements are exceedingly popular. As National Review notes, “A Gallup poll taken in October found that an overwhelming majority, 83 percent, of Americans favor proof of citizenship requirements for first-time voter registrants and 84 percent support voter ID requirements. Two thirds of Democrats support citizenship verification and voter ID, despite passionate opposition from the party’s lawmakers, activists, and media apparatus.”

So, why am I so skeptical of this bill? There are three big reasons:

First, I don’t think our local governments are ready to deal with this law’s implications. I’ve argued that any voter ID law needs to include a program to help provide photo ID for the surprisingly high number of Americans who don’t have one, which would help obviate that major barrier to voting as well as break the weird dependence we have on providing government-issued photo ID with the ability to drive. In this case, any such bill absolutely needs to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into election offices. 

155 million people cast ballots in the 2024 election. As noted above, the SAVE Act would require the millions of those voters who want to change their status — as well as any first-time voter — to provide a physical proof of citizenship and require local governments to file all of their documentation; it would mean navigating the complicating factors from every impacted group (like married women) who have changed their names. The law has no “phase-in” period; it would take effect immediately. Everyone we talked to for this piece called out that omission as a problem — overwhelming election officials, pushing already strained resources to the brink, and leaving little time to educate voters about the change.

It is truly hard to overstate how huge that undertaking would be, and how underfunded and poorly equipped our elections systems are to deal with it. As Sarah Gonski told us in our interview, this bill provides just one way to address some of our election problems — but it’s the most extreme and disruptive way. I think that is a fair assessment.

I called out many of these issues when we first wrote about this bill last year  — but I’ve seen nothing in this latest iteration of the bill that addresses them. These issues, combined with severe criminal penalties for election officials who make a mistake, could actually make our elections less secure by making it more difficult for election officials to do their jobs. 

Second, the bill is still trying to address an issue that is actually incredibly small. I believe that Democrats have erred by inviting attention to this issue by advocating noncitizen voting at the local level, and I think we should nip that in the bud. Opponents of the bill often fail to address the arguments for taking proactive steps to address real vulnerabilities in our electoral system. After all, checking a box to affirm your citizenship isn’t much of a check at all; even though states routinely audit their voter rolls, this process will not necessarily catch an ineligible voter before they’ve had the chance to cast a ballot. Cato’s Walter Olson told us that “every system can be improved, including ours,” and he’s right.   

But right now, noncitizens voting in federal elections is, by every piece of available evidence I can find, extremely rare and basically a non-issue. We have so many problems with our election systems to address (modernizing, gerrymandering, our primary system), and noncitizens casting ballots is near the bottom of my list of priorities.

Third, and finally, I don’t think this law would have a positive impact on the trust in our electoral system. That’s one of my biggest motivators for supporting voter ID reforms, which are widely supported by Americans. The latter is true no matter what I say, and maybe that’s the trump card here. But in terms of increasing confidence in elections, I’m more unsure than ever that laws like this would help. Arizona has had a citizenship requirement for a decade, yet it’s still at the center of bogus election fraud claims every year. Wisconsin has had a voter ID requirement for a decade, yet it has also been at the center of election fraud claims in the last few cycles. And when that law became part of the state constitution this year, people acted as if it was somehow new that voters would now be required to present an ID.

All in all, the aims of the bill align with many of my previously held views and concerns: We shouldn’t allow noncitizens to vote, we should have a voter ID requirement, we should worry about how little confidence there is in our elections. And yet, the bill is clumsily written, does not provide the resources for these major changes, and has hardly been revised since we called out a lot of its issues last year. For those reasons, it's hard to get behind.

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