The House on Wednesday passed the Save America Act, which would dramatically change voting regulations by requiring proof of citizenship at voter registration and significantly curtail mail-in voting.
The legislation, which passed 218 to 213, faces an uphill battle in the Senate, close observers say.
“I’m skeptical that the Senate will vote on this bill, because this bill goes farther than the bill they’ve already sent to the Senate, [which] it hasn’t taken up,” said Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state and a Democratic candidate for governor.
One Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, joined Republicans in passing the bill.
The House previously passed a version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility – the Save Act – in 2024 with three Democratic votes. Without some Democratic support in the Senate, however, it has languished on the margins.
The Save America Act, introduced by Chip Roy of Texas this year, expands on changes to voting laws in the 2024 bill, adding a nationwide photo ID requirement to vote, with a list of acceptable identification that is stricter than many states that already have voter ID requirements. Student IDs are explicitly not allowed.
Implementation of the requirements in the original bill, including the proof of citizenship requirements, would take effect immediately, leaving states scrambling to align their voting systems to the new law.
“The big thing for these bills is that they want to use them to create the impression that there is something wrong in some states,” said Gideon Cohn-Postar, senior advisor for election infrastructure at the Institute for Responsive Government. “You can describe them in a really general way, and they sound reasonable. ‘Oh, proof of citizenship. Well, of course everyone should prove citizenship.’ Well, actually, it is incredibly difficult to do, and people do attest to their citizenship on the penalty of perjury. That’s a very high standard, actually.”
Similarly, a requirement for photo ID for registration or voting sounds reasonable on its face, until the practical application to mail in registration, Cohn-Postar said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that 21 million Americans neither have a copy of their birth certificate nor a passport. Those potential voters are more likely to be poor or people of color, the organization says.
“We’ve got to look at this in its totality,” said Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of Fair Elections Center. “The whole point of this is to restrict who gets to vote in this country.”
Why, then, would the House bother with this legislation, knowing that any effort to change voting laws at the federal level would be blocked by a Democratic filibuster, never mind meeting an immediate challenge in federal courts?
Because the bill marks an X on a legislative map for conservative state legislators.
“There are certain state legislatures that, instead of doing what’s in the best interest of their state, they are listening to what this president is saying,” Caruthers said. “This president is making all sorts of assertions with no data to back up his claims, no evidence to back up what he’s saying, and there are some lawmakers who are willing to introduce legislation, voting bills, in state legislatures across the country.”
