House passes Save America Act, Trump-backed bill to impose new voting rules | US voting rights
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Save America Act, which would significantly change voting regulations by requiring proof of citizenship on voter registration and significantly reduce mail-in voting.
Close observers say the legislation, which passed 218 to 213, faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
“I doubt the Senate will vote on this bill because it goes further than the bill they sent to the Senate. [which] “This issue has not been addressed,” said Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state and the Democratic candidate for governor.
A Democrat from Texas named Henry Cuellar also joined the Republicans in passing the bill.
The House had previously passed a version of the American Voter Eligibility Protection Act — the Savings Act — in 2024 with three Democratic votes. But without some Democratic support in the Senate, he remained on the sidelines.
The Save America Act, introduced this year by Texas’ Chip Roy, expands on changes to voting laws made in the 2024 bill, creating a nationwide photo ID requirement to vote and providing a stricter list of acceptable IDs than many states that already have voter ID requirements. Student IDs are expressly not allowed.
Implementation of the requirements in the original bill, including proof of citizenship requirements, will take effect immediately, and states will scramble to bring their voting systems into compliance with the new law.
“The big thing about these bills is that they want to use them to create the impression that something is wrong in some states,” said Gideon Cohn-Postar, senior advisor on election infrastructure at the Institute for Responsive Government. “You can define them very broadly, and it sounds reasonable. ‘Proof of citizenship. Of course, everyone has to prove citizenship.’ In fact, this is incredibly difficult to do, and people confirm their citizenship under penalty of perjury. “This is actually a very high standard.”
Similarly, requiring a photo ID for registration or voting seems reasonable on its face, down to the practical recourse to mailing it at registration, Cohn-Postar said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that 21 million Americans have a copy of neither their birth certificate nor their passport. These potential voters are more likely to be poor or of different ethnic backgrounds, the organization says.
“We have to look at this in its entirety,” said Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of the Center for Fair Elections. “The whole point of this is to restrict who can vote in this country.”
So why would the House bother with this legislation knowing that any effort to change voting laws at the federal level would be blocked by Democratic filibusters, let alone face an immediate challenge in federal courts?
Because the bill marks an X on the legislative map for conservative state lawmakers.
“Some state legislatures are listening to what this president says instead of doing what is in their state’s best interest,” Caruthers said. “This president is making all kinds of claims with no data to back up his claims, no evidence to back up what he’s saying, and there are some lawmakers across the country who are willing to introduce legislation, voting bills, to state legislatures.”
