Sreya Kalapala

May 8, 2026

In February of 2026, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, and is currently stalled in the Senate as members of the chamber debate its passage. Thus far, the SAVE America Act has been portrayed as a successor to the SAVE Act, whose provisions largely overlap with the SAVE America Act’s provisions. For instance, both bills were introduced to ensure the requirement of documentary proof to register to vote and a photo ID at the time of voting [1]. Overall, these acts were developed with the intention of making sure that only citizens are able to register and cast a vote, thereby protecting the American electoral system from non-citizen voting. However, in reality, instances of noncitizen registration to vote and voting have been consistently rare, and historically have not presented themselves as legitimate dangers to the electoral structure. Unfortunately, this means that the SAVE America Act—since the SAVE Act has failed—stands to impose greater restrictions on the classification of citizen registration and voting, to the detriment of underprivileged communities especially, rather than its intended target of the infinitesimal number of non-citizen voters.

The SAVE America Act, preceded by the SAVE Act, has now been followed up by the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act [2]. With regard to the rejection of the first version of the SAVE Act that was proposed, the bill was stopped in response to the widespread public opposition that it garnered, rather than specific resistance from members of the Senate. As a response, the aforementioned various versions of the bill have been proposed as a measure by congressional Republicans to “make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat,” according to House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (WI-01) [7]. 

Regardless of the names that differentiate these bills, all of them seek to make registering to vote more complicated for all parties involved, including voters, not to mention the election officials who have the burden of determining the validity of registration. Across the board, all proposed versions of the SAVE America Act require documented proof of citizenship, whether that is a birth certificate or a passport, when registering to vote. While on the surface these provisions may appear innocuous and easily heeded, they disproportionately affect anyone who has changed their name, such as married people, people of color, and young or elderly voters, who lack the resources necessary to obtain them. [3] Research has indicated that over 21 million Americans do not have immediate access to the proper documentation that would be necessary to register to vote, creating a substantial issue that concerns voters from across a wide range of demographics. [1]  Ultimately, the implications of these bills could disenfranchise members from every group of Americans, and could inadvertently take away the voice that they, by nature of their citizenship, are entitled to.

Of course, this is not the only way in which the forenamed acts would threaten Americans’ ability to participate in the democratic process, because these bills have only been scaled up as new versions have been introduced. As it was mentioned before, the SAVE America Act and both of its siblings place the burden of proof of citizenship records and lists on people who are citizens. [1] This also means that when election officials are meant to determine whether a person has shown sufficient documentary proof of citizenship, there could be enough ambiguity with the documents presented to reject a person to avoid possible penalties, resulting in less room for flexibility when it comes to voter registration. Since the bill’s measures strictly enforce specificity at the most minute details for those documents, it becomes much more difficult for registration to be approved, because guidelines might be clearer but are also stricter by nature. The chances of someone being denied registration and the right to vote drastically increase under the SAVE Act, and could very well prevent significant portions of the voting population from participating in elections.

Furthermore, the SAVE Act also creates barriers to registration and voting for those with disabilities. Not only does it require in-person registration by prohibiting mail-in or online registration, but it also requires the aforementioned documentation at registration, and additionally, copies of photo identification with mail-in ballots. This means that people who do not have the ability to go to physical locations are running up against even greater obstacles, especially considering how 60% of physical registration locations have been found to have barriers for voters with disabilities [5].  This serves to be a major policy limitation because technology and other procedures, such as mail-in ballots, make voting accessible as a matter of civil rights; from the number of voters with disabilities, more than half cast their vote using these accommodations [5].

As such, the idea that the SAVE America Act would ensure that noncitizens could not register and vote reacts to a problem that is not very prevalent and historically has not had much, if any, effect on elections. Further, it counterintuitively makes it harder for citizens to register and actually cast said vote. Though this article only examines a few states as case studies, there has been overwhelming evidence that noncitizen registration is already very low, and noncitizen voting is even lower, and even more significantly, cases where there was a possibility of noncitizen voting were found to be a result of clerical errors or outdated records [8]. As an example, Utah conducted a review of citizenship for its entire voter registration list from April 2025 to January 2026, and found only one case of noncitizen registration and none at all of noncitizen voting. Or, in Ohio’s case, its Secretary of State Frank LaRose designated 521 voting cases between 2019 and 2023 as potentially done by noncitizens, though an Ohio Capital Journal review noted that only a single noncitizen was charged with voter fraud from that list [8]. More broadly, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, has a nationwide database of alleged cases of voter fraud, in which, since 2000, there have been only 99 identified cases of possible noncitizen voting [9]. Evidently, the statistics across the board point to the issues that the SAVE Acts make claims of targeting as being functionally nonexistent.

These bills would not only disqualify certain people from voting based on their access to documents which prove their citizenship, but if allowed to pass and be implemented, they could also lead to the allowance of government control over who can and cannot cast a vote. This has been effectively illustrated, as part of the SAVE America Act, along with the MEGA Act, includes a mandate to purge voter rolls every 30 days, thereby getting rid of the 90-day quiet period that ensures voters are not mistakenly taken off the rolls right before elections. [2] With the SAVE Act and the institution of a documentary proof requirement for citizenship, it would be very easy for an individual to be mistakenly taken off the voter rolls and not allowed to vote, and it would also be much harder to be reinstated. Additionally, the SAVE America Act has no clause or inclusion that says if someone were to be taken off the roll, they would be notified so that they could do something to rectify the situation. Generally, these factors all play a part in the issues resulting from the logistics of the SAVE Act and its iterations, which point to its inability to be equitably actionable.

Beyond the practical flaws of the SAVE America Act, it exhibits extreme implications with regard to the prospect of political weaponization. Since the primary condition of a democracy is that everyone is able to participate in their own governance, a system that is able to arbitrarily deny its citizens that participation is one that can continue that disenfranchisement for its own purposes. Requiring that voter rolls be purged every month, and making sure that voters can only register with documentation that not everyone has, only results in those who do not have ready access to things forfeiting their right to vote through no fault of their own. Particularly because research shows that 9% of eligible voters cannot quickly get documentary proof for themselves, 52% of unregistered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their legal name, and 11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate [1]. These are not insignificant numbers by any stretch of the imagination, and that means that large parts of the population will be left with no viable way to cast their votes. Moreover, the changes that the SAVE America Act is working to implement cannot be carried out in the time that it would take for the bill to pass without harming people, and even if they were, it would seem that the harms far overshadow the benefits [5].

Allowing voting registration, guidelines, and restrictions to be tightened to the point that it actively excludes citizens from voting is a move against the democratic ideals that the electoral system was built upon. There is something to be said about the fact that current voter registration guidelines mandate voter identification, and that, evidently, there are quite limited instances of noncitizen voting in past elections. Clearly, this is not a problem that needs to be addressed, as conclusively demonstrated by the research that has been conducted.

It can be concluded then that, as every citizen who registers to vote can presently do so through a relatively simple process, and changing that process would disenfranchise many, it seems reasonable to believe that the millions of people who will be left without a vote far outweigh the few who are trying to vote without citizenship. Thus, if that is the price to pay, the cost does not seem so high. Instead, the root problem that must be addressed is the connotations of stringent identification policies for registration, including specific documentary proof and a lack of accommodations for certain voting groups. The implications associated with what it means to find it acceptable to let whole sections of the American populace go without any sort of control over how they are governed are the real issue, and one that must be treated with all of the urgency and seriousness it warrants.

Image Credits: https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/8168632301

Works Cited

[1] visceral_dev_admin. 2024. “Five Things to Know about the SAVE Act.” Bipartisan Policy Center. July 10, 2024. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/five-things-to-know-about-the-save-act/.

[2] Sweren-Becker, Eliza, and Owen Bacskai. 2026. “New SAVE Act Bills Would Still Block Millions of Americans from Voting.” Brennan Center for Justice. February 3, 2026. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-save-act-bills-would-still-block-millions-americans-voting.

[3] Burns, Emily. 2025. “What You Need to Know about the SAVE Act.” Campaign Legal Center. February 5, 2025. https://campaignlegal.org/update/what-you-need-know-about-save-act.

[4] Frazzini, Kevin. 2026. “9 Things to Know about the Proposed SAVE America Act.” National Conference of State Legislatures. February 19, 2026. https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/9-things-to-know-about-the-proposed-save-america-act.

[5] Dilworth, Jackie. 2026. “The SAVE America Act Threatens Accessible Voting for People with Disabilities.” The Arc. March 20, 2026. https://thearc.org/blog/save-america-act-voting-rights-disabilities/.

[6] Autrey, Rebecca. 2026. “House Passes New Version of the SAVE Act; Brennan Center Responds.” Brennan Center for Justice. February 10, 2026. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/house-passes-new-version-save-act-brennan-center-responds.

[7] Steil, Chairman. 2026. “Chairman Steil Unveils the Make Elections Great Again Act.” United States Committee on House Administration. January 29, 2026. https://cha.house.gov/2026/1/chairman-steil-unveils-the-make-elections-great-again-act.

[8] visceral_dev_admin. 2024a. “Four Things to Know about Noncitizen Voting.” Bipartisan Policy Center. March 13, 2024. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/.

[9] “Voting by Noncitizens Is a Non-Issue.” 2026. Fair Elections Center. March 3, 2026. https://fairelectionscenter.org/voting-by-noncitizens-is-a-non-issue/.