The Republican Party and President Trump’s approval and promotion of the SAVE Act is a major move towards Trump’s authoritarian agenda to disrupt American democracy. 

What is the SAVE Act?

The SAVE Act is the Republican party’s newest “common-sense” plan to “secure elections”. [1] The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or the SAVE America Act is an election related bill attempting to pass in the senate. This bill would “require Americans to show proof of citizenship in person to register to vote in federal elections, and implement photo ID requirements for voting.” [1] The SAVE Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to “require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.” [1] Proof of citizenship in this case could be a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers. Republican senators have tried twice before to pass earlier versions of the SAVE Act, but the 60 vote threshold for passing legislation in the Senate is proving difficult. 

Is noncitizens voting a major problem?

Unlike what the Republican Party has claimed for a decade, noncitizen voting is not a sizable problem. It has been illegal for noncitizens to vote since Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996. Violators can face up to a year in prison. According to recent audits, Georgia’s 2024 voter rolls found 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters (0.00024%). [2] Ohio identified 597 noncitizens out of 8.1 million people registered to vote, but only 138 had appeared to cast ballots. [3] Lastly, Texas identified 2,724 potential noncitizens out of 18.6 million registered voters (0.00003%). [4] Additionally, Alabama election officials inactivated the registration of 3,251 individuals for potential non-citizen registration, but later acknowledged that at least 2,074 were eligible voters. [5] Even more striking: “A database of proven election fraud cases since 1982 maintained by the Heritage Foundation finds just 98 cases of alien ineligible voting across the entire U.S.” [6] These are not significant numbers, especially compared to the number of registered voters in this country, 174 million people. [7]

What can this mean from a democratic erosion lens?

This action, by President Trump and the Republican Party, is a clear act of executive aggrandizement, where an elected leader, through legal means, dismantles institutions that might challenge their rule. While the stated goal of the SAVE Act is to end “illegal alien” voting, the passage of the SAVE Act would debilitate American democracy far beyond non-citizen voting. 

One key maneuver of an authoritarian leader is strategic manipulation of elections. The passage of this bill would directly harm voter registration and voting, especially because over 9% of Americans, or 21.3 million people, don’t have easy access to proof of citizenship. Even worse, 3.8 million do not have these documents at all. [8] The Brennan Center for Justice has uncovered that 8% of white Americans and 11% of Americans of color don’t have citizenship documents readily available. [8] The Center for American Progress has found that roughly 146 million Americans do not possess a valid passport. [9] In these cases, voters would be required to show a birth certificate, which as stated above, are often inaccessible or missing. Additionally, the SAVE Act does not mention the ability of married women to supply marriage certificates or name change documents to account for having a different name than their birth certificate. Since 84% of married women change their surname, as many as 69 million American women could be barred from voting. [9] This also bars individuals who have changed their legal name, for any number of reasons, from voting, including transgender individuals. Lastly, this would disenfranchise mail in voting, where voters would be required to mail a copy of their identification or physically show up at a government office to verify their citizenship. [10] 

The Republican Party has all of this publicly available data. They know that their stated reason is not a real issue. The intention behind this bill is to directly hamper voter registration and participation in elections. This is one of the earliest identifiers that we learned this semester of authoritarian leaders. The Center for American Progress has estimated that the SAVE Act would add voter hurdles for up to 100 million Americans. [10] 

The American Constitution is the cornerstone of our democracy, and there are a few key election related sections that the SAVE Act violates. [11]

1. Supremacy Clause (Article VI): The SAVE Act would override federal registration standards previously upheld in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Ariz., Inc., 570 U.S. 1 (2013). That decision ruled that Arizona could not require additional documentation beyond the federal form unless approved by the Election Assistance Commission. 
2. Equal Protection (14th Amendment): The SAVE Act would disproportionately burden certain classes of voters including, but not limited to Elderly, rural, Native American, and low-income individuals.
3. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance: In-person documentation requirements lack sufficient accommodations for individuals with disabilities.

This bill has serious implications for Americans of different races and economic backgrounds. The Republican Party is using “illegal aliens” as a rallying point, around which they will curtail the civil liberties of millions of Americans. They are directly challenging the citizenship and participatory rights of minority groups. The ability to vote in a free and fair election is one of the most important, if not the most important, signs of a democracy. If this right is curtailed, this will exclude millions of American voices, votes, and meaningful political participation. Since the signing of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, if you are a U.S. citizen and are over 18 years old, you have been allowed to vote (barring state by state restrictions like registering before the voter registration deadline, meeting a state’s residency requirements, and having a felony conviction). [12] The SAVE Act would severely diminish this right and violate the Constitution.