What the SAVE Act would really do

As stat­ed in Part I of this series, the SAVE Act is not mere­ly a law requir­ing states to ID vot­ers at the polls or a law nec­es­sary to keep nonci­t­i­zens from vot­ing. Like many bills brought before Congress, amend­ments are added, and parts of it are tak­en out and added to oth­er bills, so that it is often dif­fi­cult for vot­ers to know which ver­sion of the bill is being vot­ed on. 

Since the SAVE Act was first intro­duced in January of 2025, the require­ments to prove cit­i­zen­ship while reg­is­ter­ing to vote have been fair­ly con­sis­tent, but oth­er facets of the bill have evolved — as has the name. 

One ver­sion of the bill (the SAVE America Act) requires proof of cit­i­zen­ship not only at reg­is­tra­tion, but at the polls unless the state has agreed to give the DOJ access to its vot­er rolls. The Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act takes the require­ments of the SAVE America Act and goes a step fur­ther by severe­ly restrict­ing access to mail-in vot­ing and requir­ing month­ly purges of vot­er rolls. 

Trump has already issued an exec­u­tive order that severe­ly restricts mail-in vot­ing and implies that the US Postal Service is to deliv­er bal­lots from only those senders on a pre-approved list. 

Critics argue that these require­ments intrude on state elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, giv­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment much more over­sight of elections. 

This is in oppo­si­tion to the Constitution, which grants each state the right to deter­mine how its elec­tions are set up. 

Republicans have his­tor­i­cal­ly been opposed to increas­ing fed­er­al over­sight of elec­tions, but are now back­ing Trump’s plan to use the SAVE Act to nation­al­ize elec­tions.  

The SAVE Act seeks to amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. This law, in part­ner­ship with HAVA and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA), increased the num­ber of reg­is­tered vot­ers and required states to take steps to make it eas­i­er for all cit­i­zens to exer­cise their right to vote — espe­cial­ly minori­ties. In these laws, the role of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is to pro­tect the vot­ing rights of those who might be dis­en­fran­chised under state law (using poll tax­es, grand­fa­ther claus­es, etc.). 

However, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly claim­ing that the pow­er of over­sight ini­tial­ly grant­ed by these acts in order to pro­hib­it dis­crim­i­na­tion gives the gov­ern­ment the author­i­ty to require states to turn over their detailed vot­er rolls (includ­ing infor­ma­tion such as dri­ver’s license num­bers and par­tial or full Social Security num­bers). The Department of Justice has also clear­ly stat­ed that it plans to share the pri­vate infor­ma­tion with oth­er gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies, includ­ing the Department of Homeland Security. 

As of February 2026, the Department of Justice said it had sued 29 states (includ­ing Kentucky) and D.C. for fail­ure to pro­vide full vot­er-reg­is­tra­tion lists; lat­er track­ers report­ed 30 states plus D.C. This require­ment will become law should the SAVE Act pass. 

In addi­tion to the fed­er­al over­reach, the SAVE Act has the poten­tial to dis­en­fran­chise a large por­tion of American voters. 

It has been esti­mat­ed that over 21 mil­lion peo­ple do not have ready access to the doc­u­ments required by the SAVE Act in order to prove their cit­i­zen­ship. Those most like­ly to be affect­ed are women who have changed their names, stu­dents who use their school-issued ID to vote, and low-income cit­i­zens who have finan­cial bar­ri­ers to secur­ing the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments to prove cit­i­zen­ship — all groups that, as a whole, are more like­ly to vote for Democrats. 

Because of this, Trump believes the pas­sage of the Act will guar­an­tee the midterms for Republicans in the fall. However, Republican women are more like­ly to change their names after mar­riage (and thus would need to pro­vide a mar­riage license) and are less like­ly to have pass­ports than Democrats. And vot­ers over 65 (who over­whelm­ing­ly vote Republican) are more like­ly to use mail-in bal­lots, which are also being tar­get­ed by ver­sions of this act. 

By insti­tut­ing more bar­ri­ers to vot­ing, the SAVE Act is fram­ing vot­ing as a priv­i­lege for some instead of a right for all citizens. 

So to recap: the SAVE Act is not a bill requir­ing ID to vote or a bill to improve the integri­ty of elections. 

Critics say the bill could pre­vent some eli­gi­ble cit­i­zens from reg­is­ter­ing or updat­ing reg­is­tra­tion if they lack ready access to required doc­u­ments; sup­port­ers say it is intend­ed to pre­vent nonci­t­i­zen registration. 

It is also an Act that is pred­i­cat­ed on the con­cept of a Republican “silent major­i­ty,” which implies that the major­i­ty of Americans hold con­ser­v­a­tive views and that Democrats, while vocal in their ide­ol­o­gy, are a fringe group who can only win in fed­er­al elec­tions by cheating. 

In real­i­ty, while 38 mil­lion Americans are reg­is­tered Republicans, 45 mil­lion are reg­is­tered Democrats. In the past decade, the votes cast dur­ing fed­er­al elec­tions were so even­ly split that nei­ther par­ty received few­er than 44% of the pop­u­lar vote, and nei­ther par­ty received more than 53%. 

There were even times (like the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion) in which nei­ther can­di­date received over 50% of the pop­u­lar vote. No one par­ty has a super­ma­jor­i­ty of the vot­ers, and every indi­vid­ual vote is impor­tant for express­ing the will of the people. 

Therefore, any bill that hin­ders the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to vote for any per­son — Republican, Democrat, or Independent — should be of concern.