As the Senate began to debate a stricter voter registration bill this week, voter rights organizations are speaking out against the bill while conservative groups are touting its benefits.
Republicans launched a rare effort on Tuesday to hold the Senate floor and talk for days about the SAVE America Act, which they know won’t pass, but it’s an attempt to capture public attention on legislation requiring stricter voter registration rules as President Donald Trump pressures Congress to act before November’s midterm elections.
The talkathon could last a week or longer, potentially through the weekend, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune tries to navigate Trump’s insistence on the issue and Democrats’ united opposition. Trump has urged Thune to scrap the legislative filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member Senate, but Thune has repeatedly said he doesn’t have the votes to do that.
The bill contains provisions that Trump and his most loyal supporters have pushed as part of a broad effort to assert federal control over elections. It would require voters nationwide to provide proof of citizenship when they register and to show accepted voter identification when casting a ballot.
It would also create new penalties for election workers who register voters without proof of citizenship and require states to hand voter data over to the Department of Homeland Security, so federal officials could screen for voters who are in the country illegally. The Department of Justice has sought voter registration data from states, but has had limited success.
Driver’s licenses in many states would not be enough. The legislation says that the identification must be compliant with new REAL ID rules and also indicate that the applicant is a citizen of the United States — which few state licenses do.
Trump also wants new provisions added to the bill, including a ban on most mail-in ballots and a ban on trans women competing in women’s sports.
The Senate voted 51-48 on Tuesday to begin the debate, with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski as the only Republican voting against moving forward on the bill.
Trump has launched unproven claims that Democrats can only win in the midterms if they cheat and explicitly said Republicans need the SAVE America Act to win in November.
Brookings, a think tank, analyzed election data from the past 25 years showing that voter fraud is exceedingly rare, occurring at a rate of less than 1% and never affecting the outcome of any contest.
Democrats and many groups that champion voter access say there is little evidence of noncitizens voting and say the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters – including Republicans – by creating new burdens to prove citizenship.
It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen, but the bill would lay out new rules for paperwork that most people would have to present in person to register to vote. Opponents of the measure say those documents are not always readily available for many people and argue that it would fill voter registration efforts and unfairly penalize young people who are registering to vote for the first time, married women who change their names, and people who cannot travel to present their documents, among other groups.
While Republicans have focused on the bill’s new requirements to show identification when they vote, Democrats say they are most concerned that the legislation would allow the federal government to take voters off the rolls. Kansas adopted a similar law in 2013 that saw nearly 31,000 citizens prevented from registering to vote. A federal judge overturned the law in 2018, saying it violated federal laws barring disenfranchisement.
Democrats say they are not entirely opposed to voter identification at the polls, despite longstanding concerns.
“Our objection as Democrats is not to a photo ID,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said this week when asked if he might negotiate with Republicans on the bill’s requirement that voters show specified forms of identification when they vote. “Our objection is that it’s a voter suppression bill.”
Omar Noureldin, the senior vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, said Senators have held procedural votes and presented amendments to the SAVE Act “to appease President Trump.”
“What we’re seeing today is Majority Leader (John) Thune doing what he thinks he needs to do to show the president that they don’t have the votes,” Noureldin said. “Those who want to get into the president’s good graces are trying to move things forward even though there is currently no viable path for this actually to be passed into law.”
While Republicans argue that the SAVE America Act is a voter ID law, Noureldin said “it’s a voter suppression bill.”
“They want fewer people to be able to vote because President Trump is allergic to any sort of accountability,” Noureldin said. “When voters are able to express their votes at the ballot box, regardless of political party, that holds elected leaders accountable. President Trump’s agenda is an authoritarian agenda that relies and is motivated by lack of accountability.”
The Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, has issued statements in favor of the SAVE America Act because it “aims to ensure that eligible American citizens and only eligible American citizens appear on the country’s voter registration lists.”
“Since federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, one might assume there would be bipartisan agreement in favor of the SAVE Act and its provisions ensuring that only citizens are able to register to vote. The SAVE Act, however, has generated white-hot opposition from congressional Democrats and others on the left,” according to a Federalist Society statement.
Republicans argue that the SAVE America Act has to pass to stop illegal immigrants from voting, but that message is misleading and doesn’t “tell the whole story” of the bill’s impact, Noureldin said.
“It is not the case that we have a widespread problem in this country around noncitizens voting. Study after study, litigation after litigation, audit after audit, has shown that that is not a problem in the U.S.,” Noureldin said. “It is trying to make it harder for people to access the ballot and hold their elected officials accountable.”
Democrats will likely discuss how the bill will impact Americans rather than “an abstract theory about why the bill is good or bad,” Noureldin said.
If the SAVE America Act were to pass, “it would affect wide swaths of America,” including Republican voters, Noureldin said.
When registering to vote or update voter registration, voters would have to provide proof of citizenship, like a passport or a birth certificate, Noureldin said. About 12% of voting-age Americans — or 28.4 million people — don’t have a passport or easy access to their birth certificates, according to an MIT study.
So a woman who changed her name when she married would have to bring a passport and other supporting documents explaining her name change before she can register to vote, Noureldin said. Or, a person who registered to vote in college but has moved will have to bring a passport or birth certificate when updating their registration, he said.
“When you update your voter registration, the SAVE Act says you have to provide all this documentation,” Noureldin said. “This shouldn’t just be viewed through a partisan lens. It should be viewed through an accountability lens.”
The push to pass the SAVE America Act is part of a larger strategy by Trump “to hold on to power, to extend power and to minimize people power,” Noureldin said.
The Associated Press contributed.
