The SAVE Act

My friends, we need to have a serious conversation about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Congressional Republicans claim this bill is about election integrity, but the reality is much darker. The SAVE Act is a dangerous attack on a fundamental right, the right to vote, that will create major barriers to voter registration and threaten more than 20 million eligible voters in 2026. The SAVE Act is not just another voter ID bill. It is about voter registration and, at its core, would require every American to prove their U.S. citizenship with inflexible requirements and specific documentation, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote. 

Let us consider what Kristi Noem said. She said, “We need to have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.” First, why is Kristi Noem even talking about this? The Department of Homeland Security does not administer or regulate U.S. elections. Second, these comments are dangerous rhetoric. When the official voting policy becomes “the right people,” it elevates the issue to an urgent level. This type of rhetoric creates the perception of a crisis, and by framing it as a crisis, they artificially and arbitrarily justify sweeping responses like the SAVE Act. Last I checked, non-citizen voting is both illegal and statistically rare. 

It is already a crime for non-citizens to vote. In fact, non-citizens generally do not vote. Election experts have said non-citizen voting occasionally happens, but in minuscule numbers, and not in any coordinated way. The executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR) said, “Noncitizens are not a large threat to our election system currently.” To further debunk the narrative that non-citizen voters are a national issue, consider these numbers from the CATO Institute with respect to the 2024 election:

• Michigan: officials found only 16 cases of noncitizen voting out of 5.7 million votes cast, or 0.00028%.

• Georgia: an audit of 8.2 million voters found only 20 noncitizens.

• Utah: a review of 2.1 million voters confirmed only one noncitizen.

• Louisiana: an investigation found 390 noncitizens out of 2.9 million registrants.

• Montana: an investigation found that out of 785,000 registered voters, 23 were possible noncitizens.

Michigan’s Secretary of State had something interesting to say about noncitizen voting. “This is a serious issue, and it has to be addressed with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.” She’s completely right. In this instance, the SAVE Act is the sledgehammer. Vulnerabilities in our system deserve careful, evidence-based solutions, not broad, reactive legislation. This is where the SAVE Act misses the mark. We’ve already established that non-citizen voting is illegal. We’ve already established that non-citizen voting is rare. Yet this bill responds not with precision, but with sweeping federal mandates that would fundamentally change how Americans register to vote. It is a solution in search of a problem, designed to work the American people into a frenzy while creating additional barriers for over 20 million eligible voters who lack the required documents.

If you want to know how much “easier and more efficient” the SAVE Act will make things, look at the REAL ID Act. Congress passed it in 2005 to set security standards for state IDs. Twenty years later, we are still struggling to get Americans compliant. Just look at the numbers: in Oklahoma, despite issuing over 2.6 million REAL IDs, the statewide compliance rate is only 50.7%. And nationwide, as of May 2022, only 137 million REAL IDs had been issued. Now the passport gap. As of Fiscal Year 2024, only 53.1% of the citizen population had a valid U.S. passport. Approximately 146 million citizens lack a valid passport. Texas issued the most passports between FY2020 and 2024, yet a whopping 12.3 Texans still lack a valid passport. And closer to home, only 624,146 Oklahomans possess a valid passport, while an estimated 2.6 million do not. Without a passport, voters will be forced to hunt down birth certificates that 21 million Americans do not possess. Furthermore, the bill shifts liability to local poll workers, who could face criminal penalties for honest mistakes in document collection, rather than focusing on personal liability for casting an illegal vote.

If you’re a woman, you should be pissed. If you have changed your name due to marriage or divorce, you may not be able to complete your voter registration without a passport or a marriage certificate. The SAVE Act does nothing to save America. Instead, it silences millions of eligible voters and adds more barriers to people simply exercising their fundamental right to vote! 

Ultimately, the SAVE Act is a move to suppress voting. By narrowing the acceptable types of IDs, it shrinks the pool of eligible voters and makes it harder for them to vote. Let me say this clearly: Yes, only American citizens should be allowed to vote. I agree with that, but protecting our democracy means making voting more accessible to eligible voters, not adding additional hurdles. We also need to consider what this will look like in the long term. What can this lead to? Experts say the DOJ and DHS will start reviewing state voter rolls, deploying personnel on the ground at voting locations, monitoring investigations, and investigating any fraudulent claims. Then we should expect to see an impact post-election as well. There is no telling where this can lead, but if I had to guess, the Trump Administration is going to push aggressively to take a far more active role in administering our nation’s elections. Perhaps they will try to establish a federal presence in ballot counting. Or at the polls themselves. Perhaps they will try to seize ballots again. These are real possibilities and should not be treated as mere hypotheticals. 

The SAVE Act will not “save” anything. All it does is create new barriers to voter registration, mandate in-person registration, kill resources like the Oklahoma Voter Portal, eliminate mail-in ballots and registration forms, and suppress community voter drives. It will impact women, low-income voters, young people, rural residents, and registered voters needing to update their registration after moving. And Mr. Tom Cole, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, voted in favor of the SAVE Act. With his help, the bill recently passed the U.S. House and is with the Senate for consideration. 

Here’s what I’ll say: voting is the foundation of our democracy, and every American should be free to participate in this fundamental right. Let’s protect it, not silence it. My friends, if voting were not important, they would not be trying so hard to keep people out. They would not make voting harder and far less accessible than it already is. They are worried about people showing up—they are worried about you showing up. Seats are flipping. With your help, we will flip CD4. 

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Amy Sherman, Fact-checking DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Her Agency’s Role in Elections (2026), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-dhs-secretary-kristi-noem-on-her-agencys-role-in-elections.

Miles Parks, Despite grand claims, a new report shows noncitizen voting hasn’t materialized NPR (2025), https://www.npr.org/2025/07/30/nx-s1-5462836/noncitizen-voting-trump-ceir-review. 

Cato.org, https://www.cato.org/commentary/trumps-claims-about-noncitizens-voting-are-false-we-can-prove-it?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=facebook&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign= .

PR: Real ID compliance exceeds 50% in Oklahoma, Service Oklahoma, https://oklahoma.gov/service/newsroom/realid-compliance-exceeds-50-in-oklahoma.html.

 Countdown to real ID, https://www.ncsl.org/transportation/countdown-to-real-id.

Americanprogress, https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SAVEact-tables.pdf.

Brennan Center for Justice, Millions of Americans don’t have documents proving their citizenship readily available (2024), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/millions-americans-dont-have-documents-proving-their-citizenship-readily. 

MS NOW, What is the SAVE Act? Trump threatens exec order on voter ID if bill fails in Senate YouTube (2026), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX0nXPSNZ4g.