UPDATED: February 13, 2026
ORIGINALLY POSTED: April 1, 2025
STATUS UPDATE: The SAVE Act passed in the House of Representatives on February 11, 2026 by a vote of 218-213.
Lawmakers are once again advancing proposals known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, legislation that would require Americans to present documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections. Versions of the SAVE Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2025, and similar bills continue to be reintroduced and promoted in Congress.
The SAVE Act, on its surface, requires proof of citizenship for registering to vote in all federal elections. However, existing law already does that. All federal voter registration forms require registrants to affirm their citizenship under penalty of perjury, and credible studies consistently show that instances of non-citizens voting in federal elections are exceedingly rare. Instead of solving a real problem, the SAVE Act would have disastrous effects on nonprofit voter registration efforts, election official workloads, and eligible voters across the nation.
The SAVE Act’s would require all voters to provide, documentary proof of citizenship – a passport or birth certificate (with a photo ID) in most cases – anytime they register or update their registration. A Real ID would not be acceptable (it is only proof of lawful residence, not citizenship), nor would military IDs, without accompanying documentation like a birth certificate. In addition, the bill contemplates that proof of citizenship be presented in person, with no clear allowance for online submission or mailing copies.
As a result of these onerous requirements, tens of millions of people could be prevented from registering or updating their registration. According to research from the Brennan Center for Justice, over 21 million voting-eligible citizens do not have ready access to documentary proof of citizenship such as a passport or birth certificate. These barriers would also have significant negative impacts on nonprofit organizations conducting nonpartisan voter registration.
- The SAVE Act would effectively be the end of third party voter registration drives. Since election officials must review the proof of citizenship, and no allowance is made for copies, third party groups would be unable to collect registration forms with accompanying proof of citizenship.In addition, nonprofit organizations would lose the ability to register voters online (see below).
- The SAVE Act makes no allowance for proof of citizenship to be submitted online. This would render the online voter registration systems currently running in 42 states useless, forcing election officials to revert to more far more costly and labor-intensive in-person registration.
The two impacts above would radically upend the work on nonprofits doing voter registration across the nation. The most nonprofits would be able to do is talk about the importance of registering, educate voters about what documents they would need, then send people to their local election office to actually register in person. Millions would simply not register.
The SAVE Act would also place significant new burdens on election officials, likely increasing costs and administrative work for state and local governments. Because the bill requires documentary proof of citizenship to be presented with a federal voter registration application, election offices would need to redesign processes, verify additional documentation, and manage a more complex registration system. Today, 43 states and the District of Columbia offer online voter registration, and these systems are a central part of how Americans register and update their information. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 73 percent of eligible citizens were registered to vote in the most recent 2024 national election, reflecting widespread reliance on modern registration methods. Reworking or replacing existing systems to comply with the SAVE Act would divert staff time and resources from other essential election functions and make voter registration more costly and labor intensive for election officials, concerns that election administrators from both parties have raised.
Then there is the highly discriminatory impact of the law on voters, disenfranchising 21 million citizens.
- Both income and education level are major factors determining whether or not someone has a passport. Voters with higher incomes and more education are far more likely to have a passport. People with household incomes over $100K are three times as likely to have a current passport as those with incomes below $50,000. Residents of northeast and west coast states are more likely to have passports than others.
- Birth certificate requirements, even if voters can find them, are also problematic. People could be barred from voting because of birth certificate name mis-matches if they took their spouse’s name or changed their name for other reasons. Among the various groups impacted, as many as an estimated 69 million American married women do not have a birth certificate with their legal name on it.
- The in-person requirement for presenting the documents will be a barrier to those with limited access to transportation. Voters with disabilities and seniors who cannot easily get to an election office, as well as rural voters, would be especially challenged. Frequent movers will also be faced with the added burden of providing these documents in person every time they move. Many people simply won’t bother and become unregistered, non-voters.
- There are the many Americans, including lower-income individuals, younger first-time voters, and new citizen voters, who rely on third party registration drives to bring them into the system that has otherwise ignored them.
Even if the documents could be submitted online, over 21 million otherwise eligible American voters don’t have these proof of citizenship documents readily available. In the end, millions of eligible American citizens who don’t have access to the required documents or can’t get to a government office in person would be unable to vote – all to prevent an exceedingly small number of non-citizens, a few dozen perhaps, from voting.
And don’t forget to spread the word about the SAVE Act and ask those in your network to do the same.
Additional Resources:
- Congress Redoubles Efforts to Pass SAVE Act Legislation: Factsheet – Fair Elections Center
- New SAVE Act Bills Would Still Block Millions of Americans From Voting | Brennan Center for Justice
- Text of the Bill
Notes
The text of the bill includes other proofs of citizenship that do not in practice exist, including a “REAL ID Act of 2005 that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States.” Citizenship is not a requirement for the REAL ID and nowhere on the REAL ID does it indicate one’s citizenship status. It also lists “A valid government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State or Tribal government showing that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.” State Driver’s Licenses, the most common form of government-issued photo ID, do not list “place of birth.” What remains in the bill is the requirement to provide either a passport or a birth certificate (or naturalization documentation, etc.) in conjunction with a photo ID. Military IDs, like state Drivers License, must be accompanied by proof of US birth.
The text of the bill makes no clear allowance for documents to be submitted digitally online or as copies via mail. The text reads that potential voters must “present” documentary proof of citizenship. It does not say attach, include, or upload. While there is no reference to online voter registration, there is a section that references mail-in registration. It states that for any mail-in registration to be valid, the voter must subsequently go “in person” to present the documentary proof of citizenship before the mail-in registration can be effective, which renders the mail-in registration meaningless. Absent text it the bill to the contrary, any online registration would almost certainly be subject to the same standard.
