WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House voted Wednesday to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election bill that President Donald Trump is pushing Congress to enact.
The vote was 218-213, with Republicans unanimously voting in favor and all but one Democrat voting against it. The one Democrat voting yes was Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas.
The 32-page legislation would require states to obtain documentary proof-of-citizenship “in person,” such as an American passport or birth certificate, from someone in order to register them to vote in a federal election.
The bill, which was revised from an earlier version to include new demands from Trump, also requires voters to show photo identification in order to cast a ballot in person. And it slaps new rules for mail-in ballots, requiring voters to submit a copy of an eligible ID when requesting and casting an absentee ballot.
“It’s just common sense. Americans need an ID to drive, to open a bank account, to buy cold medicine, to file government assistance,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters. “So why would voting be any different than that?”
Democrats say the legislation is designed to disenfranchise Americans, noting that voting by noncitizens is already illegal and very rare. Current law requires voters to attest to their citizenship under oath, with criminal penalties for violators.
“This is a desperate effort by Republicans to distract,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters. “The so-called SAVE Act is not about voter identification, it is about voter suppression. And they have zero credibility on this issue.”
Jeffries and other Democrats note that the GOP bill comes in the wake of Trump saying he wants to “nationalize” elections and “take over the voting in at least — many, 15 places.” That runs afoul of the Constitution, which gives states authority over the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections” for federal office. Democrats also note that the FBI has seized ballots and voter records from Fulton County, Georgia, as Trump continues to make false claims that he won the 2020 election.
Republicans point out that requiring some form of voter ID is popular. A Pew Research Center poll last August found that 83% of U.S. adults favor “requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.” That includes 71% of Democrats and 76% of Black voters, who some Democrats and liberal advocates claim would be disenfranchised by it.
The bill — sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah — now goes to the Senate, where it faces a daunting path. Republicans control 53 seats, and some of them are skeptical or outright opposed to the legislation.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, came out against it this week, reminding her GOP colleagues they claimed to be against federal election mandates to states as recently as 2021.
“When Democrats attempted to advance sweeping election reform legislation in 2021, Republicans were unanimous in opposition because it would have federalized elections, something we have long opposed,” she said. “Now, I’m seeing proposals such as the SAVE Act and MEGA that would effectively do just that. Once again, I do not support these efforts.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, believes the revised version of the bill is problematic, according to her office.
“Senator Collins supports the law and constitutional interpretation that only American citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections. She also supports voter ID. So she supported the original SAVE Act,” a Collins spokesperson told NBC News. “There were problems with the SAVE America Act because it went much broader than these original principles and we hope those issues are being addressed by the bill’s authors and the House.”
And Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the former GOP leader who led the charge against Democrats’ unsuccessful voting-rights package in 2021 and 2022, has long insisted he believes elections should be run by states without federal interference or mandates.
Even if it does win a majority of the Senate, the bill has no path to 60 votes to break a filibuster as Democrats vehemently oppose it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the proposal “would impose Jim Crow type laws to the entire country and is dead on arrival in the Senate.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday that Republicans are having a “robust” discussion about the measure, offering his support for it and promising to bring it up to a vote.
“How we get to that vote remains to be seen,” Thune said, while making clear that Senate Republicans firmly oppose elimination of the 60-vote threshold, despite the president’s demands to abolish it. “There aren’t anywhere close to the votes — not even close — to nuking the filibuster.”
