Follow up to White House Webpage Pushing Save Our Elections Act – Via the Brennan Center – New SAVE Act Bills Would Still Block Millions of Americans From Voting – Update: When this article was first published, the SAVE America Act included a provision that would have also required voters to show documents such as a passport or birth certificate at the polls every time they vote. The bill has since been amended in the House to replace that requirement with a directive that states regularly submit their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as a restrictive photo ID requirement for voting. Last week, Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate launched a renewed push to pass the SAVE Act, introducing two new bills that advance its “show your papers requirement for voter registration.

• The first effort to pass the SAVE Act last year failed in the face of nationwide public opposition. These new bills are yet another effort to undermine Americans’ freedom to vote and make this unpopular policy the law of the land.
• In every form, the SAVE Act would require American citizens to show documents like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. Our research shows that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents. Roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport. Millions to a paper copy of their birth certificate. The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately. Likewise, millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.
• Just like the SAVE Act of 2025, the new SAVE Act proposals would inject chaos into election administration. They would place a massive unfunded burden on state and local election officials. And they would expose those officials to significant legal risk. The bills would leave it up to local officials to decide whether a voter who lacks one of the specified documents has done enough to prove citizenship. Officials who make an honest mistake could face civil and criminal penalties. An election official could even be punished for registering an eligible American citizen, just for failing to collect all the right paperwork at the right time.
• The three versions of the SAVE Act would go into effect either immediately after enactment, or within the next year or two, depending on the specific provision. Such a rushed implementation of massive policy changes would wreak havoc on election administration, unleashing confusion that will itself undoubtedly prevent some American citizens from voting.
• Though all versions of the SAVE Act would block millions of American citizens from voting, the new bills each contain unique additional obstacles. The anti-voter provisions in the House’s new version, formally titled the Make Elections Great Again Act, are so numerous that they require a bullet-pointed list…