SAVE Act Advances
The GOP bill, a direct product of President Donald Trump’s decade-long obsession with illegal voting, would require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, bar states from counting late-arriving mail ballots, and dramatically infringe on states’ authority to run elections.
The SAVE Act still faces a steep uphill climb to overcome a likely Democratic filibuster in the Senate. But with the GOP controlling Congress and the White House, tightening voting rules near the top of Trump’s agenda, and the party largely unified around the issue, the prospect of major voter suppression legislation becoming law nationwide is much closer to reality than probably ever before.
Voting-rights advocates and Democratic officials have already made clear the massive threat the SAVE Act poses to access to the ballot in the here and now, warning that it could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. But in interviews with Democracy Docket, historians and voting experts sought to put the SAVE Act in historical context — and could point to no close parallels.
Let’s be clear - it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote. This is just a way to make it harder for citizens to vote.