House Republicans further voter ID bills that would disenfranchise millions

As President Donald Trump and his closest allies continue demands for a federal “takeover” of elections, House Republicans are rushing to deliver this week, working on a pair of voter suppression measures. 

At a House Administration Committee hearing Tuesday, Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) described his Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act as a common sense measure to secure elections against the nefarious threat of widespread noncitizen voting — a virtually nonexistent problem. 

“Here’s the top line: Elections should end on Election Day. You should need a photo identification to cast a ballot,” said Steil, describing provisions that keep thousands of eligible ballots from being counted. 

Meanwhile, GOP leadership is bringing a similar proposal, the SAVE America Act, to the House floor for a vote Wednesday (or perhaps Thursday). That bill requires voters to show documentary proof of citizenship at registration, a photo ID when they vote, and directs election officials to conduct monthly voter roll purges to remove ineligible voters, which must utilize the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program. 

The more comprehensive MEGA Act would do all that, plus prevent states from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day, ban universal mail voting, in which states mail a ballot to all registered voters, bar the federal funding for voter registration by outside groups, and authorize lawsuits against election officials.

The top-ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), cast the proposals as attempts to hand control of elections to Trump, the DHS and the Department of Justice. “All these bills have the same outcome. They are the Trump election takeover bills,” Morelle said. “I ask the American people this: Do you want Donald Trump running your elections? Do you want [Attorney General] Pam Bondi or [DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem running your elections?”

Either proposal would have sweeping impacts on how Americans vote. The citizenship proof requirements could potentially disenfranchise 21 million voters who lack ready access to a U.S. passport or a birth certificate to prove citizenship, according to a Brennan Center for Justice report. The Center for American Progress estimates the measures would add voter hurdles for up to 100 million Americans. 

The GOP’s legislative frenzy to “secure” elections from noncitizen voting comes as a series of lengthy reviews by Republican election administrators have demonstrated that it’s a virtually nonexistent problem. In Utah, officials found one noncitizen who was accidentally registered out of more than 2 million voters; in Idaho, 36 “likely” noncitizens were found, or roughly two-thousandths of a percent of registered votes; and in 2024, Georgia found 24 noncitizens out of 8.2 million voters. 

Any immigrant who voted in a federal election would risk prison time and then deportation, all for the chance to cast a single ballot out of hundreds of thousands. 

Karen Brinson Bell, North Carolina’s former chief election official, warned that rushing either the MEGA Act or SAVE America Act into law would give state election officials precious little time to implement the new standards, leading to chaos. “When Kansas attempted to implement a proof of citizenship in 2014, even with a year and a half of implementation time, 12% of applicants were denied registration for failing to provide documentary proof of citizenship,” Bell said. “Virtually all of those denied registration were, in fact, eligible.”

When the House passed a narrower version of the SAVE Act in April, four Democrats — Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Glusenkamp Perez of Washington — voted for it. Those Democrats have not responded to repeated inquiries on their position on the SAVE America Act or MEGA Act. 

Voter ID polls well with the electorate, even as experts warn it’s a solution in search of a problem, but so do the pro-voting policies the MEGA Act would ban, like universal mail-in ballots. 

In his opening remarks, Steil focused on the impact of a strict voter ID law in Georgia, where the feared dropoff in turnout never materialized. But opponents say turnout in the state — home to some of the tightest, most expensive races in the nation in recent years — would have been even higher but-for the law. Others have noted that strict voting policies often boomerang on Republicans, firing up Democrats incensed by voter suppression tactics. 

Republicans have long backed stricter ballot laws, and Democrats more permissive, under the belief that less-engaged voters — who are less likely to put in the work to fix a faulty registration — tend to lean left. But some political pundits have questioned that, arguing that stopped being true when Trump took over the GOP. 

The measures documentary proof of citizenship requirements would particularly burden the roughly 69 million married women who took their husband’s name — a group that leans to the right.  

Despite the GOP’s sudden sense of SAVE Act urgency, passage seems unlikely in the Senate, where it’s unlikely to clear the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster. 

While 49 Republican Senators are publicly supporting the proposal, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) took to social media as Tuesday’s hearing began to announce her opposition, saying, “one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington, D.C., seldom work in places like Alaska.” 

Even though some of the bill’s Senate cosponsors have repeatedly demanded an end to the “zombie filibuster” and reinstatement of the talking filibuster, Thune has poured cold water on the idea. If the GOP brought the talking filibuster back, then Democrats would be able to gum up floor proceedings for months — perhaps even past November’s elections. 

Alternatively, some Republicans want the SAVE America Act to hitch a ride on a must-pass bill, like the DHS appropriations bill for the current fiscal year or a reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

Over the weekend, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said he supports voter ID, but added that he doesn’t expect any version of the SAVE Act to make it past the filibuster. Besides Fetterman, Democrats seem uniformly opposed, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) calling the proposals “Jim Crow type laws” that would be a “poison pill that will kill any legislation that it is attached to.” 

The MEGA Act would also require state election officials use auditable paper ballots. To date, Louisiana is the only state that does not do so.