House Republicans to Prioritize Controversial SAVE Act in New Session
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill that would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to provide proof of citizenship, is a top priority in the new Congress.
On Friday, the House passed a rules package for the newly-elected 119th Congress, and it details 12 of the chamber’s legislative priorities — a nationwide proof of citizenship bill being listed as the tenth one.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement over the weekend that the “legislation makes clear that House Republicans will deliver on their promises of securing the border, unleashing American energy, protecting American elections, protecting innocent life, and returning to common sense.”
The GOP push to combat noncitizen voting, which is already illegal and extremely uncommon, is not new. This narrative has been spread over the last couple of years at the federal and state levels, but it became one of the Republican Party’s top issues in 2024.
The House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act in July, but it was stymied by the Democratic Senate and President Joe Biden.
“States already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls,” the Biden administration said in a statement after the bill was passed. “This bill would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but it would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls.”
Despite a slim chance of it being enacted, Republicans held multiple hearings about this bill, continually creating a narrative — without any concrete evidence behind it — about noncitizens voting en masse and diluting the votes of U.S. citizens ahead of the 2024 election.
Also, Johnson tied the SAVE Act to a budget bill needed to keep the government open, which ultimately had to be removed so it would pass both chambers and get signed by Biden.
Some Democrats argued that Republicans were trying to sow doubt in the 2024 election results in case President-elect Donald Trump lost.
“MAGA extremists are laying the groundwork to overturn the 2024 election,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) said. “The coup starts here.”
However, Republicans have also repeatedly tied noncitizen voting to immigration, a GOP issue before the election and certainly after — especially since it’s one of the top issues on Trump’s agenda for his administration.
Johnson released a report over the summer on why the SAVE Act needs to be passed, and he repeatedly referenced the “lax border security policies of the Biden Administration” and how they “could lead to millions of noncitizens registering to vote.”
Five of the other bills that will be prioritized in the 119th Congress relate to immigration, including ones that would make perpetrators of minor crimes, like theft, subject to deportation.
Now that the Republican Party has flipped the Senate and Trump will take over the presidency Jan. 20, the SAVE Act could have more success this time around.
If passed, the bill could disenfranchise numerous eligible voters who can’t provide the proper documentation when filling out voter registration forms.
A survey released last June, spearheaded by the University of Maryland, revealed that one in 10 voting-age citizens can’t easily access documentary proof of citizenship and 4 million of them don’t even have these documents — such as a birth certificate, passport, naturalization certificate or a certificate of citizenship.
This disproportionately affects marginalized racial and ethnic groups, with people of color being less likely to possess or have access to these documents than their white counterparts.
The legislation will likely be considered in the coming weeks, and it may not be the only voter suppression bill revived from a previous session of Congress. The American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act, a 2023 voter suppression bill that would ban noncitizen voting in federal elections, require a photo ID to vote and more, may also be a GOP priority as well.