WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans pressed forward Tuesday with a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot, despite long odds the legislation will ever become law amid bipartisan opposition. 

The 51-48 vote to formally begin debate on the measure, which GOP lawmakers have named the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, only starts the process. Senators are expected to vote on several amendments in the days, or possibly weeks, ahead. 

But at least 60 lawmakers will be needed to end floor debate, a highly unlikely prospect with Democrats arguing the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters. 

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against starting debate. North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote. 

Murkowski wrote in a social media post last month the November midterm elections are “fast approaching” and that implementing “new federal requirements now, when states are deep into their preparations, would negatively impact election integrity by forcing election officials to scramble to adhere to new policies likely without the necessary resources. 

“Ensuring public trust in our elections is at the core of our democracy, but federal overreach is not how we achieve this.”

Trump threatens retaliation

President Donald Trump has made enacting nationwide changes to voting his top legislative priority ahead of the midterm elections, although Republicans swept unified control of government less than two years ago. 

He wrote in a social media post Tuesday morning that he plans to campaign against anyone who doesn’t support the legislation, which the House passed last month.

“Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote. “If they do, each one of these points, separately, will be used against the user in his/her political campaign for office – A guaranteed loss!”

Dems predict millions kicked off voting rolls

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said during floor remarks the legislation would require Americans “to run through an obstacle course of red tape unlike anything we have ever seen in voter registration.”

The bill becoming law, he said, would lead to millions of Americans being kicked off voter rolls due to a requirement that states run their list of registered voters through a “deeply flawed” Department of Homeland Security database.

“If you’re kicked off the rolls, you may never be told,” he said. “There’s no requirement to let you know.”

Schumer argued the bill is less about ensuring only Americans vote in elections and more about Republican concerns they will lose at least one chamber of Congress later this year. 

“It’s funny. I don’t remember MAGA Republicans screaming about stolen elections and voter fraud after the 2024 election that they won,” he said. “Well, the same rules that governed the 2024 election are going to be the ones that govern the 2026 election. The only difference is that this time MAGA Republicans know they’re in trouble politically. So now they’re suddenly saying the system is compromised and broken and it needs to be changed. It’s all lies.”

77 instances of noncitizen voting 

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and anyone found guilty could face fines and up to a year in prison. There are limited instances of people not eligible to vote actually casting a ballot, according to analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center of data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, an especially conservative think tank. 

BPC’s examination “found only 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023” and that “there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated a few hours before the procedural step that “the votes aren’t there” to pass the bill via a talking filibuster, a path several of his members want him to take. 

“So what we are doing is we are having a fulsome debate on the floor of the United States Senate, which is something that I think the Senate has done in the past, and probably should do a lot more of,” he said. “But we’ll have it up. Everybody will have their say. At some point, we’ll have votes.  And we’ll see where the votes are.”

A talking filibuster would require Democratic senators to give a series of floor speeches in order to delay or prevent final passage. That process could tie up the Senate floor for months.

Thune said he wasn’t sure when votes on amendments would begin, but that he expects the process to last “for the foreseeable future.”

“I think at least for right now, there’ll be some flexibility to see where the road leads,” he said. 

Mail-in voting, gender-affirming surgeries, sports

Trump has asked GOP senators to add several provisions to the legislation, including new restrictions on mail-in voting, a federal prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth and a new law barring transgender women from participating in women’s sports. 

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Policy Committee chair, said she doesn’t believe the federal government should tell states how to manage mail-in ballots. 

“A lot of states, red states and blue, have more than a majority of the votes that are mail-in ballots,” she said. “So I think we’ve got to be careful there.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said that once debate on the SAVE America Act has concluded, he wants GOP leaders to hold a floor vote on whether to keep the rule that requires at least 60 senators vote to limit debate on bills, known as the legislative filibuster. 

“I think the days of the minority preventing legislation from passing is over. Because Democrat voters, they want their members to end it. Republican voters want us to end it,” he said. “So in the end, it’ll be that public pressure that I think will eventually end the filibuster. And I’d just rather beat them to the punch so we can pass things like SAVE America Act.”

Thune said during an afternoon press conference he believes the 60-vote procedural hurdle should remain in place because “throughout history it’s protected Republicans and conservative priorities and principles a lot more often than it’s protected Democrats.”

Photo ID

The bill would require local election officials to ensure anyone registering to vote proves they are an American, likely by showing a passport or a birth certificate. Then, when people go to cast a ballot by mail, during early voting, or on Election Day, they would need to show a valid photo ID, like a driver’s license or military identification card. 

The legislation would require state governments to submit their voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security so its officials can run them through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system to check if anyone already registered isn’t a U.S. citizen. 

The legislation doesn’t provide state or local governments with any extra money or time to implement the changes, if it were to become law. 

The Bipartisan Policy Center writes in a brief about the legislation that the organization “recommends that policymakers avoid making major changes in an election year given the likelihood that they result in administrative errors and create confusion for voters.”

The three BPC experts who analyzed the bill said it “prioritizes expediency over precision.” 

“The act becomes effective on the date of enactment, giving states no time to adjust processes,” they wrote. “It also requires that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission offer implementation guidance to states within just 10 days of enactment.”

Lawsuits

The legislation would give private citizens the ability to sue election officials who register someone without evidence of U.S. citizenship.

Jeffrey Thorsby, legislative director at the National Association of Counties, wrote in a post about the legislation’s impacts that the “liability provisions could discourage election workers and volunteers from serving at a time when many counties already face recruitment challenges.” 

“Currently, the onus on a non-citizen who registers or votes is on the illegal voter,” he wrote. “SAVE America Act proposes a radical change in how we punish fraudulent voting.”

The voting overhaul measure that the U.S. Senate began debating Tuesday would cause major headaches for underfunded state and local election officials, without meaningfully stopping fraud, according to a collection of voting rights advocates and elections officers.

The so-called SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing, would create chaos for state and local elections administrators by immediately imposing several new requirements without adding funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said on a press call Tuesday organized by Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.

“I cannot emphasize enough the Herculean effort that the SAVE America Act would present for election officials across this country,” Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as a co-founder of the group Advance Elections, said. “Please do not set our country or these public servants up for failure. Bring us to the table. Develop this legislation properly and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”

No new money

The bill would initially add $35 million in costs for Washington state to administer this year’s midterm elections, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said. The measure would cost an estimated additional $12 million annually in presidential election years for the state’s elections administrators, he added.

But it would not provide federal funding for states and localities to meet the new costs.

“When I looked at the SAVE America Act to understand how it would affect election administration, I did a control-F for the dollar sign, and I did not see a single dollar, much less the hundreds of millions needed to implement these changes,” Brinson Bell said.

The bill, which Trump and other proponents say is necessary to stop immigrants from voting, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. They would also have to provide a photo ID at polling places.

But the measure “is the very definition of a solution in search of a problem,” Kimsey said on Tuesday’s call. Noncitizens voting in federal elections is exceedingly rare.

Barriers for voting by mail

Overall, the bill would make voting more difficult, especially for people who have changed their names, tribal citizens and people without photo ID, participants on the call said. That counters the goal of elections officials: to make voting easier.

“The problem isn’t that the wrong people are voting,” Kimsey said. “The problem is that not enough people are voting.”

The bill would also create barriers for vote-by-mail, which Washington and other states have used for decades. 

The system has increased voter participation and is widely popular across party lines. 

“The state of Washington’s vote-by-mail system is such a strong system,” Cantwell said. “The whole country should be moving more towards that and not away from it.”

Voting integrity

The bill’s backers, including most Republicans in Congress, say it would erect commonsense safeguards to protect U.S. elections.

In a Tuesday floor speech setting up debate on the measure, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune called it “essential.”

“If there’s anything essential to the integrity of elections, it’s ensuring that those who are registered to vote are eligible to vote – and that those who show up to vote at polling places are … who they say they are,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said.

The way to do that, he added, was to require proof of citizenship and photo identification.

Photo IDs, though, aren’t as universal as commonly thought, League of Women Voters of Maine Executive Director Chrissy Hart said.

Eighteen percent of citizens older than 65 lack a photo ID, as well as 16% of Latino voters, 25% of Black voters and 15% of low-income Americans, Hart said.

Election denial

Kimsey, who identified as a Republican during his first run for office in 1998 and became an independent after the pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election, was asked if the measure was a continuation of Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. elections.

He answered that what he deemed the “election denial movement” lost momentum after Trump’s 2024 victory, but that it seemed to be reappearing ahead of the midterms.

“In my view, this is nothing more than a very clumsy — and I hope not effective — but a very clumsy attempt to create chaos in this year’s midterm elections,” he said.