WASHINGTON — The U.S. House passed legislation Wednesday that would require the public to produce a passport or birth certificate in most cases to register to vote, less than a year out from November midterm elections.

The 218-213 vote split mostly along party lines, with one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, breaking with his party to support the measure. One Republican, North Carolina’s Greg Murphy, did not vote.

Republicans argued the bill, dubbed by House Republicans as the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or the SAVE America Act, will prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections, which is already illegal and rare.

The Senate is considering its own version of the bill.

The GOP’s championing of the bill follows President Donald Trump’s comments advocating to nationalize elections, a mid-decade campaign to redraw state congressional districts in Republicans’ favor and more than two dozen Department of Justice lawsuits demanding Democratic-led states turn over unredacted voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.

The bill also includes a provision requiring each state to send an “official list of eligible voters for federal office” to Homeland Security to be run through the department’s database to identify any noncitizens.

‘Show your papers’

The legislation has attracted sharp criticism from Democrats and voting rights advocates as a “show your papers” law that will disenfranchise the roughly 146 million Americans who do not have a passport. 

They say it would also affect those without ready access to a birth certificate and married women whose last names do not match the name appearing on birth records.

If passed by both chambers and signed into law by Trump, the measure would take effect immediately.

“Republicans know that they cannot win on the merits, so rather than change their policies, they’re seeking to change the rules. John Lewis was not bludgeoned on a bridge in my hometown for the Republicans and Donald Trump to take these rules away from us,” said Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., invoking the late Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who was beaten in 1965 in Selma, Alabama, during a march for voting rights. 

“This is a blatant power grab, as Democrats will not stand for it,” Sewell, whose district includes Selma, said on the floor ahead of the vote.

Sean Morales-Doyle, director of voting rights and elections at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the timing of the measure, if enacted, would cause “maximum chaos.”

“A change of this magnitude to our election system right before an election would be not only terrible in substance in that it would block Americans from voting, but would also be chaos-causing,” Morales-Doyle said. 

“It would change the rules that govern our elections and government registration right when that is happening at the highest rate. … There’s always a huge increase in registration in the run-up to an election.”

‘Daggum ID’

But Republicans argue the legislation provides “safeguards” to ensure only U.S. citizens vote, as Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said on the floor ahead of the vote.

“House Republicans and President Trump want to protect the ballot box and ensure integrity in our elections across this great country,” Burchett said.

“When you purchase a firearm, when you board a plane, when you open a bank account — if I put $100 in the bank and right then ask for $20 of it back, guess what: I gotta show a daggum ID,” Burchett continued.

Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said Democrats’ arguments against the bill amounted to “hyperbole.”

“We should be checking and cleaning up the voter rolls and removing individuals who are not eligible to vote, because every citizen deserves the right to vote,” he said.

Claims of noncitizen voting in federal elections represent “tiny fractions of voters,” according to a July 2025 analysis from The Center for Election Innovation and Research. The report was updated this month.

Murkowski not on board

The Senate version, sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, may face stronger headwinds.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, issued a statement on social media Tuesday saying she won’t support the legislation.

“Not only does the U.S. Constitution clearly provide states the authority to regulate the ‘times, places, and manner’ of holding federal elections, but one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington, D.C., seldom work in places like Alaska,” Murkowski wrote, adding that changing procedures so close to the midterms would “negatively impact election integrity.”

President Donald Trump gives a speech at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 21, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump restated a call Tuesday for federal control over election administration across the country, undermining the structure outlined in the Constitution that empowers states to run elections.

For the second time in as many days, Trump indicated he wanted the federal government more involved in elections. The issue renews concerns over Trump’s expansion of presidential power, which critics of his second presidency have labeled authoritarian.

Speaking after a bill signing ceremony in the Oval Office and surrounded by Republican leaders in Congress, he responded to a question about earlier comments on “nationalizing” election administration by indicating the lawmakers standing behind him should “do something about it.” 

“I want to see elections be honest,” he said. “If you think about it, the state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway.”

Trump repeated debunked claims that he lost the 2020 presidential election only because of election fraud, especially in large Democrat-leaning cities including Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit.

“The federal government should not allow that,” he said. “The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

The comments marked the second time in as many days that Trump has floated a federal takeover of election infrastructure and came after Republican leaders in Congress and the White House press secretary had downplayed his earlier remarks.

In a podcast interview released Monday, Trump said his party should “nationalize” elections.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Afternoon walkback

Reporters asked U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune at press availabilities Tuesday about Trump’s initial comments. 

Both avoided endorsing the view and sought to tie them to GOP legislation that would create a nationwide requirement that voters show proof of citizenship.

“We have thoughtful debate about our election system every election cycle and sometimes in between,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said. “We know it’s in our system: The states have been in charge of administering their elections. What you’re hearing from the president is his frustration about the lack of some of the blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things and making sure that they are free and fair elections. We need constant improvement on that front.”

“I think the president has clarified what he meant by that, and that is that he supports the SAVE Act,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said earlier Tuesday. “There are other views, probably, when it comes to nationalizing or federalizing elections, but I think at least on that narrow issue, which is what the SAVE Act gets at, I think that’s what the president was addressing.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also endorsed the GOP elections bill and said states and cities that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections created a system that was rife with fraud. Reports of election fraud are exceedingly rare.

“There are millions of people who have questions about that, as does the president,” she said. “He wants to make it right and the SAVE Act is the solution.”

But Trump on Tuesday evening, with Johnson among those standing behind him, seemed to indicate a broader desire for the federal government to be directly involved with election administration.

2020 election history

Trump has a charged history with claims around election integrity.

His persistent lie that he won the 2020 election, despite dozens of court cases that showed no determinative fraud, sparked the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as his supporters sought to reverse the election results.

He has continued to make the claim since returning to office and spoke by phone with FBI agents who seized voting machines in Fulton County, Georgia, according to New York Times reporting, raising questions about his use of law enforcement to reinforce his political power.

Trump’s opponents, some of whom have said he is sliding toward authoritarianism in his second term, quickly rebuked his recent comments.

“Donald Trump called for Republican officials to ‘take over’ voting procedures in 15 states,” Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, wrote on social media. “People of all political parties need to be able to stand up and say this can’t happen.”

Walter Olson, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, said in a statement that federalization of elections would be a bad idea on the merits, but Trump’s history raised additional concern and called for Americans to be “vigilant against any repeated such attempt before, during or after the approaching midterms.”

“This trial balloon for a federal takeover is not coming from any ordinary official,” Olson said. “It is coming from a man who already once tried to overturn a free and fair election because it went against him, employing a firehose of lies and meritless legal theories, and who repeatedly pressed his underlings, many of whom in those days were willing to say ‘no’ about schemes such as sending in federal troops to seize voting machines.”