WASHINGTON — U.S. senators debated Wednesday whether the federal government should change how Americans register to vote and cast a ballot, with Republicans maintaining alterations are necessary to safeguard elections and Democrats arguing a new law would add unnecessary obstacles.

Tensions over the issue were on full display when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said GOP lawmakers describing the bill as a simple voter identification requirement is “bullshit,” shortly before Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee contended it would be “a suicidal move” for his party’s leaders not to find a way forward. 

The legislation, dubbed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, is unlikely to become law without bipartisan backing from at least 60 senators, who would be needed to move past a procedural vote. 

Democrats are not expected to help Republicans with that, especially after Schumer called the legislation “Jim Crow 2.0” and “evil” during a morning press conference with voting rights advocates. 

Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock said during that event GOP lawmakers are acting out of concern they will lose control of Congress following the November midterm elections, due to President Donald Trump’s actions during his second term.  

“The American people have had it with him and with his policies,” Warnock said. “He ran as someone who was going to lower costs, who was going to stay out of endless wars in the Middle East and he is failing. But instead of changing his policies, he’s trying to change the shape of the electorate.”

Problems with lack of birth certificate

New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján said if the bill becomes law, it would create difficulties for anyone who doesn’t have access to their birth certificate or a passport, to prove U.S. citizenship when they try to register to vote. 

“What about my Native American brothers and sisters?” he said. “All my brothers and sisters from the First Nations that I’m proud to represent across New Mexico, who may have been born in their home generationally with other family members. They didn’t have a birth certificate.”

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said GOP lawmakers trying to change the voting process during an election year creates a pattern when combined with several Republican state legislatures redrawing U.S. House maps to benefit their candidates. 

“We see this being about having politicians choose the voters instead of voters choosing the politicians,” he said. 

Several Democratic state legislatures have responded to GOP redistricting efforts by redrawing their maps as well. 

Schumer, D-N.Y., said it’s unacceptable that Republicans want every state in the country to submit a list of registered voters to the Department of Homeland Security to run through a database, which he believes is flawed. 

“They’re trying to dupe America. They say, ‘Oh, this is just a voter ID law.’ Bullshit. It is not a voter ID law,” Schumer said. “It is a law that will kick millions of Americans off the voting rolls.”

‘Debate this as long as it takes to get it done’

Utah’s Lee said Republican leaders shouldn’t schedule the procedural vote that requires at least 60 senators to end debate on the bill until they have found some way to move past that step.  

“I think it would be a suicidal move for us as Senate Republicans, for Republicans in general, if we don’t put everything we’ve got into this,” he said. “I think we need to debate this as long as it takes to get it done. And if we’re not there yet, we need to continue debating.”

Lee contended that prolonged debate on the bill would give Republicans time to sway holdouts to their side. 

“This is going to become popular enough that a lot of our colleagues who currently oppose it, I believe, will start to get on board,” he said. 

Every Senate Democrat, along with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, voted against formally beginning debate on Tuesday. North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote.

Trump wants national limits on voting by mail

Senate debate on the bill dragging out in the days or possibly weeks ahead won’t be confined to what’s currently in the legislation, which the House passed last month.

Trump has asked senators to make three alterations, which they will attempt to incorporate through amendments. 

Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said he plans to call for a vote to add nationwide restrictions on mail-in voting instead of leaving the issue to state governments. 

“If you have a hardship because of a disability, or an illness, or because of travel, or you’re a caregiver, or some other hardship the state can identify, you can vote by absentee,” he said. “You have to request it. Then you can vote by absentee.”

Schmitt said the carve-out would also include members of the military. 

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said she plans to call up an amendment that could create a nationwide prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, she said, would push for an amendment to block transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court aiming to force the Trump administration to admit if it plans to send armed federal law enforcement or U.S. troops to polling locations in the upcoming midterm elections. 

The suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charges that 11 Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests submitted to the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense by the DNC in October have gone unanswered, a violation of public records law. 

“To ensure that the American people obtain timely knowledge of potential threats to free and fair elections and to enable the DNC to take appropriate action to ensure voting rights are protected, the DNC now seeks this Court’s aid to enforce FOIA requirements,” according to the suit. 

The suit was assigned to federal Judge Beryl A. Howell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

Voting machines

The suit details how the FOIA requests were filed after comments from President Donald Trump to the New York Times that he regretted not using the U.S. military to seize voting machines after he lost the 2020 presidential election. 

“These and many other actions have raised serious concerns among voters across the country that the President will order armed federal agents or troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices, … and will send FBI agents or Justice Department officials to interfere with the orderly administration and certification of elections,” according to the complaint.

The suit also cites comments from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that she “couldn’t guarantee” that federal law enforcement officers would not be at polling locations this November. 

“Donald Trump wants to bully and cheat his way through a midterm election that he knows Republicans will lose, but we won’t let him,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “The DNC will stand on the side of voters and use every tool in our arsenal to stop voter suppression and intimidation before it can even begin.”

Are there records?

It’s also possible that no records exist.

Congressional Democrats have pressed Trump officials during hearings on plans to send agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to polling locations. 

Both heads of those agencies, ICE acting director Todd Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, said there were no plans to send any of their agents or officers to polling locations. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is leaving her post at the end of month and being replaced by Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin, was also pressed by Democrats. 

She said there were no plans for ICE agents, but also asked Democrats if they plan for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, something that is already illegal and rarely occurs. 

But during the hearing, Noem would not commit to issuing a directive barring immigration agents from polling locations. 

OTTAWA, Kan. — When Kansas began requiring residents to prove their U.S. citizenship before voting more than a decade ago, Steven Wayne Fish tried and failed.

A first-time father in his 30s at the time, he wanted a say in debates over public school funding despite having never voted before. But Fish, who was born on a since-decommissioned Air Force base in Illinois, couldn’t find his birth certificate, leaving him unable to register for the 2014 general election.

A federal court eventually blocked the Kansas law following a lawsuit in which Fish was the namesake plaintiff. For years, the Fish legal case served as a warning to politicians who wanted voters to produce documents proving their citizenship.

That’s changing, as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress try to impose a similar proof-of-citizenship voter registration requirement nationwide through a long-shot proposal called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or SAVE America Act.

Blue states would have a major tool to push back. Whether they would use it is less clear.

States have the power to set separate rules for state and local elections and to apply federal restrictions only on residents voting in federal races, according to interviews with more than a dozen election experts, officials and lawmakers. Operating two distinct election systems, a process called bifurcation, would give states more freedom over who can vote in races for governor, state legislature and other down-ballot contests.

Bifurcation would ensure that individuals like Fish could still cast a ballot in some contests, even if they couldn’t vote for members of Congress or president.

“It’s very strange and surreal,” Fish told Stateline about a potential national requirement during an interview on Tuesday in Ottawa, Kansas, where he works at a warehouse. Those looking back at his state, he said, will see “it did not work at all.”

Under the U.S. Constitution, states regulate the times, places and manner of federal elections, though Congress has the authority to override them. But Congress has far less authority over state and local elections.

Brandon Fincher, managing editor of the Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice, said a national proof-of-citizenship requirement would likely generate interest in bifurcation. “I think it absolutely would,” said Fincher, who wrote a dissertation that found states are likely to adopt dual systems when their voter registration rules are threatened by federal mandates or court orders.

Bifurcation wouldn’t restrain Congress from imposing voting restrictions on federal elections. It also wouldn’t stop any changes Trump has threatened to make through executive order, but those would almost certainly face immediate challenges in federal courts. The president has no unilateral authority under the U.S. Constitution to direct how states run elections.

In the past 30 years, only a handful of states have tried a two-tier system, according to Fincher’s research. Costs and administrative barriers tend to discourage states from pursuing a dual system, election experts and officials said.

Kansas briefly had one more than a decade ago. It came amid legal fights over the state’s 2011 proof-of-citizenship law and allowed voters who signed a sworn statement that they were citizens, but didn’t provide documentation, to cast ballots for federal races but not in state and local elections.

Arizona is the only state that currently operates a two-tier system — requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state and local races, but not in federal.

Still, the country is littered with current smaller-scale efforts and past examples where states operated multiple election systems.

More than 20 cities allow some form of noncitizen voting in local races, for example, even though only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, according to Immigrant Voting Rights, a site that tracks legal noncitizen voting. Before the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed universal suffrage to women, some states allowed women to vote in some contests but not all. And Maryland lawmakers are currently weighing a plan to bifurcate its elections for some absentee ballots.

Wren Orey, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project, said more proposals to bifurcate state and federal elections could follow any congressional action.

“We’re always going to see that any time there are major federal policy changes being considered that some states are going to consider, at the very least, a system where state and local elections don’t meet those requirements,” Orey said.

Maryland weighs ‘insurance policy’

In Maryland, state lawmakers are weighing bifurcating a small portion of their absentee ballots depending on the outcome of a looming U.S. Supreme Court case involving mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia offer so-called grace periods for ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day but arrive afterward, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Trump administration argues these ballots cannot be counted. A ruling in that case, expected later this year, will affect millions of Americans.

If the White House wins, twin bills being considered in Maryland’s House and Senate would direct election officials to tabulate all votes on those ballots except for federal offices.

Maryland state Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat sponsoring one of the bills, called the legislation an “insurance policy.”

The sponsor of the Maryland House bill, Democratic state Del. Kris Fair, said lawmakers would have to wait and see on federal actions before deciding whether the bifurcation could be expanded to cover additional restrictions on voting, but he didn’t rule it out.

Fair said additional bifurcation would be a “complicated conversation.” But he added that Maryland legislators would always seek to reduce as many barriers to voting as possible while keeping elections safe and secure.

“Every time the federal government is acting, seeking to restrict access and seeking to disenfranchise voters, we are going to immediately look at the books and see how we can bring enfranchisement back to the largest number of Maryland voters that we can,” Fair said.

A national battle

Republicans face tremendous pressure from Trump, who has called for “nationalizing” elections, to act ahead of the midterms in November to decide control of Congress.

They say new nationwide election standards are needed to guard against voter fraud, though instances of fraud are very rare. Trump has long pushed the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, and his administration has taken steps to keep attention focused on that race, including an FBI seizure of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, last month.

The SAVE America Act narrowly passed the U.S. House last week and has majority support in the Senate, but faces a likely filibuster that would take 60 votes to overcome — which it does not have. The measure would require the public to produce a U.S. passport or birth certificate in most cases to register to vote. It would take effect immediately if signed into law.

The Trump administration has cast anyone opposed to the legislation as motivated by a desire to cheat.

“They want illegal people and aliens in this country to be able to vote for them and to rob the United States citizens of their vote,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a news conference in Arizona last week.

US House approves bill mandating proof of citizenship for voting in federal elections

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement to Stateline that Trump is “committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters.”

Just a handful of years ago, some Republican legislators considered bifurcation in response to Democratic proposals during the Biden administration that sparked fears of a nationalized election system.

When a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022 tried to pass sweeping election legislation that included automatic voter registration, a conservative backlash led to the introduction of bills in some statehouses that sought to assert greater state authority over elections.

In 2023, the Bipartisan Policy Center found that since 2020, legislation had been offered in five states — Alaska, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Texas — that would have separated state and federal elections. One 2021 Alaska measure would have directed state officials to stop holding elections for president and Congress if new federal law created a significant conflict with Alaska regulations. No state moved forward with separating its elections.

“If the Federal Government nationalizes the election system, undermining the long tradition of mutual cooperation, or worse, the sovereign rights of a state to manage its internal election affairs, then Alaska should simply tell the federal government to run their own election, bifurcating the election process,” Mike Shower, a then-state GOP senator who sponsored the measure, wrote in a statement at the time.

Shower, now a candidate for lieutenant governor, didn’t respond to an interview request sent to his campaign.

Election officials predict complications

Whatever the motivation behind considering bifurcation, election officials and experts say the burden of running a dual system is high.

Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights organization, called the scenario a “nightmare” for election administrators because they would have to implement state and federal requirements while paying for it all.

Jamie Shew, clerk of Douglas County, Kansas, an area that includes the sprawling University of Kansas campus, said an upcoming primary election there has about 113 ballot styles — variations of ballots that voters receive depending on where they live and what party they belong to. A bifurcated system would only increase that.

“It just adds this layer of administration and complication,” said Shew, a Democrat. “It’s one of those things that as an election administration keeps you awake, because do we have it right?”

Even setting aside bifurcation, enforcing a proof-of-citizenship requirement could be costly for election officials. Bob Page, the nonpartisan registrar of voters in Orange County, California — an area with about 3.2 million residents — estimates the additional cost in his jurisdiction could exceed $6 million a year.

Page told Stateline in an email that assuming each voter could be served in 10 minutes, his office would need 59 additional staff members. He emphasized that he takes no position on legislation and will implement any changes in the law.

In Douglas County, Shew said that as Congress has debated a proof-of-citizenship requirement, he’s heard from election officials around the country who want to know about Kansas’ experience. When the state law was in effect, Shew said, he hired two additional temporary staff members to help process voter registrations.

Despite serving a university community, Shew said many of the issues his office encountered involved older voters who couldn’t locate a birth certificate or had certificates with incorrect information. In one instance, a birth certificate for someone born at a house decades ago listed when a doctor showed up, but not the date of birth. In other cases, birth certificates spelled names incorrectly.

“There’s a lot of stuff we’re going to have to record,” Shew said of the proposed SAVE America Act requirements. “If you get 100 [voter] registrations in a day, I’m going to have to go back to bringing in temporary staff just to handle that amount of extra paperwork.”

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican running for governor, didn’t directly answer Stateline’s questions about whether he supports the SAVE America Act or has any concerns about the ability of election officials in the state to implement the measure if it becomes law. Schwab told The Associated Press in 2024 that Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship requirement “didn’t work out so well.”

In a short written statement to Stateline this week, Schwab noted only that Kansas has had a voter ID requirement — which is different from a proof-of-citizenship requirement — for more than a decade and that all states with one benefit.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican who championed the state’s proof-of-citizenship law while he was state secretary of state and personally defended it in court, didn’t answer questions from Stateline.

Fish, the Kansas resident who tried unsuccessfully to register to vote in 2014, said he eventually found his birth certificate in the back of a baby book, but not before it was too late for that election. A resident of Garnett, a city of about 3,200 people, Fish said he’s learned not to bring up the legal challenge often.

Many people don’t understand how it could happen to an average person, he said, adding they believe there must be a reason the person trying to register was at fault.

“It’s not really something you can change their minds on if they’re on that side,” Fish said.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

President Trump's statements that Republicans should take over and run elections in many states, the domestic deployment of armed agents who are shooting people in nearby cities, along with Wisconsin's long struggle over fair voting rules, makes for a tense election season. But voters still have the power to defend their rights. | Photo of an anti-gerrymandering sign in the Wisconsin State Capitol by the Wisconsin Examiner

Wisconsin was almost certainly on President Donald Trump’s mind when he said this week, “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Our swing state was Ground Zero for the fake electors plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election after Trump narrowly lost here. Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office was involved in the effort to pass off fraudulent Electoral College ballots cast by state Republicans for Trump. Our state Legislature hosted countless hearings spotlighting election deniers and wasted $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars on a fruitless “investigation” of the 2020 presidential results, led by disgraced former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who threatened to arrest the mayors of Madison and Green Bay.

So how worried should we be about Trump’s election takeover threats?

“I wouldn’t be overly concerned that the president could get anything done that’s directly contrary to the Constitution,” says John Vaudreuil, a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin and a member of the nonpartisan group Keep Our Republic, which works to promote trust in elections.

Not only does Article I of the U.S. Constitution expressly delegate elections administration to the states, Wisconsin has one of the most decentralized elections systems in the country, with about 1,800 local clerks running elections in counties, municipalities and townships throughout the state. “And they are Republicans, they are Democrats, they are independent,” Vaudreuil says. “Most fundamentally, they’re our neighbors, they’re our friends.” 

Trump’s threats of a federal takeover would be both legally and practically hard to pull off in Wisconsin.

But there is still reason to worry. Sowing distrust in elections takes a toll on clerks and poll workers, who have become less willing to put up with the threats and hostility generated by Trump’s attacks. Vaudreuil urges people to support their local elections officials and poll workers and spread the word that the work they do is important and that elections are secure.

Then there’s the danger that Trump could use his own false claims about election fraud to send federal immigration agents to the polls on the pretext that it’s necessary to address the nonexistent problem of noncitizen voting.

Doug Poland, director of litigation at the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, has been involved in election-related litigation in Wisconsin for years, including a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from forcing the state to turn over sensitive voter information. 

Poland sees Trump’s threats to “nationalize” elections as part of a pivot from Republican efforts to make in-person voting harder — on the dubious theory that there’s a huge problem with voter impersonation at the polls — to a new focus on stopping absentee voting after many people began using mail-in ballots during the pandemic. But really, it’s all about trying to make sure fewer people vote.

Under former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin passed a strict voter ID law, which one Republican former staffer testified made Republican legislators “giddy” as they discussed how it would make it more difficult for students and people of color to vote. 

Like Vaudreuil, Poland sees the current threat from the Trump administration not as an actual takeover of election administration by the federal government, but as an escalation of intimidation tactics.

“Noncitizens generally don’t vote. So it’s a lie,” Poland says. “But it’s, of course, the lie that they’re going to use as a premise to send, whether it’s ICE or whomever it may be, to polling places, probably in locations with Black and brown populations, and that is purely for the purpose of intimidation. And at the same time, they’re pushing back very hard on absentee voting by mail.”

If the Trump administration is preparing to send armed federal agents to the polls to intimidate voters, absentee voting will be more important than ever in the upcoming elections.

Yet, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson recently told constituents that while he doesn’t think the federal government should take over elections administration, “I think we need to tighten up the requirements for absentee voting. I’m opposed to mail in register or mail in balloting.”

And as Erik Gunn reports, Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil’s Make Elections Great Again Act would restrict absentee voting, along with adding new layers of citizen verification steps while threatening to defund elections administrators who fail to comply with the bill’s onerous requirements.

“They’re going to do everything they can to try to make it harder to vote absentee by mail, to make it harder to vote absentee in person,” Poland says, adding, “They’re going to try to do it so they can put ICE agents around polling places and just try to intimidate people, to keep them away.”

So what can be done?

Voter intimidation is a crime, and specific instances can be addressed through lawsuits, Poland says. Still, he acknowledges (and Law Forward has argued in court) that once someone is deprived of the right to cast a ballot, there’s no remedy that can adequately compensate for that loss. That’s why it was so appalling when the city of Madison asserted that absentee voting is a “privilege” in response to a lawsuit brought by Poland’s organization over 200 lost ballots in the 2024 election.

Of course, in addition to worries about possible violations of individuals’ right to vote, there’s the fear that Trump could manage to subvert elections through heavy-handed tactics like the recent FBI raid to seize 2020 ballots from Fulton County. Both Vaudreuil and Poland think judges would step in to prevent such a seizure in the middle of an election, before the ballots were counted.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, absentee voting remains legal and many municipalities are using secure ballot drop boxes. We need to keep on making use of our right (not our privilege) to vote, using all the tools we have in place.

As for the intimidating effect of armed ICE agents at polling places, local officials and perhaps local law enforcement could have a role in protecting the polls and reassuring voters it’s safe to cast their ballots. Neighbors who have been organizing to warn people of ICE raids, bring food to immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes, and form a protective shield around schools could become self-appointed polling place protectors.

If we are going to defend the core tenets of our democracy against an administration that has demonstrated over and over again its contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, it’s going to take massive public resistance and a flat refusal to give up our rights.

“What is it that will make them stand down from what they’re doing to break the law?” asks Poland. “I think the people of Minnesota have answered that for us better than anybody else can, which is that you have to stand up, you have to exercise your rights, First Amendment rights, the right to vote.”

Exercising our rights is the only way to make sure they are not taken away. Courage and collective action are the best protection we’ve got.

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