The House will vote Wednesday afternoon on an election bill backed by President Donald Trump that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and require photo identification at the ballot box.
The SAVE America Act, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, has been the focus of a pressure campaign from the White House, hard-line congressional Republicans and online influencers like Elon Musk.
Democrats and voting rights groups, meanwhile, say the legislation would disenfranchise millions of Americans, make it harder to register to vote, and put more power in the hands of Trump and the federal government ahead of what is expected to be a difficult midterm election for the GOP.
“It’s the president’s wishes that elections be turned over to him and his administration,” said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., referring to Trump’s recent comments about nationalizing American elections.
“He wants to do it because Republicans know that if the midterm elections go off as they expect they should … he will lose the majority of the House, probably lose the majority in the Senate,” Morelle, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, told reporters on Tuesday.
Under the U.S. Constitution, states are granted control of most aspects of elections.
An amended version of the SAVE America Act advanced out of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday. The House is scheduled to take a procedural vote on the measure early Wednesday afternoon, then vote on the underlying bill later in the day.
If the legislation passes the House, it faces an uphill climb in the Senate, where Democratic leaders have vowed to block the measure, which needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. At least one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has come out in opposition.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., a supporter of the legislation, on Tuesday threw cold water on a push to change the filibuster rule in the Senate to clear the way for passage, further undermining the bill’s odds of becoming law.
“There aren’t anywhere close to the votes, not even close, to nuking the filibuster,” Thune said at a news conference on Tuesday. “So that idea is something, although it continues to be put out there. … That doesn’t have a future.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) listens during a House Rules Committee meeting on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act at the U.S. Capitol on May 21, 2025.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
But the House is pressing on.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business called it a top priority for both the House GOP and the president and echoed Trump’s unfounded claims about noncitizen voters deciding federal elections.
“They want illegals to vote. That’s why they opened the border wide for four years under [President Joe} Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris and allowed in all these dangerous people. It was a means to an end. The end is maintaining their own power,” Johnson said.
“They’ve got to cheat, frankly. That’s it. They’ve got to allow illegals to participate in elections so that they can continue to win,” he said.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and documented cases are rare.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice and the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, 21 million Americans do not have documents proving their citizenship readily available and 2.6 million Americans lack government-issued photo ID of any kind. Young voters and voters of color could be disproportionately impacted and women whose married names are not on their birth certificates could face additional barriers to register, the Brennan Center warned.
The latest push for a GOP-led election reform bill comes nearly a year after the House advanced similar legislation, dubbed the SAVE Act, with the support of four Democrats.
The earlier iteration of the bill, also introduced by Roy, required proof of citizenship to register to vote, but did not have the voter ID provision. It never got a vote on the Senate floor.
Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, one of the Democrats who supported the earlier SAVE Act, told CNBC this week the newer version is “not even close to the same” as the one he previously supported.
Another Democratic supporter of the earlier SAVE Act, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, said on Wednesday she would not support the latest proposal.
“Call me a perfectionist but if your legislation requires government to provide free photocopy services, you have not written a good piece of legislation,” she posted to X.
