Trump’s voting restrictions bill may fail, but parts live on in 23 states

By Julia Harte

April 14 (Reuters) – The SAVE America Act looks set to die in Congress, but 23 mostly Republican-led U.S. states have recently changed their voting procedures to mirror key aspects of President Donald Trump’s sweeping package of voting restrictions in time for November’s midterm elections, a Reuters analysis shows.

States from Wyoming to Georgia since 2024 have imposed new proof-of-citizenship requirements on Americans registering to vote and limited the types of photo ID accepted at the polls.

Officials in at least 17 of the states have opted to follow one of the SAVE America Act’s most controversial mandates: screening lists of registered voters for non-U.S.-citizens by running them through a federal system normally used to verify eligibility for public benefits.

Most of these state changes are not as extreme as the SAVE America Act when it comes to how voters can prove their citizenship and the types of photo ID accepted when casting a ballot, according to the Reuters analysis.

But voting rights advocates warn that these copycat measures could still disenfranchise citizens who ‌lack certain forms of identification during this year’s elections, which will determine whether Trump’s fellow Republicans retain control over Congress.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, did not mention the SAVE America Act in his opening address after Congress reconvened on Monday.

At a signing ceremony in March for an executive order to tighten mail-in voting rules, Trump called U.S. voter fraud “massive.” Trump’s executive order has been challenged in court and is unlikely to take effect in the near future.

Although most new state-level proof-of-citizenship and photo ID requirements are not as severe as those Trump has pushed, they “still have really serious impacts on voters,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights and the rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center.

The bipartisan political reform group Issue One analyzed an election fraud database maintained by the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank and found 65 total convictions of non-citizen voting between 2000 and 2025, out of about 1.4 billion votes cast in federal elections.

The Heritage Foundation, which describes the database as a “non-comprehensive” sampling of election fraud cases on its website, did not respond to a request for comment.

MORE LENIENT STATE MEASURES

The SAVE America Act’s most well-known provision is its requirement that people registering to vote in a federal election provide proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate.

Of seven states that have imposed new proof-of-citizenship requirements in time to take effect in November’s election, only one – New Hampshire – is as strict as the SAVE America Act.

Chris Diaz, legislative tracking director at the non-partisan Voting Rights Lab, noted that many Americans are already required to provide documentary proof of citizenship when applying for a driver’s license or state ID, and that the 2005 Real ID Act requires states to retain digital copies of such records.

“It just doesn’t make any sense for a state to not leverage the massive amount of information they already have about voters,” he said.

Similarly, most states recognize that the SAVE America Act’s limits on the types of ID voters could show at the polls – only unexpired U.S. passports, driver’s licenses, state IDs, military IDs or tribal IDs – are needlessly restrictive, Diaz said.

Of nine states that have recently tightened their photo ID rules in time for November’s election, some allow voters to show student IDs, expired IDs, or simply any ID with a voter’s name and photo. New Hampshire and Indiana are two exceptions where lawmakers have replicated the photo ID requirements in the SAVE America Act.

SENDING VOTER ROLLS TO DHS

The part of the SAVE America Act that officials in 17 states have copied more closely is its mandate that voter rolls be sent to the Department of Homeland Security to be run through a system typically used to verify the citizenship or immigration status of people applying for benefits.

Historically, election officials had occasionally used that “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements” system to check specific voters whose citizenship status was unclear.

Last year, the Trump administration expanded the system to include additional types of personal information, such as data from the Social Security Administration, and invited states to upload their entire voter rolls to be screened for non-citizens.

Six states have since passed laws requiring their voter rolls to be run through the DHS system on a periodic basis. In 12 others, top election officials have opted to do so.

In Iowa, the process revealed 277 non-citizens among the state’s 2.1 million registered voters, of whom 40 had tried to vote in the 2024 election, according to the secretary of state’s office. In Utah, the DHS system flagged nearly 9,000 of the state’s 2 million voters as requiring further investigation – but manual verification found only one non-citizen, according to the state’s lieutenant governor.

“The initial results of those searches mostly just prove that there’s nothing to see here, that there isn’t a problem to be fixed,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

A ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation in February found that state officials in Missouri and Texas incorrectly flagged dozens of voters as non-citizens after running their lists through the system, suspending their right to vote or initiating their removal from voter rolls altogether.

(Reporting by Julia Harte. Editing by Paul Thomasch, Michael Learmonth anf Alistair Bell)