US House to consider new election restrictions ahead of November midterms

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) – The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to vote on Wednesday on a bill requiring proof of U.S. citizenship in the November midterm elections, which Democrats denounced as a ploy to hurt their chances in a contest that will determine control of Congress.

The SAVE America Act is the latest version of legislation that first emerged during the 2024 presidential campaign, driven by President Donald Trump’s false claims that large numbers of people in the country illegally have been voting in federal elections.

A similar measure passed the House twice – last April and in 2024 – with support from a handful of Democrats. But it died in the Senate.

The House vote on the bill comes barely a week after Trump called for Republicans to “take over” elections in more than a dozen locations. The bill would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote in the midterms and would impose criminal penalties on election officials who register anyone without the required documentation.

Republicans have also added a photo ID requirement for subsequent federal elections for people casting ballots at the polls or via mail-in ballots. They cite polls including a Pew Research Center survey showing that 83% of voters, including 71% of Democrats, back photo ID for voters.

REPUBLICANS WORRIED OVER SPECIAL ELECTION LOSSES

Democratic Party leaders say the legislation attempts to suppress the vote and undermine their electoral chances at a time when they are favored by independent analysts to take control of the House. Republicans have been jarred by a string of Democratic special election wins, including one for the Texas state Senate viewed as a wake-up call.

“Republicans are trying to lay the ground to undermine midterm elections that I think they feel concerned about losing on the merits,” said Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who likened the citizenship requirement to the poll taxes once used in Southern U.S. states to dissuade voting by Blacks and poor Whites.

If passed by the House, the bill would face long odds in the Republican-led Senate, where it would need Democratic support to meet a 60-vote margin for passage. Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has denounced it as “Jim Crow 2.0.”

It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. Independent groups on the left and the right, as well as state election officials, have found such voting to be extremely rare.

The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has warned that the SAVE America Act could deny the vote to millions of U.S. citizens who lack ready access to passports, birth certificates and other documents that prove their citizenship.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise described the citizenship requirement as a “real common sense” standard to protect Americans.

“Everybody understands what that means,” Scalise told reporters on Tuesday. “If someone is stealing your vote, then they’re nullifying your vote.”

Democracy advocates say the legislation is also part of a larger struggle between the Trump administration and state governments that has included the withholding of federal funds, the deployment of National Guard troops and the FBI search of a county election office in Georgia.

“We have checks and balances in place that include state and local officials acting as a check against federal overreach,” said Mai Ratakonda, program director of election protection at States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan group that works to safeguard free and fair elections. “That’s what the federal government is trying to undermine.”

Republican leaders say the legislation is necessary to revive public confidence in the election system and accuse Democrats of opposing it because they want non-citizens who entered into the United States under President Joe Biden to vote illegally.

“There’s only one logical reason the Democrats are opposing this. They want people to participate in elections who are not supposed to. That’s what the wide-open border was about,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. 

Democrats say any decline in electoral confidence has resulted from Trump’s repeated false claims about non-citizen voting and a stolen 2020 election.

 “Republicans have created distrust in the elections by making claims of non-existent fraud,” U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told ABC News in a recent interview. He described the SAVE America Act as a “voter suppression” law. 

Republicans are also readying a second, broader election bill, called the Make Elections Great Again Act, which would mandate the use of paper ballots, restrict mail-in ballots and prohibit ranked-choice voting in federal general elections. It was examined at a hearing before the House Administration Committee on Tuesday.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Edmund Klamann)