The president says the election security bill ‘will guarantee the midterms’ for Republicans. Available data is far less clear cut. Here’s why
Can the SAVE America Act actually pass Congress?
Trump says the SAVE Act would “guarantee” GOP wins in the midterms. What’s in the bill and does it any real chance of passing.
WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump has pushed congressional Republicans to pass stiff new voter registration requirements, he has argued that the legislation will benefit their party in the upcoming election.
“It will guarantee the midterms,” Trump told Republican lawmakers gathered March 9 at his Doral, Fla. golf resort, in urging them to make it their No. 1 priority. “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”
The fact that Republicans have been so gung-ho for the bill, known informally as the SAVE Act, suggests they do believe their party would benefit in a year when forecasters project they may lose control of the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile Democrats uniformly oppose the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, and voting rights and civil rights advocates worry that it would disenfranchise many voters who lack access to proof of citizenship − a risk that is usually considered a threat to Democrats, whose supporters are disproportionately young, nonwhite and low-income.
But would the SAVE Act actually give Republicans a partisan advantage? The evidence is unclear.
The bill would require Americans to show documentary proof of citizenship – such as a birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents – to register to vote in federal elections. Provisions under consideration could also greatly restrict, or eliminate, mail-in voting and would create a national requirement to show a government-issued photo ID to vote, which is currently only needed in some states.
Democrats overwhelmingly say they support election security and voter ID measures to make sure noncitizens and other ineligible people can’t register or vote, while noting that such cases are extremely rare. But they say the bill’s proof of citizenship requirements for registration would block many eligible voters.
“Under the SAVE Act, you cannot use your driver’s license to register to vote,” Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said March 19 on X. “Republicans want you to buy a passport instead. If you can afford one. This is a modern-day poll tax.”
Here’s what we know, according to voting rights groups, legislative analysis and other data.
‘Political impact may vary state by state’
One of the most widely cited findings in the debate comes from research by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, which has been researching the issue for many years.
In a March 2025 report, “Who Lacks Documentary Proof of Citizenship?,” the Center took three in-depth surveys, including a nationally representative sample of the adult U.S. citizen population.
“Many Americans of all political identities lack DPOC,” or documentary proof of citizenship,” the study said. “More research is needed to understand how, if at all, the SAVE Act would impact electoral outcomes.”
The national survey found that those who lacked easy access to proof of citizenship were disproportionately younger and people of color, two demographic groups that tend to vote more for Democrats than Republicans.
But the Center also took two state-level surveys, in Georgia and Texas, and found that the “results suggest that the political impact may vary state by state.”
In the Texas survey, the Center said, more Republicans than Democrats reported not currently having citizenship documentation at all or not being able to easily access it. But in its Georgia study, the authors wrote, “we found roughly even numbers of Democrats and Republicans were impacted.”
The electorate has become less polarized by income in recent elections. In 2016, voters making less than $30,00 favored Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 13 percentage points over Trump, while in 2024 Trump lost those low-income voters to former Vice President Kamala Harris by just 4 percentage points, according to exit polls.
Millions of Americans lack required documents
In recent weeks, Trump said he won’t sign bills until the Senate follows the House’s lead and passes the SAVE Act.
The GOP’s push to do so this week has faced stiff opposition, not only from Democrats but also from some Republicans who are unwilling to eliminate the Senate’s filibuster and its de facto supermajority requirement to pass it, as Trump demands.
But if it does pass, tens of millions Americans could be affected.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found in a 2024 study that more than 21 million American citizens did not have easy access to the kinds of proof-of-citizenship documents the bill would require.
And at least 3.8 million people didn’t possess any of those documents at all, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen, according to that Brennan Center report, which was done with the Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement and two other voting rights groups, VoteRiders and Public Wise.
The Brennan Center report also uncovered some evidence of racial disparity, with 8% of self-identified white American citizens lacking ready access to citizenship documents but nearly 11% of Americans of color in a similar position.
An updated Brennan Center report, issued by the same authors last month, found that 8% of Democrats who said they cast a ballot in 2020 don’t have easy access to these documents, compared with 7% of Republicans.
The mail-in registration complication
Further clouding the picture are other possible provisions of the new bill.
For instance, the final version of the SAVE America Act would likely also require in-person proof of citizenship to register or update registration, limiting or replacing existing methods like registration over the Internet, by mail or at local state Motor Vehicle offices.
A Brennan Center survey from 2023 found that millions more voters who did have access to citizenship documents still preferred to register using these popular methods.
Key – but bipartisan – constituencies
Trump has long claimed, without proof, that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden, especially the “millions” of undocumented immigrants he says were let into the country by Democrats to boost their political fortunes.
A mountain of empirical evidence has shown that Trump’s claims aren’t true, and that non-citizen voting and other forms of election fraud are virtually non-existent.
Conservative groups disagree. One, the Heritage Foundation, maintains a database of what it says are 1,546 “proven instances of voter fraud.”
“The SAVE Act would make sure non-citizens can’t vote in American elections,” the think tank said in a Jan. 22 Facebook post. “If you oppose that, you’re probably trying to cheat.”
A potential to backfire on Republicans?
On its face, the proposed law targets administrative factors, like access to documents and registration methods, as opposed to party affiliation.
But analysts say it could impact voters of both parties in different ways nationally, and state-by-state given their existing election policies and protocols.
Married women, the elderly, young individuals, Hispanic citizens, and low-income registrants will have the most trouble registering to vote under the SAVE Act, according to a January 2025 analysis by the non-partisan Institute for Responsive Government.
In a recent analysis, The Washington Post found that rural voters – a group Trump won by a 30-point margin in 2024 – are less likely to have passports. Adding to that unpredictability, the Post said, was the fact that Republicans attract more male, working-class and first-time voters, “who tend to have lower education levels and less access to documentation.”
The biggest voting bloc – older Americans
Older Americans across party lines are likely to face some of the most significant documentation hurdles, including mismatched or missing records, according to March 17 “SAVE America Act Guide” by the non-partisan AARP, formerly known as formerly known as American Association of Retired Persons.
That could prove significant, the AARP said in another report from October 2024, because older adults are a major force in deciding U.S. elections.
Voters 65 and older have had the highest turnout of any age group since 1988, with 72 percent casting ballots in 2020, the AARP guide said. For the 2024 election, it said, voters 50 and older made up 55 percent of the electorate.
Older Americans who have moved often over the span of their lives or have moved out of their homes and into nursing or assisted living facilities, may have an especially tough time gathering the required proof of eligibility such as a birth certificate.
Particular challenges for women and minorities
The bill under consideration is also likely to pose particular challenges for women, especially those who have taken their husbands’ name, which does doesn’t match the name on their birth certificate.
“As far as married women who have changed their name, if they’re already registered to vote, they’re entirely unaffected by the SAVE Act,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a March 10 White House press briefing.
The AARP notes that among women married to men, 85% of those 50 and older took their husband’s last name when they wed.
While women as a whole lean Democratic, married women favored Trump by five percentage points in 2024.