SAVE Our Souls: The Implicated Threats of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act 

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed a once-obscure election rights bill, and voting-rights experts are sounding the alarms: the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (also known as the SAVE America Act, or H.R. 22/S. 12). Two new bills, the SAVE America Act

(H.R. 7296/S. 3752) and Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act (H.R. 7300), were recently

introduced to renew and expand on voter restrictions. The first effort to pass the SAVE Act last year failed in the face of nationwide public opposition, but the GOP is once again pulling out all of the stops to rally behind the bill, with only Henry Cuellar of Texas (D) joining all House Republicans in voting for the Trump‑backed bill before it heads to the Senate. Democrats are certain to challenge SAVE, but the efforts of the Republican caucus in prioritizing election security in favor of key national concerns such as ICE crackdowns and the precipitous rise in the cost of living should serve as a warning sign that federal authorities are levelling a foundational principle of our democratic system, and that it’s happening right now. 

In short, the SAVE Act prohibits states from accepting and processing an application for voter registration in a federal election unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. However, the precedent for citizen-exclusive voting rights has existed for decades, and citizenship has been a fundamental requirement of the voting process. The only time voting by noncitizen immigrants was widely practiced and not uncommonly controversial was in the nation’s infancy. The emerging republicanism embodied in slogans such as “no taxation without representation” made noncitizen voting an extension of democratic praxis; what discerned the right to vote was property, gender, and race. If one was to analyse, however, the transformation and (dis)appearance of alien suffrage in America, they arrive at a coterminous and pivotal juncture in American power relations. As political scientist Ron Hayduk asserts, “an influx of newer immigrants at a point in time sparks a wave of nationalism and nativism—often associated with war or political conflict—and a rollback of voting rights.” In the eve of the 18th century, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed for the government to detain foreigners at will and produced the legal category of “aliens ineligible for citizenship” respectively. These pieces of legislation were passed by the governing Federalist coalition within the context of the Quasi-War and XYZ Affair with France, in which French diplomats demanded bribes from American envoys to negotiate disputes, leading to public outrage and calls for military interference and the surveillance of the U.S. population.

Leading politicians would take advantage, creating the narrative that Frenchmen within America would infect the people with radical ideas and underscore the fundamental principles of the nation. In addition, the caucus hoped to retain control of the allied Adams Administration, using the Acts to appeal to conservatives and nativists. The nature of immigration suffrage has always in some capacity been related towards a movement towards insularity. Political and legal measures have been taken since to further restrict voting rights for immigrants. Non-citizen voting rights were rolled back and ultimately barred entirely by 1924 in every state in response to the influx of immigrants into East and West Coast cities. Outside of the majority European migrant population, the Supreme Court expanded their jurisdiction by ruling  that people of both Japanese heritage, Ozawa v. United States (1922), and South Asian descent, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), were ineligible to become naturalized citizens, and set the foundation for the infamous decision against Frank Korematsu’s right to evade internment in 1942 (Korematsu v. United States).

 All of these rulings precede the Civil Rights Act of 1960. Decades later on the national level, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, although some areas, like the District of Columbia, Maryland, and California have implemented legislation allowing for noncitizen suffrage on the local level. Due to the various efforts put in place by the US government to safeguard and prevent noncitizens from voting in elections, a small number of them actually end up going to the polls, especially when the process carries a literal paper trail. Noncitizen voting has been illegal for more than a century and holds severe consequences if violated, with sentences leading anywhere from imprisonment to deportation. With the rigidity and settled nature of laws dictating alien suffrage, no well-informed incentives exist. Utah, for example, performed a citizenship review of its entire voter registration list from April 2025 through January 2026.

From a review of more than 2 million registered voters, state officials identified only one confirmed instance of noncitizen registration and zero instances of noncitizen voting. The Michigan Department of State, using resources from the Department of Homeland Security, found that approximately 16 noncitizens appeared to have illegally voted in the 2024 general election, out of a total of 5.7 million ballots sent. That’s 1 person out of 360,000. 

So why, then, does the House continue to attempt to pass the bill? The SAVE Act operates on the premise that noncitizens are voting in significant numbers; the Trump Administration is no stranger to cracking down on supposed voter fraud over the past decade, but SAVE in particular has garnered notoriety for what it means for mutual forbearance. Instances of voter fraud by immigrants are exceedingly low, and deliberate attempts are even less, almost infinitesimally so. If that concern for our democracy is to be removed, it ought to be done with the scalpel of deliberate, state-level intervention, not a federally-backed anvil which pulverizes the civic protections of greater America. 

This goes beyond supposed foreign intervention in our domestic affairs; the effects of SAVE have widespread bearing on the very right to vote and the democratic principles which scaffold it. For months, the current administration has sought to undermine the integrity of the nations through the silencing of millions of Americans who both wish to express their wishes in how the government is run, and have every right to do so unless SAVE threatens it. The SAVE Act is about suppression, seeking to severely curb voter registration efforts and disenfranchise already registered constituents by imposing unnecessary barriers to the registration process. For example, the Act functionally eliminates online and mail-in voter registration, and other voter registration efforts by requiring people to produce citizenship documents in person to an election official. As of February 2026, only 6% of voters currently register in person at an elections office. In addition, under SAVE, most voters wouldn’t be able to register to vote with their driver’s license alone, because licenses generally do not indicate citizenship. 

This subsequently requires Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to register to vote and attend the polls. This poses a significant socioeconomic issue that would disproportionately impact working-class and lower-income Americans: 1 in 4 Americans with a high school degree or less have a valid passport, and with 1 in 5 holding a yearly salary below $50,000. According to research from The Brennan Center, 21 million people lack ready access to these documents. All of these metrics equate to approximately 146 million American citizens who do not possess a valid passport. 153 million voted in the 2024 presidential general election. Communities of color, married women who have changed their names, transgender people, the poor, and the elderly are among those who will now find it more difficult to express their political voices if SAVE is enacted. 

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This article was edited by Abigail D’Angelo.