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President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have logged quite a few significant legislative wins this term – but one key item eludes them: the SAVE America Act. While this election security bill flounders at the federal level, however, several red states have stepped up and passed similar laws locally. For the GOP, that’s something like progress. Yet on the bigger picture nationwide, how much does that really change?
Red States Strive to SAVE Elections
The House first passed the SAVE Act in April of 2025, then expanded that to the SAVE America Act in February of this year. Yet neither version has seen any real success in the Senate – the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster, which requires a handful of Democrats to join every Republican, is simply too big an ask. So, by mid-July, the GOP shifted gears and began working on yet another reconciliation bill – this time, including $10 billion in federal grants to reward states that adopt such laws on their own.
As Liberty Nation News explained last month, it’s a classic play:
“Back in 1987, the government bribed states to mandate seat belts by withholding a percentage of federal highway funding for any state that refused. The feds did the same – using the same funding, in fact – to coerce states to raise the drinking age to 21 in the ‘80s and to drop the speed limit to 55 MPH in the ‘70s. And those are just three examples of many.”
Call it incentives, rewards, bribery – pick your poison. A rose by any other name … and, as these historical examples show, it often proves universally effective.
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But some Republican-led states are already on board. Florida, Utah, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Tennessee each passed legislation either requiring “documentary proof of citizenship” (DPOC) at the point of voter registration or allowing state officials to demand such proof if citizenship can’t be verified through federal databases. Wyoming did so in 2025, and Louisiana in 2024. Notably, New Hampshire – a state one might call more purple than red or blue, though it has leaned more Democratic in presidential elections since the ‘90s – also adopted such requirements in 2024.
Of course, some states were ahead of the class. Arizona famously passed a bifurcated registration system back in 2022. The Grand Canyon State had actually required DPOC for voter registration as far back as 2004, but the US Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in 2013. Under the new system, there are two registration forms; “federal only” voters aren’t required to prove citizenship, but any who hope to cast a ballot in state elections must.
Ohio also enacted requirements for proof of citizenship in 2022, and Alabama has been checking driver’s licenses and Social Security records to verify voter eligibility since 2009. Alabama and Kansas passed DPOC laws in 2011, though the first never fully implemented it and the second’s was struck down by a court ruling in 2018.
All of these states – and several others – already require ID at the polls to vote, though, interestingly, the laws in Utah, Arizona, and Wyoming don’t require it be an actual photo ID.
Does It Move the Needle?
It’s little surprise, however, that most of these states are on board. These aren’t the states the Trump administration and many Republicans allege have illegals voting. Just last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had completed an analysis of voter rolls and had found more than 250,000 non-citizen registered voters in just four states – California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
It remains unclear just how that analysis was conducted – and, so far, officials from three of the four states have disputed the numbers. Still, a quarter of a million is an alarming number, even if it turns out to be somewhat exaggerated – which may or may not be the case.
And this isn’t the only voter roll issue New Jersey currently faces. The state’s Motor Vehicle Commission discovered that a “system error” had improperly registered about 6,600 people to vote who had indicated on their driver’s license applications that they weren’t citizens. It was a big enough deal that Governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, came out in favor of a voter ID law in the Garden State – though she maintains that she’s against the SAVE Act and considers it “just a tool of voter suppression.”
Even that, however, seems like a suspiciously safe take for a Democrat governor in a state with a mixed legislature and a Democratic majority in one chamber that has thus far refused to pass such laws. If it all sounds too familiar, it’s because we’ve heard this song before. Democrats in the US Congress have long claimed to be in favor of “fair” voter ID laws as they reject the SAVE Act – much in the way they say they respect the Second Amendment as they strive to pass more and stricter gun control. GOP leaders put that to the test, teeing up “clean” voter ID bills only to see Democrats vote them down.
And therein lies the problem: President Trump and congressional Republicans want to pass a nationwide voter ID and DPOC requirement, but Democrats won’t have it. And without the SAVE America Act at the federal level, none of the blue states have – or likely will – do it on their own.
