SAVE Act would create ‘chaos’ for election offices

Advancing legislation that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote could create chaos for state and local election offices, a state election official and a voting expert told StateScoop.

The House of Representatives last Thursday passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, a bill that has received strong support from congressional Republicans who’ve deemed the measure necessary to ensure that only citizens vote in U.S. elections. The concern arrives amid mostly unfounded fears that large swaths of immigrants and undocumented individuals are participating in and influencing elections.

Introduced this year by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, following a failed attempt last year, the legislation would require state and local election offices to conduct additional audits of their voter databases to weed out noncitizens.

It would require states to create alternative processes for voters to demonstrate citizenship and create new penalties for state and local election officials who accept or process voter registrations without proof of citizenship. State and local election administrators would be subject to civil lawsuits and criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison.

Voting advocates and concerned state leaders said these changes would burden state and local election offices, which are often already strapped for resources. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said the SAVE Act would “cause a lot of chaos in our election system, from top to bottom.” And criminal penalties, he said, would create a “cloud of intimidation” for election offices, many of which are underpaid and understaffed.

Simon said the chaos would particularly impact elections’ technical processes, such as same-day voter registration and online voter registration, the latter of which is allowed in 42 states.

“This will likely put to an end most online voter registration. We’ve all become accustomed to doing almost everything online, and voter registration is no exception to that. This, in many cases, would preclude that,” Simon said. “It would require people to show up in person and present some sort of paper to someone, whether that is a birth certificate, whether that’s a marriage record, whether that’s naturalization papers — that’s not something you could readily do anywhere that I’m aware of online.”

‘What is the methodology?’

State and local election officials would also be required to conduct retroactive audits of their voter rolls, removing any registered voters flagged as non-citizens. Simon said that under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, states like Minnesota are already required to conduct what he called “list maintenance,” an audit-like process that includes deactivating voters who have recently moved or otherwise made themselves ineligible to vote.

Simon said Minnesota’s election officials work with a variety of agencies, including immigration and law enforcement, to get data for cross-referencing and maintaining voter rolls. But he said it would be difficult for election administrators to meet existing and new auditing requirements without additional guidance.

“Somehow, we’re being asked to go through all the voters on the voter rolls and do an independent check, I guess, as to whether or not they’re citizens,” he said. “And the thing that I think surprises a lot of people is there is no master list in this country of citizens of the United States. If there were, that would be a lot easier.

“The question is, what is that methodology? How do you do that? What are you asking? And the question I have is what is this law really asking people to do on a practical basis, day-to-day? What is the real thing they’re being asked to do? And can they even do it based on the data that’s out there?”

‘A problem that doesn’t exist’

Tom Lopach, CEO of the nonprofit Voter Participation Center, said the SAVE Act would add to workforce and resource issues already challenging beleaguered election offices, while attempting to solve “a problem that doesn’t exist.”

“It is already illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote. They are not allowed to vote, and many states have a voter [system] when you show up to vote. States already have systems in place to check people who are submitting a registration to make sure they are citizens,” Lopach said. “The number of incidents of non-citizens voting is incredibly rare and on the occasion it does happen, usually it is because of confusion and not some coordinated effort to have non-citizens voting in our elections.”

Arizona and Kansas have attempted to require voters to provide additional proof of citizenship during voter registration, and in each case it backfired spectacularly. Kansas passed its law in 2011, and in the two years it was enforced more than 30,000 eligible voters were blocked from registering to vote, mainly married women who’d changed their names. Kansas’ law blocked about 12% of voter registrations during the period before it was declared unconstitutional by the courts, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018.

Lopach said voter disenfranchisement might be part of the goal. He argued that elections already cater to affluent citizens who have the luxury of getting to a polling place and that the SAVE Act’s added requirements are just another hurdle aimed at keeping folks from voting.

“Voting efforts favor older white folks. Voting locations favor people who can take time off of work, people who can get in their car and drive, and don’t favor people who may use public transportation or may need to vote after hours,” he said. “So it could all add up to strain the resources of state and county offices and to again, over-indexed on people of wealth while making it harder for minorities, women, young people, to be part of our elections. If the end goal is to keep people from voting, maybe that’s what’s all going on here.”

Trump’s cyber cuts

If the SAVE Act is intended to bolster election security, Simon said the Trump administration’s latest actions stand in contrast to that goal. Last month, the president signed an executive order that, similarly to the SAVE Act, directs the Election Assistance Commission to add proof of U.S. citizenship to its voter registration forms. The EAC is a independent group created by the 2002 Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which created standards for voting systems.

The order may also force states to purchase new voting machines that meet technical specifications — except there’s no voting machine commercially available that meets those specifications, The Washington Post reported. If states don’t purchase new voting equipment as required by Trump’s order, election offices may need to hand count ballots for the 2026 midterm elections.

Cuts last February at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which provides election offices with cybersecurity services through a partnership with the Center for Internet Security, also seems to be contrary to the goal of bolstering election security, Simon said. The Center for Internet Security provides states cybersecurity support through its Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis center, which last month lost roughly $10 million of its federal funding. The center shuttered its operation of the Elections Infrastructure ISAC last February after CISA announced its functions duplicated the efforts of federal agencies.

“Look, if what we want is secure elections, elections that are fair and accurate and honest and secure, the thing that the federal government can do for those who run elections that would be most valuable is to shore up a partnership with the Department of Homeland Security, specifically with CISA, to provide continuous and reliable financial support for the administration of elections through the Help America Vote Act,” Simon said. “So, I think the SAVE Act is really an exercise in taking everyone’s eye off the ball here, because there are other ways — better ways — to shore up election security across the board.”