Trump’s Voter ID Push: SAVE Act, Executive Order, and Lawsuits

President Trump is pushing two parallel efforts to tighten federal voting rules: the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register and photo ID to vote in federal elections, and an executive order directing federal agencies to build citizenship-verification lists for states and impose new standards on mail ballots. The bill is stalled in the Senate. The executive order is moving toward partial implementation but is being challenged in federal court. Together, they represent the SAVE Act and Trump executive order on voting that many searchers are now trying to understand.

Here’s what each does, where each stands, and what it could mean for you.

What the SAVE America Act Would Require

Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Representative Chip Roy of Texas introduced the SAVE America Act on January 30, 2026, as an expanded version of an earlier SAVE Act that cleared the House in April 2025 on a 220–208 vote.¹² The bill amends the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require every person registering (or re-registering) to vote in a federal election to present documentary proof of citizenship, and to show photo ID at the polls.³

Acceptable proof includes:

A REAL ID-compliant photo ID that indicates U.S. citizenship.
A valid U.S. passport.
A military ID paired with a service record showing a U.S. birthplace.
A federal, state, or tribal photo ID showing a U.S. birthplace.
A government-issued photo ID paired with a certified birth certificate, naturalization certificate, certificate of citizenship, consular report of birth abroad, or an extract from a U.S. hospital birth record.⁴

A key detail: people registering by mail would have to deliver the citizenship documents in person to an election official’s office. That would effectively end most mail-in and online voter registration as it operates today.³

States would also have to submit voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security for citizenship verification. DHS and the Social Security Administration would be required to respond to state requests within 24 hours.⁴ Election officials who register a voter without proper documentation could face fines and up to five years in federal prison, and the bill creates a private right of action allowing individuals to sue those officials. No federal funding is provided to states to implement the new system, and the requirements would take effect immediately upon enactment.³

Why the Bill Is Stuck in the Senate

The SAVE America Act has not been able to overcome a Democratic filibuster and lacks the 60 Senate votes needed to advance.⁵⁶

Murkowski explained her opposition in a February 2026 op-ed, writing that while she supports voter ID in principle, the bill’s documentation rules would be difficult for rural Alaskans to meet and could cost residents hundreds or thousands of dollars in travel. She also argued the Constitution assigns election administration to states, not the federal government, and raised concerns about the reliability of the DHS citizenship database.⁷

Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged the math. “We don’t have the votes, either to proceed to a talking filibuster nor to sustain one if we got one,” Thune said.⁸ Senator Rick Scott of Florida and others also doubted the bill’s provisions could survive the Byrd Rule, which bars policy changes with only incidental budgetary effects from reconciliation legislation.⁹

What Trump’s Executive Order Does

With the bill stalled, Trump signed Executive Order 14399 on March 31, 2026, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”¹⁰ The order doesn’t create a national voter ID card. It directs federal agencies to do three main things:

Build citizenship lists for states. The Secretary of Homeland Security, coordinating with the Social Security Administration, must compile and send each state a list of confirmed U.S. citizens age 18 or older, updated at least 60 days before each regularly scheduled federal election.
Reshape mail ballots. The Postmaster General must start rulemaking to require all mail-in and absentee ballots to use envelopes marked “Official Election Mail” with unique Intelligent Mail barcodes, and to send ballots only to voters on verified state participation lists.
Enforce compliance. The Attorney General is directed to prioritize prosecutions related to distributing ballots to ineligible voters, and federal agencies may withhold funds from noncompliant states and localities “where such withholding is authorized by law.”¹¹

The order cites the president’s Article II duty to enforce federal law, Article IV’s guarantee of republican government, and two federal statutes — the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act — as its legal basis.¹¹

Where Implementation Stands

A June 8, 2026, DHS memo indicated the administration was on track to launch a portal by June 30, 2026, giving state election officials access to citizenship data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Social Security Administration, and the State Department. A public-facing portal for individuals to check or correct their own records was deemed not feasible by that deadline and pushed to later in 2026.¹²

The Postal Service published its proposed mail ballot rulemaking on June 2, 2026, laying out envelope standards, barcode rules, and a “Federal Ballot Mail Portal” through which states would submit voter participation lists. The proposed rules apply to general and special federal elections but exempt primaries and military and overseas ballots. The comment period closes July 2, 2026.¹³ Election administration experts have called the rules “onerous” and warned they are being rushed ahead of the November 2026 elections without clear funding for state compliance.¹⁴

Legal Challenges

On April 3, 2026, a coalition of 23 state attorneys general and the Governor of Pennsylvania sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, arguing the order usurps state authority over elections. The case is co-led by the attorneys general of California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Washington.¹⁵ A separate challenge from the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, joined by the ACLU, is proceeding in the same court.¹⁶

Trump attempted similar executive action before. He signed an executive order in March 2025 that sought to require the Election Assistance Commission to mandate citizenship documentation for the federal voter registration form. Three federal courts blocked it, and in October 2025 a federal court permanently enjoined its key provisions, ruling that the president lacks unilateral authority to change election procedures reserved for Congress and the states.¹⁷

Who Would Have to Produce Documents — and Who Doesn’t Have Them

If the SAVE America Act became law, tens of millions of eligible citizens would need to locate paperwork many don’t currently hold. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that more than 21 million eligible American citizens lack ready access to a passport or birth certificate.¹⁸ A Bipartisan Policy Center survey found that roughly 9 percent of eligible voters do not have or lack easy access to documentary proof of citizenship, 11 percent of registered voters cannot access their birth certificate, and 52 percent do not hold an unexpired passport with their current legal name.³

The burden is uneven. Only about one in five Americans with household incomes below $50,000 has a valid passport. Roughly 69 million married women hold birth certificates that don’t match their current legal name, meaning they’d need a marriage certificate or other supporting documents. Nearly half of Black Americans under 30 lack ID matching their current name and address, and some older Black Americans were never issued birth certificates. About 24 percent of Americans under 30 lack ready access to the required documents.¹⁹

Getting the paperwork isn’t free. A U.S. passport starts at $165, a replacement naturalization certificate costs $1,385, and certified birth certificates range from $10 to $50 depending on the state. In the 30 largest counties in the Western U.S., voters would face an average 260-mile round trip to reach an election office in person, and some voters in Alaska and Hawaii would have to fly.¹⁹

One counterintuitive finding: the Bipartisan Policy Center reports that while Democrats and Republicans are roughly equally likely to possess at least one qualifying document, Democrats more often rely on passports and Republicans on birth certificates. Because birth certificates trigger stricter validation and more often require supplementary documents for name changes, the center concluded Republicans could be more heavily affected by those provisions.²⁰

A State-Level Preview

Kansas offers the closest real-world test. Under Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Kansas enacted a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement that took effect January 1, 2013. In the first year, nearly 24,000 Kansas citizens had their voter registration applications suspended for failing to provide the required paperwork.²¹ Federal courts eventually struck the law down. A trial court ruled in 2018 that the requirement violated the Equal Protection Clause and the National Voter Registration Act, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed in April 2020 in Fish v. Schwab.²²

How Rare Is Noncitizen Voting?

Trump and supporters of the SAVE Act frame it as necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections. The available evidence shows noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare.

A July 2025 report from the Center for Election Innovation and Research found that noncitizen voting occurs in “minuscule numbers” with no evidence of coordination. In Michigan’s 2024 election, an audit identified just over a dozen noncitizen ballots out of 5.7 million votes cast — a rate of 0.00028 percent.²³ The Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization, maintains a database of 1,546 proven voter fraud cases; just 68 involve noncitizen voting over roughly 40 years — less than 5 percent of the total, out of more than one billion votes cast in U.S. elections during that span.²⁴

Researchers report that when noncitizens do end up on voter rolls, it usually stems from bureaucratic errors or confusion about eligibility rather than intentional fraud. In Alabama in 2024, the secretary of state removed more than 3,000 supposed noncitizens from the rolls; a judge halted the purge after thousands of those individuals were found to be U.S. citizens.²³

What Both Sides Argue

Supporters say requiring proof of citizenship is a commonsense measure to ensure only eligible voters participate. Senator John Cornyn of Texas has framed it as fulfilling a mandate from American voters and the president to secure elections, and has urged Senate Republicans to consider rules changes to overcome the filibuster.²⁵ Proponents argue that a front-end verification system is more reliable than back-end database checks.

Opponents — including the Brennan Center for Justice, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Democratic members of Congress — argue the bill solves a problem that barely exists while creating barriers for millions of eligible citizens. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada cited Heritage Foundation data showing 77 cases of noncitizen voting between 1999 and 2023, and a Nevada investigation that found only two cases out of 7 million votes over a decade.²⁶ The League of Women Voters has cited research indicating citizens of color are three times more likely than white citizens to lack the necessary documents, and that two-thirds of Black Americans do not have a passport.²⁷ The Brennan Center has called the SAVE America Act “the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress.”²⁸

What Your State May Already Require

Even if federal changes stall, state-level rules are shifting. As of April 2025, 36 states had laws requesting or requiring some form of ID at the polls; 14 states and Washington, D.C., did not. Of those 36 states, 23 require photo ID and 13 accept non-photo identification.²⁹

In the first four months of 2026 alone, at least nine states enacted 12 restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center. South Dakota and Utah began requiring passports or birth certificates for state and local voter registration. Florida, Kentucky, and Mississippi enacted laws requiring citizenship documentation from certain voters. Several states narrowed acceptable ID: Florida removed student IDs, debit cards, and public assistance IDs from its list; New Hampshire dropped student IDs; and Kansas passed a law invalidating driver’s licenses that reflect a gender identity different from the one assigned at birth.³⁰

Where Things Stand for November 2026

The SAVE America Act is stalled in the Senate, blocked by the filibuster and a handful of Republican holdouts. Trump’s executive order is moving toward partial implementation, with the DHS citizenship portal expected to launch by the end of June 2026 and Postal Service mail ballot rules in a comment period. Multiple lawsuits are proceeding in federal court, and the similar 2025 executive order has already been permanently blocked, with a court ruling the president lacks unilateral authority to alter election procedures reserved for Congress and the states.³¹ Whether any of these measures will be in effect for the November 2026 midterms remains an open question being fought out in courtrooms and on Capitol Hill.

If you’re a registered voter, the practical takeaway for now is to watch your state’s rules — which may be changing on their own timeline — and, if you’ll rely on a mail ballot, to track the outcome of the pending USPS rulemaking. If the SAVE Act ever passes, or if the executive order’s citizenship-list system survives court review, having a current passport or a certified birth certificate that matches your legal name will be the difference between registering easily and getting caught in a documentation cure process.

1
U.S. Senator Mike Lee. Senator Mike Lee Introduces SAVE America Act With Congressman Chip Roy
2
Congress.gov. Roll Call Vote, H.R. 22
3
Bipartisan Policy Center. Five Things to Know About the SAVE Act
4
House Committee on Administration Democrats. SAVE Act Section-by-Section
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The Hill. SAVE America Act GOP Strategy
6
National Low Income Housing Coalition. Senate Republicans Pass Reconciliation Bill After Marathon Amendment Voting Session
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Senator Lisa Murkowski. Murkowski: I Support Voter ID, but Oppose the SAVE America Act
8
Democracy Docket. South Dakota Republicans Reject Censuring John Thune Over Stalled SAVE America Act
9
Roll Call. Byrd Rule Poses Challenge for Voter ID Bill in Reconciliation
10
The White House. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ensures Citizenship Verification and Voter Eligibility in Federal Elections
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American Presidency Project. Executive Order 14399, Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections
12
Democracy Docket. States to Get Citizenship Lists Before Voters Can Check for Errors
13
GovInfo. Proposed Rule, Domestic Mail Manual
14
Votebeat. USPS Mail Ballot Rules, Trump Executive Order
15
California Office of the Attorney General. Attorney General Bonta Co-Leads Lawsuit Challenging President Trump’s Executive Order
16
ACLU. League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump
17
Brennan Center for Justice. League of Women Voters v. Trump (March 2025 Elections Executive Order)
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Brennan Center for Justice. New SAVE Act Bills Would Still Block Millions of Americans From Voting
19
Vote.org. The SAVE Act
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Bipartisan Policy Center. Do Documentary Proof of Citizenship Requirements Disadvantage One Party More Than the Other
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Brennan Center for Justice. Court Strikes Down Kansas and Arizona Proof of Citizenship Laws for Federal Registration
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League of Women Voters. LWV Kansas Celebrates Decision Affirming State Cannot Require Citizenship
23
NPR. Noncitizen Voting, Trump CEIR Review
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American Immigration Council. Myths About Noncitizen Voting, Heritage Foundation Data
25
Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn Op-Ed: Why the SAVE Act Matters More Than the Filibuster
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Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Cortez Masto Exposes Republican SAVE America Act as a Voter Suppression Bill
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League of Women Voters. SAVE Act
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Brennan Center for Justice. Brennan Center Letter to Senate Opposing SAVE America Act
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National Conference of State Legislatures. Voter ID
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Brennan Center for Justice. State Voting Laws Roundup, May 2026
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NPR. Trump Voter List Mail Ballots Executive Order