When she was working as an election official in Arizona years ago, Tammy Patrick encountered voters who supported what was then the state’s new “proof of citizenship” law for voter registration — only to realize that they had been disenfranchised by it.
“They’d say, ‘I voted for that!’” she recalled of the voters, many of whom were “snowbirds, older people, who didn’t have the wherewithal to get [the correct documents] because the documents didn’t exist anymore.”
“It was heart-wrenching,” Patrick said.
At the time, Arizona was the only state in the nation with a documentary proof of citizenship requirement for voters, and thousands of people have since lost out on the right to vote in state elections. Kansas, which later also tried its own citizenship requirement for voter registration, saw similar results.
“Kansas did that 10 years ago,” Kansas’s Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab told The Associated Press in December of his state’s own requirement, which prevented tens of thousands of voter registrations and was ultimately blocked in court in 2018. “It didn’t work out so well.”
Nonetheless, despite data showing tens of millions of Americans don’t have ready access to proof of citizenship documents, Republicans are now pushing hard to require those records nationwide for voter registration.
They haven’t been able to make it happen yet. But two efforts, one each from the White House and congressional Republicans, have made the prospect of a national proof of citizenship requirement a real possibility.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed the executive order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” In addition to ordering a slew of changes to voting machine standards and information-sharing arrangements between the federal and state governments, the order ― which is not a law ― instructs the Election Assistance Commission to change its national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship.
In Congress, the so-called SAVE Act would similarly mandate proof of citizenship documents. The bill passed the House last year and is scheduled for a vote in the House this week, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Though neither effort is a law right now, they both present significant risks to millions of voters. The Trump White House has in its first two months asserted unprecedented executive authority over the federal government, even on matters legally outside its purview, like trying to shut down entire agencies created by Congress, and it’s not clear how far Trump is willing to take his power grab.
Millions At Risk
As things stand, would-be voters swear under penalty of law on registration paperwork that they are citizens, and state officials have various methods to confirm that citizenship, including by checking against Social Security data and state databases.
But Republicans’ efforts to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote ― a push that gained political support from widespread lies about non-citizen voting ― would change that.
And if voters needed to provide documentary proof themselves, millions would be at risk of disenfranchisement.
Over 21 million voting-age American citizens don’t readily have access to documentary proof of citizenship, and over 3.8 million lack any of those documents at all, one 2023 survey from the Brennan Center for Justice and several other groups found.
The impact would be felt across political and demographic lines: While poor voters, voters of color and indigenous voters are less likely to have certain documentation, states with high levels of passport ownership generally vote blue ― and Republican women are more likely to report taking their husbands’ last names, which complicates the process, the Center for American Progress noted in January.
Both the White House efforts and the SAVE Act are also strangely vague when it comes to what documentation is required. Both mention passports as an acceptable proof of citizenship, but half of American citizens don’t have a valid passport. They both also mention the REAL ID Act of 2005, though so-called “REAL ID” cards don’t actually list citizenship status on them, and non-citizens can obtain REAL IDs. Both also list military IDs, but only if they specify citizenship. If not, the SAVE Act requires further documentation. The SAVE Act notes birth certificates can be used in conjunction with government-issued photo IDs; Trump’s order makes no mention of birth certificates at all, though it does say photo IDs can work when “accompanied by proof of United States citizenship.”
What would happen to the millions of voters who don’t have these forms of ID, or a handful of others the SAVE Act mentions, such as a naturalization certificate? That’s not clear.
The SAVE Act includes language directing states to establish a process for applicants who don’t have documentary proof of citizenship to “attest” that they are citizens and “submit such other evidence to the appropriate State or local official demonstrating that the applicant is a citizen of the United States,” but it doesn’t get more specific than that. And it also allows prosecutors to pursue criminal charges for election officials who register anyone who “fails to present documentary proof of United States citizenship,” adding a ton of pressure on those officials to not give would-be voters any flexibility.
When HuffPost reached out to the office of the bill’s top sponsor, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), for more details, it did not provide any.
“The line of questioning you have sent makes me very inclined to believe that this is yet another smear attempt at the SAVE Act filled with hypothetical questions and baseless claims,” Roy’s communications director, Armani Gracia, said in an email. “I can assure you that the bill (linked here) is not that deep — it literally will simply require states to verify US citizenship when registering an individual to vote in federal elections, give states the tools to remove non-citizens from their voter rolls, and penalizes [sic] officials who register non-citizens.”
“Let’s be very clear: The bill’s opponents want non-citizens to vote,” he added. Gracia also included a statement from Roy, who condemned “absurd armchair speculation” by the media and said the legislation “provides a myriad ways for people to prove citizenship and explicitly directs States to establish a process for individuals to register to vote if there are discrepancies in their proof of citizenship documents due to something like a name change.”
Other supporters of the bill have similarly dismissed concerns.
“The open borders lefties who oppose the SAVE Act requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote have now come up with the DUMBEST argument ever, saying that requiring proof of citizenship will mean that married women cannot register to vote, because their birth certificate won’t have their married name…huh?” wrote Cleta Mitchell, a major player in the right-wing election space.
“Under their theory, married women who change their names would also be unable to get a passport, credit card, REAL ID, any drivers license, bank account, social security…and on and on…because, under this nonsensical theory, married women are not capable of bringing the necessary documentation that shows citizenship AND married status….something that MILLIONS of women do every day when they change their names upon marriage…or divorce.”
Others say the lack of citizenship documentation should itself be disqualifying.
Referring to the Brennan Center study, the Federalist’s election correspondent Brianna Lyman wrote Thursday that even if people without ready access to proof of citizenship documents are in fact citizens, “failing to require proof of citizenship still poses a threat to the integrity of U.S. elections.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) reposted the article, writing that people who “can’t prove” their citizenship “shouldn’t vote.”
The documentary requirements aren’t the only part of the bill that has scholars and voting rights advocates nervous.
Several analyses have also noted, for example, that the SAVE Act would effectively end online, by-mail and volunteer voter registration efforts, as it requires that documentary proof of citizenship be presented in person to government election officials. This dynamic would harm voters who live far away from election offices, particularly in rural areas.
What’s more, the SAVE Act would likely apply to all interactions with the voter registration process, even by already-registered voters, such as people changing their address or party affiliation.
“Nothing we have found in the SAVE Act addresses these concerns,” wrote the Brennan Center’s Wendy Weiser and Andrew Garber in Election Law Blog in February.
“The bill consistently cuts in favor of in-person registration at a select few places for your registration to count. And that would likely be the case every time you need to update your registration.”
Trump’s Executive Order Is A Dramatic Attempted Power Grab
On top of its proof of citizenship requirement language, Trump’s executive order is alarming simply because it exists at all. American elections are almost entirely run at the state and local level, and any national rule changes must generally be approved by Congress. Trump’s apparent belief that he can simply declare changes to the nation’s elections represents an extremely aggressive assertion of presidential power.
In the order, Trump instructs both independent agencies and Cabinet officials to pursue various investigations of (and vast changes to) the election system, including regarding election machine certifications and information-sharing between states and the federal government.
At one point, the order tells the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to “review each State’s publicly available voter registration list” in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security.
Given his track record over the past two months ― an unending series of executive commands, even on topics where the president has no legal authority ― some election experts are ringing alarm bells.
“It’s dangerous to put such power in the hands of the president, who could attempt to manipulate election rules to favor his party and his self-interest,” wrote Rick Hasen, a professor of law at UCLA and director of UCLA Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project. “And it seems especially dangerous to take power away from the states when there are many threats to our democracy.”
Hasen called Trump’s order “an affront to principles of federalism.” That concern crosses ideological lines.
“While some provisions might point in the right direction, Trump is making a critical error in pushing these measures through an [executive order] rather than pursuing a more durable and decentralized solution via legislation,” wrote Matt Germer, director of the governance program at the conservative R Street Institute think tank. “As a result, the order moves our country toward a more top-down election system and sets a dangerous, destabilizing precedent for future executive action.”
A future Democratic president, Germer warned, could use Trump’s precedent to seek “any other election changes they wished” unilaterally.
Various aspects of the order will almost certainly face legal challenges.
Patrick, who is now chief program officer at The Election Center, said the order was “astounding, in many ways.”
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“Many people are perplexed and dumbfounded on how this is happening, in some cases, because there are constitutional questions to be raised,” she said, adding later, “When we try and frame some of these things with a historical perspective, or a constitutional perspective, or the way these things have been done in the past, it doesn’t seem to apply, for some reason, in this moment.”