House Republicans have pushed through legislation that civil rights organizations warn could disenfranchise millions of Americans — and disproportionately burden Black Americans — by erecting new barriers to the ballot box.
That bill, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, now heads to the Senate, where it faces steep odds. Still, advocates are sounding the alarm, arguing that the legislation, which some are calling “Jim Crow 2.0,” would fundamentally reshape who gets to participate in U.S. democracy.
The move continues President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about widespread voter fraud in U.S. elections.
“The SAVE America Act is not about protecting our elections — it’s about disguising voter suppression techniques aimed at disenfranchising Black voters as election security,” Demetria McCain, the director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a Feb. 12 statement the day after the GOP’s elections overhaul.
“It is disingenuous, it is discriminatory, and it is all based on a continuously disproven narrative of voter fraud propagated by an administration concerned not with voter protections but solely with the fear of letting people select their own leaders,” she added.
What is the SAVE America Act?
The SAVE America Act is a piece of legislation that would result in three major changes to how we vote:
- The legislation would require Americans to provide documentary evidence of their citizenship when they register to vote, though they’re already required to attest — under penalty of perjury — that they’re citizens when they register. It would also mandate proof of residence as part of the registration process.
- The legislation would implement a nationwide photo ID requirement to cast a ballot, relying on a narrower list of acceptable IDs than what currently exists in most states. For instance, it would bar the use of student IDs, even those issued by state universities, as valid identification.
- The legislation would heighten the difficulty of voting by mail, restricting who can cast a ballot by mail without showing valid identification. This is despite evidence that the practice is secure and widely used, including by Trump and other Republicans.
How are civil rights organizations responding?
Civil rights organizations are united in denouncing the SAVE America Act.
“The authoritarianism woven into this bill has no place in our elections,” McCain said in her letter. “Instead of trying to solve a nonexistent problem, Congress must focus its attention on the affordability crisis that is decimating the livelihoods of millions of Black people and the federal encroachment on city streets.”
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — along with 130 other organizations, including the Black to the Future Action Fund and the Black Voters Matter Action Fund — wrote a letter to Republican lawmakers criticizing the bill. Rules such as the proof of citizenship requirement aren’t necessary to guarantee secure elections, they said.
“They would do nothing more than exclude eligible voters — particularly Latino, Black, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Native American citizens; married women who have changed their names; low-income people; and people with disabilities — from the electorate and our democracy,” they added.
The organizations pointed to data showing the burden the legislation would cause: About half of U.S. adults don’t have a passport; two-thirds of Black adults don’t possess the document. Additionally, Black Americans are less likely to have a current driver’s license.
“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently said. “What they’re trying to do here is the same thing that was done in the South for decades to prevent people of color from voting.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently said much the same, effectively characterizing Republican efforts as a solution in search of a problem.
“This is a desperate effort by Republicans to distract,” he told reporters. “The so-called SAVE Act is not about voter identification. It is about voter suppression. And they have zero credibility on this issue.”
Why do Republicans say that it’s necessary?
Trump and his allies maintain that the bill is necessary to extinguish fraud and restore public faith in elections, framing it as a commonsense safeguard against cheating.
“We need elections where people aren’t able to cheat,” Trump recently said, echoing baseless claims that he’s espoused since losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. “And we’re gonna do that. I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna get it done.”
However, there’s no evidence of widespread election fraud. Investigations and analyses have found no proof of systemic irregularities.
The bill follows Trump’s recent comments that he wants to “nationalize” elections and “take over the voting” in more than a dozen jurisdictions — remarks that have alarmed civil rights advocates and election officials.
Such a move would be at odds with the U.S. Constitution, which grants states primary authority over the time, place, and manner of federal elections, subject to some congressional oversight.
The bill also comes in the middle of heightened tensions over election administration, including the FBI’s seizure of hundreds of boxes of 2020 election ballots in Fulton County, Georgia — a crucial battleground Trump continues to falsely claim he won in 2020.
“We all know how Black election workers have been treated [in Fulton County], receiving death threats, being doxxed and all kinds of things,” Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett told Capital B Atlanta in January, referring to the harassment of Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman.
“Now Trump’s DOJ is coming after Georgia,” she continued. “They’re trying to get your private data. And they’re willing to break the law to get it.”