Congress and many state legislatures are focusing on the same thing: ensuring that only U.S. citizens can vote.
The U.S. House is expected to consider the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act next week. The bill would amend the National Voter Registration Act to require voter registration applicants to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections. A similar bill passed out of the House in 2024 but stalled in the Senate.
In the states, verifying citizenship for voters is the most significant elections trend NCSL is tracking this year. Over 160 bills have been introduced offering a wide variety of approaches to ensuring only eligible U.S. citizens can vote; some ask the voter to take action, others give state election officials tools to check citizenship status. In 2024, New Hampshire and Louisiana both passed bills requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register, and Wyoming is the first state to do so in 2025.
States are constitutionally vested with the power to regulate elections, and every year, they consistently consider over 2,500 bills nationwide (and enact 300 laws, plus or minus) addressing various elections issues, all with an eye toward continuous improvement.
The federal government may (and every so often does) pass laws intended to govern how federal elections are run. The National Voter Registration Act (1993), the Help America Vote Act (2002) and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (2009) are recent examples. These federal laws set standards to which states must conform. Because states usually conduct federal and state elections concurrently, any federal law regarding elections will likely affect the nuts and bolts of how states run all elections and touch on the balance of the federalist system.
If passed, the SAVE Act, while only explicitly affecting federal elections, will impact how prospective voters get registered and preempt state voter registration processes.
The big-picture takeaway: The SAVE Act would require everyone registering to vote to provide a document verifying their citizenship. It would then require states to enhance voter list maintenance programs to identify noncitizens who have inadvertently gotten on the rolls—if they don’t have such practices in place already.
What to Know About the Bill
- Federal law is clear that only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote in federal and state elections. Currently states decide how to enforce this requirement.
- All states require new voters to attest to their U.S. citizenship when they register, and all states conduct voter list maintenance to identify potentially ineligible voters on the rolls. How they do that varies.
- The SAVE Act would require states to collect and document proof of citizenship from voters, which few states currently do, and establish additional voter list maintenance processes. (A side note: In states that have strong links between voter registration and motor vehicle agencies, the transfer of citizenship data can be quick.)
- The SAVE Act does not authorize federal funding for the new state responsibilities it creates.
- If enacted, some states would need to make significant changes to their voter registration processes, and there is no phase-in period included.
- States that can’t comply might face running state and federal elections separately, with separate procedures, or they might have to keep separate lists of voters who have not provided proof of citizenship and permit them to vote only in state or local races. Arizona already has such a “bifurcated” process, which has seen a stream of litigation dating to 2004.
- By requiring driver’s license applications to serve as voter registration applications, the bill might force all states (including the six now exempt from the NVRA) to direct their DMVs to perform voter registration services in conjunction with driver’s license services. States will need time and money to create automated data transfer processes between DMVs and voter registration records.
- The bill includes a private right of action, allowing individuals to sue if they feel the law is not properly enforced.
- The bill would establish criminal penalties for election officials who mistakenly register an applicant to vote who has not presented proof of citizenship.
In related news, President Donald Trump on March 25 issued an executive order requiring, among other things, that citizens provide documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The order is likely to face legal challenges, and it is unclear how it would interact with the SAVE Act, should it pass.
To learn more about state actions, read States Consider Options to Ensure That Noncitizens Aren’t Voting and see NCSL’s webpage Legislative Approaches to Ensuring Only Citizens Vote.
Katy Owens Hubler is the associate director of NCSL’s Elections and Redistricting Program.
Questions Legislators Can Ask About Voting and Citizenship:
- Is voting by noncitizens an issue in our state? How do you know?
- How do you already work to ensure noncitizens cannot get on voter rolls, or vote?
- Who does this work? Is it staff at the state level or is it a responsibility of local jurisdictions?
- What resources or funding are devoted to this work?
- Is the work done uniformly throughout the state?
- Do you have an agreement to access the DHS SAVE database to check any records that lack proof of citizenship?
- Does your state use jury dismissals to look for potential noncitizens? If not, do you think that would be useful?