What is the SAVE America Act? How Saturday’s Senate vote could affect your vote

The Senate is debating a Republican bill known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act that would tighten requirements for both registering and voting. Democrats are working to block it, saying it would disenfranchise millions of legal voters. President Donald Trump is pushing hard for the bill, saying it would “guarantee the midterms” for his party. 

If passed, the bill would require both proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and specific government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot. It would also make it easier to challenge voters whose names do not match their identification.

The bill would also create national rules for verifying voters, limiting the flexibility states such as New York now have. In practice, that could mean some people could vote in local elections but not in federal races, for president or Congress. 

The Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based nonpartisan law and policy organization, has called it “the most restrictive voting bill” ever considered by Congress. Opponents say the bill would block millions of eligible U.S. citizens from voting because they lack passports or birth certificates, their names don’t exactly match their ID, or they lack access to online and mail voter registration, automatic voter registration and registration drives. 

The bill passed the Republican-controlled House last month but is considered a long shot in the Senate, as Republicans there are short of the 60 votes that would be needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster. 

Epicenter NYC spoke with Ray Serrano, national director of research and policy at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to learn more about the bill, what to know and what you can do if it passes. Last year, LULAC joined a coalition of plaintiffs in a lawsuit that stopped a part of an executive order issued by Trump that sought to require proof of citizenship to vote. LULAC recently published a guide to the bill. Excerpts of the conversation have been lightly edited. 

Epicenter NYC: What inspired this “Stop the SAVE America Act” toolkit?

Dr. Serrano: They tried to pass the SAVE Act last year, and our call to action was this would have a disparate impact on Latinos because of the red tape of trying to get folks registered.

A lot of folks register through the DMV, and you’re relying on how the person’s name is registered there. If it’s a hyphenated last name, two last names or a marital last name, it will not necessarily match.

Say somebody is Maria Gonzalez-Perez. Their birth certificate shows Maria Gonzalez-Perez, but at the DMV it might be shortened. Then when they register through the DMV, their voter registration card will show Maria G. Perez.

When they go to vote, they’ll be told they’re not Maria Gonzalez-Perez. There’s a mismatch or missing hyphen.

Epicenter NYC: We see these hyphenated names a lot with Latinos and immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries. So a person could be barred from voting over something that small?

Serrano: Yes, because their voter registration is not matching their driver’s license. The SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship to verify that.

Some people don’t have the paperwork. I spoke to a friend in Baltimore who had to take multiple buses to get to the DMV, wait one or two hours, then take buses back. It’s a whole day. Most people don’t have a day to do that. Many people in inner cities have ID issues because of paperwork and moving frequently. Documents get lost or sent to old addresses.

Some people don’t have birth certificates or documents on hand. These are hard to come up with, and you’d need them to register to vote.

Epicenter NYC: Is there evidence that this has barred people from voting?

Serrano: We have about 450 councils and 570,000 members; 40% are in Texas. We get calls, often from older women who moved cities and need to update registration.

To change registration, they must provide documents. Without them, they can’t register. In Texas, after [Senate Bill 1] restricted voter assistance, one woman said a librarian told her it would be illegal to help her update her registration.

Epicenter NYC: If the SAVE Act becomes law, who would be most affected? 

Serrano: It’s especially concerning for women, Latinos with hyphenated or multiple last names, immigrants with different naming conventions, married or previously married women who have changed their names, LGBT folks (especially trans individuals). Working-class folks, students, military members, people who move a lot — they would have to re-register every time they move.

Elderly folks who don’t have the means to travel to go get their documentation. Those without documentation like a birth certificate because they, like my mom, weren’t born in a hospital but to a midwife.

Epicenter NYC: Should people start gathering documents to prove their citizenship in case the bill passes? 

Serrano: In general, people should have their documents ready because of the countless cases where people have been picked up who are American citizens, detained, incarcerated by ICE for three days. So you need to have that documentation handy, not just for voting but for safety. 

Epicenter NYC: In simple terms, how would the SAVE Act change voting?

Serrano: It would create a certain criteria for what is required for people to vote at federal elections. States might allow more flexibility locally, but for federal elections you’d need specific documentation. You’ll be allowed to vote maybe in local elections, but not in federal elections. So no congressman, no senator, no president.

It’d be a lot more confusing, and it’d also be a lot more disheartening, with folks saying, “I came to vote, but I wasn’t allowed to vote for the president.” It would be really disenfranchising.

Epicenter NYC: What would you say to supporters who argue this is about election integrity?

Serrano: Noncitizen voting is essentially nonexistent: maybe .0001%. It has no impact on elections. This was largely an idea that was brought up in 2024 to merge two big things: the 2020 election “stop the steal” rhetoric and the idea of a surge of undocumented folks.

What we saw in 2024, this narrative was spreading a lot, justifying voter purges. We saw it in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina. So we looked deeper into North Carolina, because there were about 280,000 folks that were flagged as non-citizen voters who didn’t have a driver’s license number, or didn’t have a social security number. So they were flagged there the most.

When we did just a frequency assessment, Martinez was the most common Latino name that showed up, and it was number 51. The most common names were Watson, Jenkins, Washington, et cetera. Not Latino but Black or Muslim names. They were using the narrative of non-citizen voters so people could think [these non-eligible voters] were Latinos. But in reality, they were actually going after African American votes. 

The one mistake they made is that one person they included in that list happened to be this star basketball player who grew up in North Carolina, who was a high school basketball player who ended up joining UNC Chapel Hill (basketball’s a big thing in North Carolina). He was flagged as a non-citizen voter, and they were like, “Oh, that was a mistake.”

And in Arizona, when they did the same thing there, they found out that Republicans were actually about to lose. Mostly because in Arizona, some long-term driver’s licenses issued in the 1990s didn’t require proof of citizenship, so when states later tried to verify voter eligibility, those individuals were incorrectly flagged as noncitizens. The Arizona Republican Party even started pushing back, saying, “You know, let’s just rethink this further.”

So you started seeing how this narrative of noncitizen voters actually didn’t actually render the results that they had expected. Because it was built on a lie. It was built on “la gran mentira (the big lie).”

Epicenter NYC: Given all that, is there enough support among lawmakers for this to pass?

Serrano: In the Senate, they will need Democrat support to get it past cloture. Trump has said he’s not going to sign any bill until this passes. So there’s a lot of pressure on the Senate leadership, the Republican leadership, to try to get it past the filibuster, and to try to streamline it that way.

Epicenter NYC: How likely is it that they could get it past the filibuster?

Serrano: I’m doubtful, because the shoe will be on the other foot very soon, and once you do it this way, then it might happen in the other direction. The Senate leadership knows that. I don’t think they really want to do it, because they know that 60-vote threshold could be the levee that keeps bad things from happening one way or the other. The Senate was structured for that. 

Epicenter NYC: But it seems many decisions in politics, or among some policymakers, are being made without considering long-term consequences or how those policies might apply if the shoe were on the other foot.

Serrano: There’s a lot of pressure to do it. But if they do this, also, it’s not just a one-and-done thing. Say you pass it and you require IDs from everybody. The boards of elections now have to verify who’s a citizen and who’s not. That falls on the counties. That falls on those county boards of elections that are financed by the state and the county. 

They’re going to have to hire staff for that. They’re going to have to have capacity for this. There’s going to be a federal mandate on them to produce, to verify that all their voter rolls in, say, a county of 300,000 people, that those are all, say, the 260,000 people who are registered to vote there, that they’re all U.S. citizens. They all have driver’s licenses, or they have social security numbers, and they are verified citizens.

Epicenter NYC: Would that also come with a mandate for the federal government to fund that support?

Serrano: There’s no mention of that in the bill. Something I would think for the Republican side to be pushing back on would be the unfunded mandate. Because it’s great to have this bill that’s going to, in theory, clear up a nonexistent problem. But if it does pass, then who’s going to finance it? Because most of these Republican senators are coming from states that are very poor. So they don’t have the capacity. The last thing they’re going to need is to be able to hire 10 staff members to go verify people’s information. The price tag for this cure, for this so-called medicine that they’re providing with this bill, it’s pretty high.

Epicenter NYC: Recent polls done by the Pew Research Center and Gallup show about 84% of Americans support requiring a government-issued ID to vote. Why do you think that is?

Serrano: Because it’s been framed simply: this idea that you just show an ID. That if you have an ID to be carded for cigarettes or for alcohol, then why can’t you have an ID to just vote? That’s only one part of it. The other part is whether my voter registration matches my ID is a separate question.

Again, showing my ID, if my name is Maria Gonzalez-Perez and my ID shows it’s Maria G. Perez, you may not be able to vote. Most people would support the idea of flashing your ID. But if it means that you’re banking on zero clerical error under an underpaid DMV worker — that zero clerical error is going to exist in that ID and the voter registration rolls — that’s unrealistic.

Epicenter NYC: So you think many people don’t understand that part?

Serrano: I think most people would say no if they understood this. They would say, no, people get married. People have hyphenated last names. Maybe they’re trans and they have a different name than on their ID or voter registration. Things change, life changes. 

Epicenter NYC: That sounds as though it puts a lot of responsibility on individuals.

Serrano: Yes. Think about you moving to a new apartment. You’re getting the electric bill set up, you’re getting your Wi-Fi set up, you’re returning the U-Haul truck, you’re going to IKEA to buy certain furniture, you’re trying to put together the furniture, you’re trying to move the old boxes here, you’re trying to get rid of some of the other stuff. You’re like, “Oh, I need this, I need that, I need to go buy this other stuff.” The last thing you’re thinking about is to go to the Board of Elections office and update your Board of Registration card.

Epicenter NYC: How would this affect vote by mail?

Serrano: The bill severely restricts vote by mail. Some states would require specific excuses to vote by mail. In some states, it would be basically like Texas, where, for instance, you’re a registered student in D.C., and you live in Texas, and your family owns a home in Texas — that’s why you can’t vote in person. 

Permanent vote by mail lists would likely be eliminated. People who vote by mail tend to vote more frequently, around 80% turnout versus about 60% in person. Restrictions would reduce turnout, especially among elderly and younger voters.

Simply choosing an absentee ballot, requesting to vote by mail, you can’t do that. In states where they have permanent vote-by-mail lists, like Maryland, for example, you can get on a permanent list and say, “Just mail me my ballots from here to the end of time.” That would functionally be eliminated by this law.

Epicenter NYC: I wanted to ask about LULAC’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive actions on voter registration and mail voting. How does that case connect to the same issues as the SAVE America Act?

Serrano: The initial premise of what Trump tried to do was go through an executive order, which was fundamentally unconstitutional. We challenged him in court. It went to the DC court — they lost, appealed and the Supreme Court denied certiorari.

That effectively killed the executive order route. We filed in February, it was adjudicated by March, and we won multiple times through appeals. When it reached the Supreme Court, it was turned down.

So that ended that route, and pressure shifted to Congress to pass the SAVE Act in the House. The Senate has been slower, and now the push is to pass it there.

Epicenter NYC: So this bill is partly in response to your lawsuit?

Serrano: Yes. States also started doing their own versions — “SAVE Light” — trying to require proof of citizenship for state elections.

Epicenter NYC: If it passes, what would LULAC do?

Serrano: We’ve discussed “papeleo clinics” (paperwork clinics). Like what we’ve done with Medicaid but for paperwork for voter registration: Basically having a local library that we’ll rent out on a Saturday, and announce on Spanish radio, and announce to the community, saying “If you have any problems with Medicaid and you need your forms filled out, go to this library, on this day, and we will have volunteers help you fill out these forms.” 

But if the bill passes, that would be a huge loss. Voting is the mechanism to change policy. If people can’t vote, then you don’t change up the system. There’s no way of changing that policy. The mechanism to change the policy is to vote the guys out. 

Epicenter NYC: Is there legal recourse if it passes?

Serrano: It would still face judicial scrutiny. It wasn’t constitutional under the executive order, and even as a law, due process and equal protection matter.

If it has a disparate impact and is based on a false premise — noncitizen voting — it could be struck down. If there’s evidence of discriminatory intent, it likely wouldn’t pass judicial muster.

Epicenter NYC: What do you think is missing from mainstream coverage of this bill?

Serrano: People overlook implementation. What happens in Washington has to be carried out locally — DMVs, Boards of Elections — which are underfunded. The gap between policy and implementation is significant. A clerical error at the DMV could cost someone their right to vote.

This is not just showing ID. It’s about matching every detail of your name exactly. If it doesn’t match, you could be denied. That’s a high cost.

Epicenter NYC: What can people do now?

Serrano: The most effective thing is peer outreach. The number one thing that gets Latinos to vote is another Latino telling them to vote. People have strong social networks. Those can be mobilized. 

Calling your congressman matters. Staff log calls and report them. If enough people call, it influences decisions. If people don’t complain, politicians assume there’s no issue. Yeah, we could prepare for doomsday and get all our paperwork together and so forth. But how much better it would be, how much easier it would be, to just solve the problem before it becomes a problem?