This Essay was posted on 4/18/2026.
The Save Act, supposedly designed to prevent noncitizens from voting just passed the House and is heading for the Senate. Noncitizen voting is not a problem in the US. The Heritage Foundation only cites 68 examples of noncitizen voting in a database that goes back to the 1980’s. The Save Act is fixing a nonproblem, but it is worse than that.
The Save Act makes it much harder to become a registered voter. You need a passport or equivalent ID to register, and your ID must match your birth certificate. These restrictions make it impossibly hard for over half the voters who don’t have valid IDs or have changed their name. Women, in particular, might need their marriage licenses. This law would prevent far more from voting than the 68 noncitizen voters over the last 40 years. But that isn’t the whole story.
Voters would need to apply for absentee ballots at voter registration locations. Some rural voters need to fly to a voter registration center to get an absentee ballot, because they can’t get to the voting location on election day. And the Save Act contains more rules.
Save Act rules aren’t new rules. Kansas and Arizona tried these voting rules and failed. In Kansas has about 0.002% of noncitizen voting, but 12% of new eligible voters couldn’t provide sufficient IDs. The courts rejected these Save Act restrictions for obvious reasons.
The Save Act will not save elections, but it might save Donald Trump’s job.
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