April 7, 2026
The so called SAVE America Act is nothing short of Jim Crow 2026.
Voters arrives to cast their ballots during the Illinois Primary Election on March 17, 2026.
(Jacek Boczarski / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Polling consistently shows that Americans’ top concern is the cost of living, especially housing and healthcare. The president has made life more expensive by embroiling the United States in an unjustified war with Iran, driving gas prices even higher. A reasonable voter may conclude that Republicans in Congress, who control the House and Senate and are facing abysmal polling, would be focused on ending the war and helping lower costs for Americans.
Those voters would be wrong.
Instead, Republicans are singularly obsessed with disenfranchising millions of voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.
How obsessed? Trump’s recent executive order aims to change mail-ballot laws and would establish a list of voters in each state he deems “eligible.” He, along with congressional Republicans, are desperate to undermine free and fair elections and control who can vote. Trump’s allies in Congress frame the so-called SAVE America Act as an “election integrity” bill that simply requires an ID to vote. That is wildly deceptive because their bill is, in fact, a full-frontal assault on the fundamental right of Americans to cast a ballot in future elections, including the 2026 midterms.
Americans could not use a driver’s license, or even a REAL ID driver’s license. Instead, they would need a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote, and the name must match on each document. This would put millions of married women at risk of losing their right to vote. US service members could not use a military ID to register to vote, nor could Native Americans use a tribe-issued ID.
Millions of Americans don’t have access to their birth certificates or passports. Half of Americans don’t own a passport, and it costs, on average, $130 to obtain one, meaning this legislation is little more than a Jim Crow–style “poll tax” for millions of low-income Americans. This would come as working people struggle to pay for food, gas, housing, and childcare because of Trump’s failed economic policies and unnecessary wars.
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The SAVE Act also overrides state election law, such as Wisconsin’s, which allows voters to register to vote same-day, online, or by mail, a policy that is especially helpful to voters with disabilities and rural voters. It grants unprecedented power to an executive branch that has peddled voter fraud conspiracies, tried to blackmail states for election data, and relitigated Trump’s 2020 election loss through efforts like FBI raids in Georgia and Arizona.
Specifically, this legislation would force state governments to hand over their voter files to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a dubious proposition under the US Constitution.
The architect of this legislation, Representative Bryan Steil, who represents my birthplace of Racine, Wisconsin, would be disenfranchising his constituents, and millions of other Americans.
Despite Republican claims, actual cases of vote fraud are extremely rare, according to numerous studies. For example, the conservative Heritage Foundation did a comprehensive study tracking voter fraud going back 25 years and found actual instances of fraudulent votes to be .0000845 percent, which is 36 instances of fraudulent votes out of 42,626, 379 ballots cast.
The so-called SAVE America Act is nothing short of Jim Crow 2026. Don’t believe me—take the word of Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who was recently caught on a hot mic giddily remarking that the SAVE Act would disenfranchise up to 18 percent of the electorate in 2026.The Election Administration and Voting Survey 2022 Comprehensive Report says that approximately 112 million votes were cast in that midterm election. If you do simple math, you can see that Republicans estimate that the SAVE America Act would disenfranchise more than 20 million Americans!
Don’t believe Republicans when they tell you the SAVE America Act is just a voter-ID bill. It is something far more insidious and uglier. Free and fair elections and equal access to the ballot box are the cornerstones of our democracy, which is why I voted against both versions in the House and believe that all Americans should oppose this legislation.
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