Trump’s SAVE America Act would end voter registration drives nationwide

Before Wyoming elections, the state’s League of Women Voters tries to get voter registration information into the hands of residents at events and gatherings. But under state law, League volunteers can’t sign up voters themselves — only local election officials can do that.

“It’s been tough,” said Linda Barton, president of the League of Women Voters of Wyoming. She added that her group does its best to offer registration information. “We provide a lot of printed literature that we hand out all over the state.”

Congress may take Wyoming’s approach nationwide.

The SAVE America Act would effectively ban voter registration drives, a mainstay of college campuses and neighborhood events.

The U.S. Senate began debating a version of President Donald Trump’s signature elections measure last month, after the House passed it in February. The legislation would require voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot. It would also require individuals to present documents proving their citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to government officials in person to register to vote.

Trump and Republican members of Congress have cast the proposal as necessary to secure elections and crack down on noncitizen voters ahead of the midterms. Democrats and other critics warn it risks disenfranchising wide swaths of Americans. Studies have shown noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

In many states, civic groups have long provided applications to would-be voters that they can quickly fill out. During the 2024 election cycle, voter registration drives accounted for 3.7% of registrations, according to survey data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. While a small percentage, the figure still represents 2.1 million Americans.

Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia placed no restrictions on voter registration drives as of November 2024, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a Colorado-based think tank. An additional 24 states impose some limits, while Wyoming and New Hampshire prohibit them.

Bill would end registration drives nationwide

Every form of voter registration drive would effectively end under the SAVE America Act as currently drafted in the Senate, said Brian Miller, executive director of NonprofitVOTE, which aids nonprofit organizations in helping individuals vote and participate in the democratic process. Community-based groups, universities, food pantries, and others who help register voters would all be affected.

“That’s the high school civics teacher who works with his graduating class … gone, they can’t do that anymore,” Miller said.

NonprofitVOTE, working with 120 organizations across nine states, engaged 60,000 voters during the 2022 midterm cycle, according to a report by the group. It found that individuals reached by nonprofits were 10 percentage points more likely to cast a ballot than comparable registered voters.

The effect was more pronounced among younger voters. Those ages 18 to 24 who were engaged by nonprofit groups were 12 percentage points more likely to cast a ballot than comparable registered voters.

Hispanic Federation, a nationwide Hispanic and Latino advocacy group, says it has registered 160,000 voters since 2016. Frederick Vélez III Burgos, the federation’s senior director for communications and community outreach, said the organization works to register voters because of language and cultural barriers, work schedules, and other factors that make the process challenging.

“There’s just a group of people and communities that is just very difficult to get registered through normal means,” Burgos said.

Top Trump priority

Trump has made clear the SAVE America Act is his top legislative priority, and he has urged Congress to pass the measure before moving to other business. While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, support for the proposal falls short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate.

“The SAVE Act would gut tried-and-true methods of voter registration, including registration by mail and registering online,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said earlier this year.

Still, Senate Republican leaders in March kicked off an extended, wide-ranging debate over the bill. It remains unclear when the debate will end. Congress is scheduled to be in recess until mid-April.

GOP proponents have dismissed concerns that the legislation would make registering to vote and casting a ballot difficult. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said on the Senate floor that the bill offers multiple ways to prove citizenship and “gives states the flexibility to create other pathways to show proof of citizenship.”

Grassley noted that his mother was one of the first women to cast a ballot after ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote.

“The SAVE America Act doesn’t infringe on these hard-fought voting rights. It would preserve the integrity of every vote cast in a federal election,” Grassley said.

Hard-to-reach voters

Third-party voter registration drives date back to voter education and registration efforts by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, according to Joshua Douglas, a University of Kentucky law professor who specializes in voting rights and election law. The association eventually morphed into the League of Women Voters, which helped spearhead registration efforts following the 19th Amendment.

Voter registration drives typically aid voters who may not otherwise have opportunities to register, Douglas wrote in an email to States Newsroom. They may not have a driver’s license or may not be thinking about registering.

“There is a long history of civic organizations engaged in voter registration drives, and this legislation would make that work harder,” Douglas wrote.

Tom Lopach, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Voter Participation Center, an organization that works to register voters from underrepresented populations, said he fears some members of Congress haven’t fully read the bill or digested how it would affect voting.

Since VPC was founded in 2003, it has helped register 7 million voters, Lopach said.

“And that’s just us,” he said. “When you think about the League of Women Voters, when you think about in-person voter registration drives happening in a grocery store parking lot, or knocking doors in a neighborhood, you would have tens of millions of Americans not registered and then not voting.”

States trending toward more restrictions

Even if the SAVE America Act doesn’t become law, some states have taken steps to make voter registration drives more difficult.

The Center for Public Integrity and NPR found in 2024 that at least six states had passed legislation cracking down on voter registration drives following the 2020 election. Some of the bills imposed massive fines for violations or barred noncitizens from participating.

As recently as March, the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced it would require groups conducting voter registration drives to print their own registration forms. The board cited significant costs, after it provided nearly 1.3 million applications to organizations and government agencies in 2024 at a cost of more than $269,000.

“Nothing about this temporary tightening of our practice surrounding voter registration drives changes the fact that any North Carolina citizen who wants a voter registration application will always be able to get one simply by contacting their county board of elections or the State Board,” Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director, told NC Newsline.

Courts have blocked some state-level restrictions. A federal court prohibited Kansas from enforcing a 2021 law that barred out-of-state organizations from distributing advance mail ballot applications to voters and prohibited applications that contained personalized voter information. Kansas has appealed the decision.

The Missouri Supreme Court last week ruled against a state law that prohibited groups like the League of Women Voters from using paid workers in voter registration drives. The state’s high court also struck down requirements that individuals who solicit more than 10 registration applications must register with the state and be Missouri voters. The law had also prohibited encouraging someone to obtain an absentee ballot.

Kay Park, president of the League of Women Voters of Missouri, called the restrictions “ridiculous” and said that while they were in effect, the organization did nothing with absentee ballots — such as suggesting an absentee ballot could be an option for someone with a disability, for instance.

The League of Women Voters of Missouri holds voter registration drives in high schools, Park said. While Missouri residents must be 18 to vote, they can register once they’re 17 ½ years old. The SAVE America Act would effectively end those drives.

If the legislation becomes law, Park said the Missouri league would likely focus more of its efforts on helping individuals obtain identification documents and birth certifications — something it’s already trying to do.

“It just puts another cog in the wheel,” Park said.

Wyoming model

In Wyoming, Barton and her fellow League of Women Voters members are already grappling with a state-level proof-of-citizenship voter registration law passed last year, regardless of whether Congress passes the SAVE America Act.

Residents who want to register to vote must visit a county clerk’s office and bring a valid passport or birth certificate. Wyoming also accepts REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses and tribal IDs, as long as they do not indicate the individual is a noncitizen, and a few other documents, such as a naturalization certificate. Individuals may register by mail, but must include copies of their documents along with a notarized application.

The new state requirements were championed by Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican who is running for the state’s U.S. House seat.

“As the chief election official of Wyoming that has experience with these common-sense election integrity measures, I can tell you that the SAVE America Act will be easy for states to implement,” Gray wrote in a March 17 letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican.

Gray didn’t respond to questions from States Newsroom.

Barton said that without the option to hold voter registration drives, going to events and speaking to clubs and organizations like Rotary are imperative.

“I just think that the only other choice is to be out there, communicating as much as possible,” she said.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.