Trump and the Republicans know they’re going to lose control of at least the House in November and could be in for a drubbing. Since the end of WWII, the President’s party has lost House seats in 90% of midterm elections. When the President is unpopular (“underwater” in the polls) that 90% number goes to 100%. Trump’s numbers are historically bad.
So Trump has turned his attention to fixing elections, instead of crazy stuff like, you know, making life better for Americans or reducing the cost of living. His claim is that there’s rampant voter fraud and the federal government needs to step in to fix the election process. The problem with this claim is that it’s a lie – documented cases of voting by non-citizens are exceedingly rare. According to CNN, “The right-leaning Heritage Foundation’s database of confirmed fraud cases, for instance, shows fewer than 100 examples [nationwide] of noncitizens improperly casting ballots between 2000 and 2025.”
The actual problem for voters is voter suppression, “the effort to limit the capacity of a group to register, vote or cast an effective ballot” and gerrymandering, the artificial redrawing of districts to favor one party.
The SAVE America Act
This legislation that Trump is trying to pass, makes is harder for people to vote. Although “SAVE” is an acronym for “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility”, this legislation is designed to stop millions of Americans from voting. Not surprisingly, most of these are folks who historically vote for Democrats.
The SAVE America Act requires voters to provide documented proof of citizenship at the time of registration (a passport or birth certificate), eliminating online or mail-in registration. It also requires voters to present one of only a narrow set of qualifying photo IDs to cast a ballot. In order to vote by mail, voters must include a copy of this eligible photo ID with their absentee ballot request and again when mailing in their ballot.
This requirement would be waived if the voting jurisdiction provided sensitive voter data to the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database for confirmation of voter eligibility. Besides the fact that this database was developed for public benefits verification, this raises a number of problems including transparency, (cyber)security, accuracy (this is the federal government after all), etc.
The impact of these measures is widespread. As of 2024, 34.5 million Americans reported not having a current driver’s license or state ID card, more than 21 million Americans don’t have ready access to a birth certificate and half don’t have a passport. Women who get married and change their names would be particularly impacted by these obstacles.
Obviously, implementing the SAVE America Act would be very difficult to realize since it doesn’t provide the funding or, more importantly, the time to apply and administer these changes. The increased in-person traffic and paperwork for election offices would slow processing and increase the risk of errors.
This bill also give individuals the right to sue election officials and implements criminal penalties for allegedly registering a person to vote who hasn’t met the bill’s proof of citizenship, even if the voter turns out to be an eligible citizen.
Given the issue of interference and harassment during the 2024 election, these changes could make this problem more severe. This increased fears of personal safety and legal liability could induce staffing shortages at election offices just when their workload is ballooning from the SAVE America Act’s increase in traffic and paperwork.
“Nationalizing Elections”
Trump has called for “nationalizing” elections in at least 15 states. Although he has not elaborated on exactly what this would mean, the context is clear: the federal government should be running federal elections. Fortunately for the country, the Constitution strictly forbids this.
Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 states that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators.”
Gerrymandering
According to current estimates, Republicans should gain 10 to 12 House seat nationally from gerrymandered districts in Texas, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. Although, voter anger at Trump and at the gerrymandering process could easily reduce that advantage a lot, just look at the results of the November 2025 elections and multiple primaries held in 2026.
Based on the history of midterm elections, as detailed in the first section above, the White House loses an average of 25 House sets. This should be enough to withstand the Republicans’ (potential) advantage from recently gerrymandered districts. So, even if these numbers are off somewhat, Democrats should win back the House.
Where is the SAVE America Act today?
As of the end of July, the SAVE America Act has been passed by the House (narrowly) but is still DOA in the Senate since it takes 60 votes to pass bills over the filibuster and the Republicans have only 53 Senators. The would require 7 Democrats to vote for the bill to pass it, in addition to the four Senators who have voted against this bill changing their votes.
Republicans next tried to pass elements of this bill using the “Budget Reconciliation” process. This allows the bill to pass on a simple majority, but imposes very strict rules that it be purely budgetary in nature. The Senate Parliamentarian has already ruled that the SAVE America Act’s core provisions do not fit these parameters. The latest effort called “Reconciliation 3.0” includes a $10B fund that will be used to incentivize states to pass their own voter ID and citizenship rules, a strategy that one source said faces “immense structural and political roadblocks in the Senate”.
As November gets closer, the likelihood of any kind of national-level changes to election procedures lower. Besides being logistically daunting, there are legal principles against altering voting rules this close to an election. As a result the strategic focus surrounding the SAVE Act may be shifting from efforts to make substantive changes for this year’s election to longer-term goals in general and to state-level efforts.