General Discussion

In January, a federal court issued a permanent injunction against Trump’s March, 2025 executive order that attempted to require documentary proof of citizenship on voter registration and limitations on mail-in ballots. In her opinion, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, articulated why the Founders entrusted administration of elections first with the states in the Constitution’s Election’s Clause.

“The Framers of our Constitution recognized that power over election rules could be abused, either to destroy the national government or to disempower the people from acting as a check on their elected representatives,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Accordingly, they entrusted this power to the parts of our government that they believed would be most responsive to the will of the people: first to the States, and then, in some instances, to Congress.

The idea that immigrants are being brought into the United States to vote is a far-right conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly disproven. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote, and those that do so intentionally are easily caught, prosecuted, imprisoned for years, and then deported, all for the chance to cast a single ballot out of hundreds of thousands. Consequently, noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare, as election officials and court findings across the country have persistently shown.

Similarly, mail-in ballots are popular across the country and have shown no evidence of being particularly susceptible to electoral fraud. The SAVE America Act would not limit mail-in ballots, but another bill recently introduced in the House, the Make Elections Great Again Act, would.