This GOP scheme could backfire badly

U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), Washington, D.C., U.S., February 3, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

If the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act of SAVE America Act) is passed in both branches of Congress and makes it to President Donald Trump's desk for signature, it will amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by demanding "documentary proof of United States citizenship" in order to register to vote.

The bill passed along partisan lines in the U.S. House of Representatives, 218-213, on February 11 — with only one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, joining Republicans in voting "yes." Now, it is being considered in the U.S. Senate, where it would required 60 "yes" votes in order to meet the requirements of the filibuster. Some MAGA Republicans, however, favor a filibuster carveout in order to get the SAVE Act passed in the Senate and onto Trump's desk for signature.

If the SAVE Act becomes law, Democrats argue, it would make voting overly difficult — as a regular driver's license alone would not be sufficient proof of identity. It would also require a second document in order to prove citizenship, such as a passport, an enhanced driver's license (a Real ID), a government-issued photo ID that notes citizenship status, a birth certificate, or a military ID card.

Many Democrats view the SAVE Act as a form of voter suppression. But in an article published on February 26, The Atlantic's Marc Novicoff argues that the bill could backfire and hurt Republicans.

"At Donald Trump's urging," Novicoff explains, "Republicans are pushing yet another voter-ID bill, ostensibly to prevent fraud and noncitizen voting. Democrats are opposing the bill on the grounds that voter fraud is negligible and that the law is really meant to disenfranchise their supporters. But upon closer inspection, something very strange is going on."

Novicoff continues, "For decades, the politics of voter-ID battles were based on a simple premise: The voters most likely to be screened out by such restrictions were probably Democrats. In 2024, however, that fact stopped being true. Trump beat Kamala Harris among voters who didn’t regularly participate in elections. In the low-turnout, off-cycle elections that have happened since then, Democrats have overperformed dramatically, suggesting that their advantage with the most educated, plugged-in voters remains strong. In other words, the politics of voter ID have not caught up to its new partisan implications. Making voting more difficult would most likely hurt Republicans’ chances, yet they're pushing hard to make that happen; meanwhile, Democrats, who insist that Trump and a MAGA Congress are existential threats to American democracy, refuse on principle to help Republicans sabotage themselves."

Historically, Novicoff observes, Democrats have held aggressive voter registration drives.

"In 2016, according to the Democratic-aligned data firm Catalist, Trump won a majority of voters who had voted in the previous four cycles, but lost with everyone else," the Atlantic journalist notes. "He repeated that performance in 2020, although the difference between frequent and infrequent voters became less stark. Kamala Harris, accordingly, held 'When we vote, we win' rallies in 2024. But that November, the pattern flipped."

Novicoff continues, "Trump won the popular vote for the first time and, according to multiple analyses, did better with sporadic voters than with consistent voters. Harris won educated voters, rich voters, and well-informed voters, and her coalition was whiter than Joe Biden's had been. Trump got the downtrodden. Some of the biggest shifts in his direction were among young people, Latinos, and immigrants…. Republicans' current voter-ID push seems almost custom-designed to disenfranchise their own voters."

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