Booths await voters at the Pennington County Administration Building during early voting on January 19, 2026, for the municipal election in Rapid City, South Dakota. (Photo: Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight)
The voting reform bill scheduled to begin debate in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday would create major headaches for underfunded state and local officials without significantly stopping fraud, voting rights advocates and election officials say.
The so-called SAVE America Act that President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing would create chaos for state and local election administrators by immediately imposing several fresh requirements without increasing funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said during a Tuesday teleconference hosted by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.
“I cannot emphasize enough the tremendous effort the SAVE America Act would place on election officials across the country,” said Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as co-founder of the group Advance Elections. “Please don’t set our country or these officials up for failure. Bring us to the table. Get this legislation right and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”
No fresh money
The bill would initially enhance costs to Washington state by $35 million for administering this year’s midterm elections, said Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey. He added that the measure would cost state administrators an estimated additional $12 million per year during presidential election years.
However, it would not provide states and localities with federal funds to cover the fresh costs.
“When I looked at the SAVE America Act to understand how it would impact election administration, I pressed F for the dollar sign and didn’t see a single dollar, much less the hundreds of millions needed to make these changes,” Brinson Bell said.
The bill, which Trump and other supporters say is necessary to prevent immigrants from voting, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. They would also have to show photo ID at polling stations.
But the measure “is the very definition of a solution in search of a problem,” Kimsey said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Foreigners voting in federal elections are extremely sporadic.
Barriers to postal voting
Overall, the bill would make it more arduous to vote, especially for people who have changed their name, tribal citizens and people without photo ID, people on the call said. This defeats the purpose of election officials: to make voting easier.
“The problem isn’t that the wrong people are voting,” Kimsey said. “The problem is that not enough people vote.”
The bill would also create barriers to mail-in voting, which Washington and other states have used for decades.
The system has increased voter turnout and is widely popular across party lines.
“The absentee voting system in Washington state is a very strong system,” Cantwell said. “The whole country should be moving in this direction, not away from it.”
Voting integrity
Supporters of the bill, including most Republicans in Congress, say it will introduce commonsense protections to protect U.S. elections.
In a Tuesday speech opening debate on the measure, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune called it “essential.”
“If there is one thing that is important to election integrity, it is ensuring that those who are registered to vote are eligible to vote and that those who show up to vote at the polls are … who they say they are,” said Thune, a Republican from South Dakota.
He added that this could be achieved by requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID.
Photo IDs, however, are not as universal as commonly believed, said League of Women Voters of Maine executive director Chrissy Hart.
Hart said 18% of citizens over age 65 do not have photo ID, as do 16% of Latino voters, 25% of Black voters and 15% of low-income Americans.
Election denial
Kimsey, who identified himself as a Republican during his first bid for office in 1998 and became independent after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election, was asked whether the measure was a continuation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the U.S. election.
He responded that what he sees as the “voter denial movement” lost momentum after Trump won in 2024, but appears likely to reemerge before the midterms.
“In my opinion, this is nothing more than a very clumsy – and I hope ineffective – but very clumsy attempt to create chaos in this year’s midterm elections,” he said.
