WASHINGTON — The process of casting a ballot may become more difficult for voters come midterms if the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE Act, passes through Congress.
As Iowa’s congressional delegation points to election security and aims to pass the legislation, Johnson County leaders warn the bill will disenfranchise millions of voters, specifically married women.
Under the SAVE Act, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 would be amended to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
The SAVE Act would eliminate online and mail registration methods. Voters would need to present documented proof of citizenship to register to vote, such as a passport or driver’s license.
Critics of the legislation say this is already the law, and the SAVE Act is an attempt to add an extra hurdle to the democratic process.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, there is no evidence noncitizen
noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome.
Most Americans support requiring photo ID to vote in federal elections, although the legislation remains opposed by Democrats. An August 2025 Pew Research Center poll found that 83 percent of U.S. adults support “requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.” This number is up from 77 percent support in a 2012 Pew Research Center poll.
The SAVE Act has passed the U.S. House of Representatives multiple times since 2024, receiving support from Iowa’s federal
representatives, and was passed most recently in the House in February.
Iowa representative’s continued support
Iowa Republican U.S. Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson voted in favor of the bill in two consecutive Congresses.
“I think it should be easy to vote and hard to cheat, and I think every voter should know that their vote
matters,” Hinson said in an interview with The Daily Iowan.
Hinson pointed to election integrity as the reason for her continued support of the legislation.
“We’ve had some very close elections in the state of Iowa, so I think every person needs to know the integrity of their vote matters,” Hinson said. “That’s why I’ve supported the SAVE Act.”
Hinson launched her bid for the U.S. Senate in September, following U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, announcing she will not seek reelection. The seat has attracted multiple candidates, including Republican former state senator Jim Carlin, Iowa Rep. Josh Turek, D-Council Bluffs, Iowa Sen. Zach Wahls, D-Coralville, and Libertarian Thomas Laehn.
RELATED: Iowa leaders, lawmakers react to the SAVE Act
Primary polling compiled by The New York Times 2026 Poll Tracker shows Wahls as the Democratic frontrunner and Hinson as the GOP’s top pick. Primaries are set for June 2.
In the 2024 general election, Miller-Meeks won Iowa’s 1st Congressional District with 50.1 percent of the vote. Following a recount, Miller-Meeks secured her third term in the U.S. House by less than 800 votes.
In an email to the DI, Miller-Meeks said a high percentage of U.S. adults who support showing government-issued photo ID to vote, including 71 percent of self-identified Democrats, according to the Pew Research poll.
“We already show ID to drive, board an airplane, verify employment, open a bank account, or buy a beer,” Miller-Meeks said in an email to the DI. “Asking for proof of citizenship to participate in federal elections is common sense and essential to maintaining public trust.”
Miller-Meeks said Iowa has voter ID laws that work efficiently and voter turnout has increased after the law was implemented.
Iowa’s voter ID law was passed by the state legislature in 2017.
The law was implemented incrementally to allow poll workers to gain training and familiarity with the changes.
The law was partially in place for the 2018 midterm elections and fully in effect for the 2019 elections.
Iowa’s 2020 election broke an all-time turnout record for a general election, according to Secretary of State Paul Pate. Roughly 1.7 million Iowans cast a ballot in 2020, according to data from the Secretary of State’s office.
This turnout followed Pate sending every eligible voters information on how to request an absentee ballot.
In the 2024 general election, about 74 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, according to state data, which is roughly 1.67 million Iowans.
Thirty-six states, including Iowa, have voter ID laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Miller-Meeks said the SAVE Act will make showing voter ID the standard nationwide.
“If you’re already registered to vote, you don’t need to reregister,” Miller-Meeks said.
Johnson County political leaders worry the SAVE Act will disenfranchise voters and negatively impact voter turnout.
JoCo leaders warn negative impacts
Vicki Aden, president of the League of Women Voters of Johnson County, said the SAVE Act, as it is written, will do more harm than good.
Aden said the legislation is written for a problem that does not exist, and the instances of noncitizen voting are minuscule.
Thirty-five of the about 1.67 million ballots counted in the 2024 general election were cast by non-U.S. citizens in Iowa, according to Pate. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office charged six individuals with felony election misconduct, and so far, one case has ended in a guilty verdict.
“If you’re weighing people who say that noncitizens voting is impacting elections — it’s really not, that’s the claim,” Aden said. “My point would be not allowing people who are qualified to vote to register will impact the elections more because you’re going to disenfranchise many, many more people.”
Aden said the SAVE Act will disenfranchise women who have married and changed their last name since the last name on their ID will not match the last name on their birth certificate.
Women will have to show an alternative form of ID, such as a passport, Aden said, which has barriers due to a wait time and cost.
Aden said lawmakers assuming Iowans have the time and money to acquire the necessary documents to register to vote is a privileged response.
The league has received concern from Johnson County residents about whether the SAVE Act will affect their voter registration as well as the burden of providing additional documentation. Aden said if the legislation passes, lawmakers are placing this burden on women.
“I’m not quite sure why they don’t understand that requiring a woman to get more documentation than her husband is inherently unfair,” she said.
Under the SAVE Act, voter registration drives, carried out by the League of Women Voters and other local political organizations, would no longer be legal.
Iowans would need to register to vote in person at the county auditor’s office. There’s no funding to support the time and staff this would take, Aden said, and would be a burden to Johnson County’s election infrastructure.
Julie Persons, Johnson County county auditor, wrote in an email to the DI that if the bill passes, the Secretary of State would need to give counties direction on how Iowa will handle the process.
“At this time, we don’t know how the proposed legislation would impact election processes,” Persons wrote.
Removing the ability to register to vote outside of the auditor’s office would disenfranchise rural voters, Aden said, who may live hours away from their county auditor. The SAVE Act will also negatively impact working voters interested in registering to vote, as they might not be able to take time off work to go in person.
College students who likely didn’t bring their documents with them to school and older citizens whose licenses have expired will also face additional hurdles, Aden said.
Aden questioned how the U.S. draft is now automatically registering young men, but citizens who turn 18 years old are not automatically registered to vote.
“My preference is to make it easier for people who are eligible to be able to register and to vote, not harder,” she said.
She described the SAVE Act as a fearmongering tactic to make Americans question the sanctity and security of elections.
Johnson County Democrats Chair Ed Cranston said Republicans are pushing the bill to bring up concern about the validity of voters.
“The doubt has just been sown by Trump,” Cranston said.
In the 2016 GOP primaries, President Donald Trump lost to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in the Iowa and Colorado caucuses.
“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Trump posted on the social platform X.
Following the results of the 2020 election, which resulted in former President Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, Trump continued to claim that the results were fraudulent.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump’s supporters, buoyed by his claims, stormed the Capitol as Congress was going through the certification process of making Biden president.
Trump continued discussing voter fraud after the insurrection, and now in his second term, he has continued to make claims about rampant voter fraud, with little to no evidence backing his claims.
Cranston said the bill is unrealistic to carry out, especially by midterms in November.
“We are in a bind here that we are not represented here in Johnson County by people that are really looking at this bill and thinking through what it would take to implement it,” he said.
Cranston said it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote, and to him, the SAVE Act sounds like it’s really about suppressing voters.
“Our elections have been really a pride of our country,” Cranston said. “The fact that we have in the past, have had elections and the transfer of power from one party to the next, where that has not been an issue until this last decade, with the wild swing that is taking place both in Washington and in Des Moines.”
Iowa senators uncertain
Ernst said in an interview with the DI that she does not know if the SAVE Act will move this year, and lawmakers can continue to work on the legislation.
“The plan right now is to look for ways that we can begin funding opportunities for states so that if they want to engage in the SAVE Act at the state level, that’s one way to do it and lay the groundwork,” Ernst said.
Ernst, a former county auditor, said she is sensitive to concerns about what types of ID will be accepted.
She said Iowa has already put many of the legislation’s measures into place, and she thinks most Iowans are “OK” with the SAVE Act.
Ernst said she does not think the legislation would disenfranchise voters.
“My thought is that we allow the time for women to update those requirements,” she said. “So what is in the SAVE Act today can always be tweaked to accommodate common sense proposals.”
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a cosponsor of the SAVE Act, said he supports the legislation because it’s a top issue for voters, referencing the Pew Research poll.
When asked if he anticipates if the SAVE Act will clear the Senate this Congress, Grassley said to ask U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, the Senate Majority Leader, who introduced the bill.
Grassley said the legislation is simple.
“There’s one final step that you’d have to take if you can’t have any of those documents because we don’t want to deny anybody that’s a citizen of the United States the right to vote,” Grassley said.