83% of Americans support requiring all voters to show government-issued identification to vote. This bipartisan support shows that well-constructed federal voter ID legislation would be broadly popular. Furthermore, it would greatly promote trust in elections. To discuss this, I will discuss Trump’s SAVE Act, the associated problems, the common arguments for federal voter ID legislation, and my dream bill. You’ve heard all of the criticisms of Trump’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act: cracking down on absentee voting without plans to help people adjust their voting habits, the systematic removal of suspected fraudsters from voter rolls within the 90-day quiet period before elections, and the requirement of expensive Real IDs to vote could all contribute to the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans.
But just because Trump’s plan for federal voter ID legislation is flawed doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take arguments for it seriously. As someone who grew up in Europe, where provinces and regions are less autonomous than American states, I am highly compelled by the argument of standardization. At the moment, a lack of national standards sees voters in Maine vote without presenting an ID (unless registering on election day), leaving Maine with little defense against voter fraud by means of impersonation. 1,300 miles away in Georgia, voters are required to provide a state driver’s license or ID number to register online and bring matching photo ID to the polling location on election day. While it may provide some protection against fraudulent voting, the stricter regulations come with the problems mentioned above: many people don’t have access to the proper documentation, and this unevenly affects certain marginalized groups.
Regardless of which approach is taken, federal voter ID legislation would help to standardize the voting process for people who move from one state to another within the same country. Between 2023 and 2024, 7.16 million people, or 2.1% of the population of the United States, moved between states. This is not an inconsequential portion of the electorate in an age when elections are regularly won and lost on decimals of percentages. In order for these people to vote in their new home states, it is essential that they understand what documentation is required.
Proponents of the SAVE Act also argue that government-issued ID is already a part of daily life, since it is required to open a bank account, drive, etc.: “Why should voting be any different than that?” asks Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. This position seems like a very reasonable one to take until we remember that the documentation required to get a driver’s license and to open a bank account is not the same as that required to prove one’s citizenship and vote. Citizens and non-citizens alike open bank accounts with driver’s licenses and proof of residence, not passports or birth certificates. If implemented abruptly, the SAVE Act would leave 9% of eligible voters disenfranchised. Furthermore, the prohibitive cost of applying for and getting a passport would unduly affect disadvantaged voters, who are already less likely to vote. However, this does not mean that I am entirely unsympathetic to this line of argumentation. In fact, I think that using voting rights to encourage people to get government-issued photo IDs would be a net positive. I will return to how one could do this equitably later.
Some fans of the SAVE Act would tell you that non-citizens are voting in large numbers. However, the data collected by the Heritage Foundation, even with its strong conservative bias, shows only 1,619 cases of voter fraud since 1982. Based on the Heritage Foundation’s data, these fraudulent votes represent less than 0.0005% of the population of the United States and less than 0.00065% of eligible voters. Despite the rarity of illegal voting, it is not something we should just accept as a fact of life. How are we to uphold our democracy if the security of our elections relies on a glorified honour code, where we are trusting people in states with lax requirements not to abuse the system?
We know from recent history that there are malicious actors, foreign and domestic, that wish to influence our elections. The external threat can be seen in the Kremlin’s recent “digital influence” campaigns which attempt to sway American elections. Beijing has also been known to attempt to influence American elections through online influence operations, with AI tools only making them more effective. However, their strategy differs from that of the Russians, with their focus not being on helping individual candidates win, but on sowing distrust to weaken the United States, according to a 2024 article from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. With Iran also trying to undermine confidence in American elections, according to the FBI, the foreign will to meddle is clear.
However, the threat is not only external. With only 55% of Americans reporting themselves as being fairly or very confident that elections will be carried out accurately and fairly, calls to overturn the legitimate outcomes of elections have grown loud, common, and violent. In this case, the issue is not the actual trustworthiness of elections, since the number of fraudulent votes is so minuscule, but our trust in elections. This distinction is drawn by Charles Stewart III of MIT in a 2022 article. He notes that the perception of election integrity has been on the decline in recent years, something expressed in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. This event was, in and of itself, an attempt to overturn the legitimate results of a democratic election, driven by a deep distrust of our electoral institutions — with the same playbook set to be used again following the recent midterm elections.
This argument, for me, is the most powerful one in favor of federal voter ID legislation like the SAVE Act. It would set a standard that all states must follow and hopefully put to bed any notions about stolen elections. Furthermore, it isn’t without historical precedent. After the controversial presidential election of 2000, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was signed into law in 2002 to address the problems that the course of that election made apparent. HAVA set basic standards for election integrity and has been credited with introducing measures which boosted confidence in elections. These include the setting of minimum standards for the administration of federal elections, the creation of the right to a provisional ballot, allowing people to vote, even if not on the voter rolls on election day, so long as their eligibility can be confirmed after the fact, and the investment of large sums of federal money to upgrade polling machines and ensure the presence of accessible machines at polling locations nationwide (see U.S. Law Explained).
All of this was meant to combat the deterioration of trust in elections, following the election of 2000, during which “the rules for counting votes seemed to change from one county to the next.” However, in 2026, we find ourselves in a similar position, with our elections and democratic processes called into question in a much more obvious way. Thus, there is a strong argument for another federal election security bill to rebuild American trust in our elections. Furthermore, the aforementioned attempts by foreign powers to influence elections and the broader backdrop of increasing great-power rivalries make it more important than ever that we counteract this lack of faith in our elections and therefore our government.
Now that I’ve gone over the Trump bill, the relevant criticisms and the arguments used to support it, I will move on to discussing my preferred solution. I believe an effective solution to these problems would involve setting a national standard for photo ID when registering to vote and when voting. This would be a requirement to provide a scan, fax, or copy of some proof of citizenship when registering and to bring the real thing with you to the polling location on election day. Furthermore, it would limit absentee voting to those with a special reason for voting in this way (service members, elderly or disabled people, etc.). As discussed in relation to the SAVE Act, this policy could lead to a decrease in voter turnout. However there are two reasons that I would still limit absentee voting to certain cases nationwide. First, its global rarity makes the U.S. an outlier with regards to absentee voting. This fuels my primary reason, which is that absentee voting is regularly invoked to undermine faith in elections. This is seen in Donald Trump repeatedly calling it a “hoax”.
However, it would differ from the SAVE Act in a few key ways. First, my bill would include an adjustment period, allowing time for election officials to be trained in the new procedures. This safeguard would prevent mistakes and protect the states from legal action should a new policy be incorrectly implemented. The proper length of time is hard to estimate, but I would give it about four years, or one full election cycle, until all provisions are fully in place. This would also give voters across the country time to research and prepare for the new regulations.
Secondly, I would not utilize anything like the SAVE system, discussed above. Any removals from the voter rolls should be checked by humans, and I would preserve the 90-day quiet period before federal elections in which no “general list maintenance program” could be embarked upon. Doing so would prevent eligible voters from being mistakenly removed from the rolls, without sufficient time to get back on them. However, my legislation would include a much more active process of making sure that those who move between states or change address within states are removed from the voter rolls of their previous constituencies and aided in getting onto those of their new homes. This would encourage people to become involved in the politics of their new localities, while also being a very engaged and public process, helping to restore faith in our elections, by showing that the rolls are being revised regularly.
Finally, and most importantly, my bill would include a provision for increasing access to government-issued photo IDs that prove American citizenship. This would not only help to secure our elections and counteract popular notions of their insecurity, but also provide around 152 million Americans without passports with the highest form of identification. In one, a passport can allow you to travel internationally, prove your citizenship to an officer of the law, bank, social service provider, etc. and vote in some states. However, we have already established that passports are very expensive, costing up to $315 if you don’t have the necessary documents to prove your citizenship.
Firstly, this price is only for a passport book. Passport cards are much cheaper, costing only $65 for a first-time applicant. This is assuming that you don’t have to pay the aforementioned $150 “file search” fee. The savings are still large, but not large enough. If you want to bring in federal voter ID legislation, the potential price tag of a passport card being $215 is not acceptable. Therefore, my plan would have the federal government eat the price of passport cards for all. The lingering question, however, is one of cost. The entire problem that I am trying to solve is that requiring a passport, or other form of photo ID, which proves citizenship is prohibitively expensive. Thus, to ask the state to provide every American with a passport card is no mean feat. In fact, to provide a free passport card to the 152 million Americans who would need one, under my proposed legislation, would mean almost $10 billion in lost revenue for the State Department. No doubt this would take a long time and cost a lot of money, but the price would diminish over time as the backlog of eligible applicants without passport cards is dealt with.
However, this is a price worth paying. If we ignore the assorted benefits that I have listed as coming with a passport, election security and the perception of election security are priceless. With more than a trillion dollars set to be spent on defense in 2026, this investment in the integrity of our democracy would come out to around 1% of what we spend on our material security in the short term and would decrease in price over time as the need to provide large portions of the population with passport cards would go away.
With all of this in mind, it is a no-brainer to protect ourselves on the home front, by keeping our elections secure and recovering trust in them and our government. With the world entering a period of great instability, the trust in electoral institutions and government that this legislation would support is more important than ever.
