The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is federal legislation requiring any person registering to vote in a U.S. federal election to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship at the time of registration. It is one of the most important election integrity measures Congress has considered in a generation — and Tea Party Patriots Action helped write it.

The SAVE Act was authored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and introduced in the Senate by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). In its 2026 form — now called the SAVE America Act — it also includes a national photo ID requirement for voting. The House passed the SAVE America Act on February 11, 2026. The bill now awaits action in the U.S. Senate.

At its core, the SAVE America Act does something simple and commonsense: it closes a loophole in the federal voter registration process that currently has no mechanism to verify whether a registrant is actually a U.S. citizen. The law requiring citizenship to vote already exists. The SAVE America Act enforces it.

This is not a radical idea. It is the norm in most democracies around the world. Mexico, France, Germany, Canada, and dozens of other nations require citizens to prove their identity and eligibility before voting. The SAVE America Act simply brings the United States in line with international standards for election security.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. So why does the SAVE America Act matter? Because there is currently no federal mechanism to verify citizenship at the point of registration. It is against the law for a noncitizen to register to vote — but nothing in the existing process verifies.

When a noncitizen registers to vote today, they must sign an attestation swearing they are a citizen under penalty of perjury. But attestations alone are not verification. There is no documentary check, no database query, and no standardized process for election officials to confirm the claim is true before adding someone to the rolls.

A study by Just Facts found that approximately 10% to 27% of noncitizen adults in the U.S. may be registered to vote illegally — not because they are intentionally committing fraud, but because the registration system makes it easy to do so by mistake or design. States like California, Illinois, and others have implemented automatic voter registration programs that, without robust citizenship screening, risk adding noncitizens to the rolls through ordinary government interactions like obtaining a driver's license.

The question is not whether individual noncitizens are deliberately trying to steal elections. The question is: should we have a system that makes accidental or intentional noncitizen registration possible? The SAVE America Act says no.

The Current System Is Broken by Design

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) — also known as the "Motor Voter" law — was designed to make voter registration as easy as possible. The ease of the process created a corresponding ease of error. When you can register to vote at the DMV without ever being asked for citizenship documentation, the system relies entirely on personal honesty and the hope that no one abuses it.

The SAVE America Act is not an attack on the NVRA's accessibility goals. It is a targeted fix to add a single, critical verification step at the front end of the process.

The SAVE America Act requires one of the following documents to be presented when registering to vote in federal elections:

• U.S. Passport or U.S. Passport Card — issued by the U.S. Department of State; definitively establishes citizenship
• U.S. Birth Certificate — must be an official copy issued by a state, county, or municipality
• Consular Report of Birth Abroad (FS-240) — for citizens born overseas to U.S. citizen parents
• Certificate of Citizenship (Form N-560) — for individuals who acquired citizenship through a U.S. citizen parent
• Certificate of Naturalization (Form N-550 or N-570) — for individuals who became U.S. citizens through the naturalization process
• Name change documentation (marriage certificate or court order) — required only when the name on your citizenship document differs from your current legal name; a single supporting document bridges the gap and fully satisfies the requirement

Every U.S. citizen already has access to at least one of these documents, either in hand or by request. Birth certificates are available from the vital records office of the state where you were born. Naturalization certificates are issued at the time of naturalization. Passports can be applied for at any Post Office location. These are not rare or obscure documents — they are the fundamental papers of American citizenship.

Opponents often claim that requiring these documents creates an undue burden. But this argument conflates having a document with carrying it at all times. Voter registration is not a spontaneous act. The documents required by the SAVE America Act are the same documents anyone would gather before applying for a Real ID, passport, federal benefits, or a background check. They are a one-time requirement — not a recurring barrier at every election.

The SAVE America Act did not emerge overnight. It is the product of years of grassroots activism, legislative strategy, and relentless advocacy — much of it driven directly by Tea Party Patriots Action and the Only Citizens Vote Coalition.

The media wants you to believe the SAVE America Act is controversial. The polling says otherwise. In March 2026, Tea Party Patriots Action commissioned McLaughlin & Associates to survey 1,000 likely general election voters on the question of proof of citizenship for voter registration. The results were decisive.

These numbers are not an outlier. Multiple independent polls from the same period find similar results, with support consistently above 80% across all demographic groups. This is not a partisan issue. Three-quarters of Democrats agree with the core premise of the SAVE America Act.

And yet, Democratic senators continue to block its passage. The question every constituent should be asking their senator is: Why are you opposing a bill that your own party's voters support?

When Tea Party Patriots Action presented these poll results to Members of Congress, the message was clear: passing the SAVE America Act is not a political risk. Blocking it is.

Tea Party Patriots Action is not a bystander to the SAVE America Act. We are among its founding architects. Along with the Only Citizens Vote Coalition — a nationwide alliance of conservative advocacy organizations — Tea Party Patriots Action helped draft the legislation's key provisions, build the congressional coalition behind it, and generate the grassroots pressure that got it through the House.

• Co-authored the legislation alongside Rep. Chip Roy's office and coalition partners, shaping the bill's core documentary proof requirements from the earliest drafts.
• Commissioned national polling through McLaughlin & Associates to document the overwhelming public support for the bill — evidence that proved decisive in convincing wavering legislators.
• Launched the Only Citizens Vote Month in August 2025, mobilizing grassroots supporters across the country to contact their senators during the August recess.
• Led the Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour, a three-week, 20-state tour concluding with a major rally at Upper Senate Park in Washington, D.C., where we delivered petition signatures directly to Members of Congress.
• Recruited and trained over 35,000 poll watchers and poll workers ahead of the 2022 and 2024 elections — demonstrating Tea Party Patriots Action's long-standing, on-the-ground commitment to election integrity.
• Mobilized hundreds of thousands of petition signers and phone call makers who contacted their U.S. senators demanding the SAVE America Act's passage.

Tea Party Patriots Action Honorary Chairman Jenny Beth Martin has led this effort personally, testifying to congressional committees, meeting face to face with members of Congress, speaking at rallies nationwide, and ensuring that the American people's voice defines the SAVE America Act debate.

Left-wing organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice, the League of Women Voters, and Campaign Legal Center have waged an aggressive media campaign against the SAVE America Act. Their arguments deserve direct, factual responses — because when you examine their claims closely, they don't hold up.

The SAVE America Act is the 2026 successor to the original SAVE America Act. Passed by the House on February 11, 2026, it retains the original bill's central requirement — documentary proof of citizenship to register — and adds significant new provisions to further secure federal elections.

The core of both bills is identical: only U.S. citizens should be able to register to vote in U.S. elections, and the voter registration system should have a mechanism to verify that. The SAVE America Act is a more comprehensive version of that principle.

The 2026 midterm elections are approaching. Without the SAVE America Act, every 2026 election will be run under the same unverified registration system that has concerned election integrity advocates for years.

• No federal citizenship verification standard — states will continue to use a patchwork of inconsistent approaches, ranging from robust to essentially nonexistent.
• Automatic voter registration programs will continue to register people without citizenship checks — programs in more than 20 states automatically add people to voter rolls when they interact with government agencies, with no systematic citizenship screening.
• The verification gap grows with each new wave of immigration — as the noncitizen adult population grows, the statistical risk of registration errors increases proportionally.
• Public confidence in elections continues to erode — the absence of verification is itself corrosive to public trust. The American people deserve to know their election system has gatekeeping mechanisms, not just perjury laws.

The window to pass the SAVE America Act before the 2026 elections is narrow. The only path to passage runs through sustained, direct constituent pressure on individual senators. Tea Party Patriots Action has never backed down from a legislative fight when the stakes are this high. We will pass the Senate.

The SAVE America Act will only become law if enough Americans demand it. Here is exactly what you can do today to make a difference:

Step 1: Contact Your Senators

Use our action page to contact your U.S. senators directly and demand they vote YES on the SAVE America Act. Contact your senators now →

Step 2: Spread the Word

Share this page with everyone you know. The most powerful thing you can do is ensure that everyone in your network — family, friends, church members, colleagues — understands what the SAVE America Act is and why it matters.