House passes revamped citizenship and voter ID bill

Nina Heller, CQ-Roll Call on Feb 11, 2026

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After weeks of pressure from rank-and-file Republicans, the House on Wednesday passed a bill aimed at creating a federal voter ID mandate.

Dubbed the SAVE America Act, it would require Americans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote and present photo identification when casting a ballot. It would also require states to submit their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security for vetting of citizenship status. The proposal is a more expansive version of a previous iteration known as the SAVE Act, which the House passed in April.

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, the lead sponsor of the bill, described it as an effort to safeguard the country’s elections and dismissed the idea that it would make it harder for Americans to vote.

“In this age of progressive suicidal empathy, basic concepts such as voter ID and proof of citizenship have been attacked as suppression,” he said Wednesday on the floor.

Republicans were united in backing the measure, with a final tally of 218-213. Just one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, crossed party lines to vote in favor.

Introduced last month, the bill was fast-tracked to the floor without being marked up in the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal election matters. Leaders tapped an unrelated measure to serve as the legislative vehicle.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said the legislation would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.

“The SAVE Act would introduce the 21st century equivalent of a democracy that tolerates literacy tests and asks people to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar. And for what reason? Because Donald Trump to this day lies about the 2020 election,” he said on the Senate floor, dismissing the president’s efforts to paint American elections as rife with fraud.

House Republicans took up the bill after pressure from Roy and Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who has been publicly lobbying the Senate to use a so-called talking filibuster to sidestep a 60-vote threshold.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., appeared to rule out that idea, saying the strategy could eat up precious floor time.

“You ought to be able to prove that you’re a citizen of this country in order to be able to vote. How we get to that vote remains to be seen,” Thune told reporters this week.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said he expected to see “a lot of public pressure on the Senate to move that bill to the president.” Billionaire Elon Musk has used his social media platform to post repeatedly in favor of the bill, and conservative influencer Scott Presler has made the rounds on the Hill this week to back it.

Noncitizens are already barred from voting in federal elections, and documented cases of voter fraud are rare. The measure’s photo ID requirement would take effect immediately following the bill’s enactment, with the changes applying to all federal elections.

The measure would require states to submit voter registration lists to the Homeland Security Department to be compared to its database of citizens. It would allow noncitizens found to be on the voter list to be investigated for potential deportation.

It would also allow private individuals to sue election officials for registering people to vote who have not presented documentary proof of citizenship.

Democrats have criticized the bill for its limits on acceptable forms of ID for registration, which they say would make it difficult to vote for people who can’t afford a passport or who have changed their last names, as many married women do not change their birth certificates to match. The bill would require those who have changed their names to provide additional documentation to establish citizenship, including the option to sign an affidavit.

Virginia Democratic Rep. Jennifer McClellan described the measure as a “modern-day poll tax,” citing the cost of various forms of ID and recalling how members of her family “fought tooth and nail” for voting rights.

“My great-grandfather at the turn of the 19th century — in the name of making sure that citizens voted and election integrity — had to take a literacy test and find three white men to vouch for his character,” she said during Wednesday’s floor debate. “History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.”

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(Savannah Behrmann and Valerie Yurk contributed to this report.)

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