White House defends bill that would require people to verify citizenship to vote

Los Angeles (USA).- The government of President Donald Trump defended this Friday the approval of a broad bill that would require people who can vote to present proof of citizenship and photo identification to be able to vote in federal elections, which faces opposition in the Senate.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, defended this Friday from Phoenix (Arizona) the project, christened the Law for the Protection of American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America Act, in English), which would require states to require voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, mainly through a valid U.S. passport or a birth certificate.

The initiative also requires voters to present a valid photo ID before they can cast their vote, a requirement that is already established in most states.

The plan, approved this week by the majority of the House of Representatives, also imposes new rules for voting by mail, which require voters to present a copy of a valid identification when sending their ballot.

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In a press conference, Noem insisted that the approval of the project would prevent undocumented people from voting, a Republican rhetoric that led several states in the 2024 elections to try to impose bans on voter lists.

The project backed by Trump will be voted on in the Senate

But investigations show that voter fraud by non-citizens is extremely rare, a study by the Brennan Center For Justice found that only 0.0001% of the 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions surveyed in the 2016 election were allegedly votes by non-citizens. Only two of those jurisdictions reported possible cases. For its part, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, identified only 23 cases of non-citizen voting between 2003 and 2022 in a related study. Noem also insisted on the need to establish photo identification for people who vote in person, but currently 37 of the 50 states require it and the rest have other methods of verifying identity. The Trump-backed project will be voted on in the Senate, where it faces a difficult path because it needs the Democratic vote and even some conservative lawmakers have said they will vote against it. The U.S. Constitution grants states control over voting and the guidelines for carrying it out. Republicans in Arizona failed in 2024 to impose voting restrictions.