THE “SAVE” ACT IS A FRAUD - TRUMP WANTS TO WRECK AMERICA’S NEARLY FLAWLESS VOTING SYSTEM
Our voting system is the most secure in American history - American Bar Association
One of the most stunning and scandalous truths about this year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is how hard Trump is working to rig the November election. Could there be a more visible proof that Trump cares nothing about the promises of the document that became the soul of the revolution that changed the world? Could anyone imagine that on this our 250th anniversary, the occupant of the White House is pulling out every stop to block millions of Americans from voting eight months from now?
Trump’s transparent plot to fix the November elections in his favor is based on his awareness that in a free and fair choice by Americans, he will lose. He knows there would be no GOP partisan legislation reaching his desk if he loses the House. He knows that a Democratic House will undertake a wide range of inquiries and demand detailed answers from the White House and Federal agencies on actions he is already undertaking. He knows that if the Democrats win the House he also will face a possible impeachment. He knows what’s likely to face him if he cannot overturn the sacred right of every citizen in a democracy to vote.
The right to vote is as fundamental to democracy as the ability to breathe is to life. By making it as difficult as possible to cast a ballot, he is federalizing the American voting system to serve his own egotistical ambition to block the will of the people from becoming reality. He knows what he is doing but as he always does, he has invented a different reason for his ballot box coup. He maintains that the bill is designed to prevent fraud. Fraud is depriving someone through deceit of something they lawfully deserve. On that basis, that is precisely what Trump is doing now - executing a fraud on the American people.
A number of federal and state laws buttress what may be the most accurate voting process in the world. Most states can validate citizenship without requiring voters to present documentary proof. Election officials rely on database verification systems and cross-checks with government records. Many states use their DMV records dating from the information on the person’s citizenship from the time of the first license application. Federal law also permits intending registrants to provide the last four of their SSN, which is cross-checked with the Social Security Administration. States regularly use interstate data bases, for example the Electronic Registration Information Center, to discover possible duplicate registrations across states or voters who may have moved. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 aimed to increase voter registration by requiring states to offer registration opportunities at motor vehicle agencies and through mail-in applications. It ensured that more citizens could register to vote and maintains the integrity of voter registration rolls by making it a crime punishable by up to five years in prison to falsely claim citizenship in order to vote.
Election administrators adopted this approach because it allows registration to remain simple and easily available to all citizens and relies on existing government records for verification. In summary, this system uses state driver’s license databases, social security number checks, motor vehicle registration systems, interstate data sharing systems, and legal attestation under penalty of perjury to verify eligibility without requiring most voters to present proof-of-citizenship documents during registration and to reduce the need for voters to provide physical documents.
Election security specialists say that changing actual vote totals in the U.S. would be extremely difficult. The Protecting American Democracy 2018 report of the National Academy of Sciences states that “the most significant threat to the American elections system was coming, not from faulty or outdated technologies, but from efforts to undermine the credibility of election results. Unsubstantiated claims about election outcomes fanned by social and other media threaten civic stability.”
Paper ballots and audits verify results even if machines are compromised. Any electronic manipulation would be detectable through audits and recounts. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal of May 13, 2025 found that their audits of the 2020 election changed the net presidential vote totals by only about 0.007%, indicating very small tabulation errors. Paper ballots, post-election audits, and the highly decentralized election administration across thousands of local jurisdictions means there is no single database or machine system controlling national vote totals.
Voter fraud in the United States is infinitesimally small. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 found 35 fraudulent votes out of 23.5 million ballots examined, equalling 0.0001% of votes. In 2024, recent audits of voter rolls in states including Georgia, Ohio, and Iowa uncovered instances of noncitizen voting that overall amounted to only a tiny fraction of the states’ overall number of registered voters. The Heritage Foundation maintains a national database of election fraud cases and lists proven non-citizen voting cases over the decades. Compared with billions of votes cast, these cases reported by Heritage are still far below 1 tenth of one percent of votes cast. Finally, the American Bar Association after the 2000 election printed a comprehensive study of voting integrity in the United States and reported that “In November 2020 shortly after the Presidential election, the top Federal government officials responsible for election security issued a joint statement that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history.”
Mail-in balloting, greatly restricted in the SAVE Act, is in fact a very reliable means of casting a ballot. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, (EAC) is the only federal agency solely focused on election administration and works to test and certify the nation’s election equipment, support election officials, and serve voters. Data from the EAC show that problems with mail ballots—such as fraud or invalid ballots—occur at very low rates compared with the total number of ballots cast. Researchers with the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project studied the 2020 election, when mail voting increased dramatically, and reported that there was no evidence of widespread fraud, that most issues were administrative and rejection rates were roughly 1 to 2% of mailed ballots. The National Academies of Sciences reported in Securing the Vote (2018) that absentee and mail voting systems can be secure when combined with safeguards such as voter signatures, ballot tracking and post-election audits. Several states with long experience in widespread or universal mail-in balloting- Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah - report very low levels of fraud and high voter participation.
With virtual zero voter fraud all across the United States in federal elections and with a robust and safe system of federal and state law and practice for all elections over decades of history, there is no reason why the United States would need the SAVE Act.
Not only is the legislation not needed, it discriminates. According to the Department of State, about 170 million valid passports were in circulation as of fiscal year 2024. The population of the US as of March 11, 2026 was 345.7 million according to duckduckgo.com Half the US does not have a passport, and the passport fee for an adult is $130 plus handling fees.
Obtaining a birth certificates depends on state law, and the response time may be months in some cases. For married women using their spouse’s name and for divorced women who keep their ex-spouses surname, the birth certificate name will be different, and therefore a marriage certificate may also be required. For others, court-ordered name change documentation may be required.
For already registered voters, re-registration may be required under the Save Act in case of change of address, change of name, or change of party. A photo would be required at the polling place in order to vote.
There are many people whose jobs or family responsibilities make it difficult to spend great effort to gather necessary documents and then for very many to leave work to register or re-register in order to vote.
Trump does not need the SAVE Act in order to ensure the integrity of the voting system. That issue is taken care of. Usually, Trump does not reveal the real reason for his decision; he commonly offers a seemingly plausible falsehood for his decisions instead of the actual reason. Many examples come to mind. He went after Europe not for fairness but to cause European industries to relocate or make large investments in America. He wants the Russia-Ukraine war to end, not for concerns about Ukrainians, but for the economic prospects of trillion dollar deals with Vladimir Putin He went after Venezuela not for drugs, certainly not for democracy but for that country’s oil. He went after Greenland not for protection against Russian or Chinese threats, but to seize Greenland’s mineral riches. He’s never made clear why he started a war with Iran, having offered up multiple reasons for his actions in the days after March 7, So far, the same pre-war leadership organizations in Tehran remain in power, and Trump is offering no help to the Iranian people he encouraged to rise against the Shia dictatorship.
His purposes for the SAVE Act are manifold. It gives him a seemingly valid reason for changing the elections laws. It inserts the federal government - his government - into the heart of the American voting system defying the clear mandate of the Election’s Clause (Article I, Section 4), the states’ selection of the electors in presidential elections (Article II, Section 1), and the 10th Amendment, which reserves to states the powers not delegated to the Federal Government. It tries to validate the claim that Democrats are going to cheat in November, and provides a speech point for him wherever he appears. It serves to shift attention away from his economic, immigration and foreign affairs blunders. It helps to keep public attention less focused on the Epstein stain that he constantly denies but never explains. He hopes it takes some of the sting out of his poor economic record, including rising inflation and falling jobs, and cuts in health care, while he is conducting a war without an end game at the cost of nearly $1 billion daily. In short, he is doing his usual fan dance appealing to the spectators while covering up the realities.
This fight is about cultural icons he trumpets to encourage Americans to distrust each other and to convince Americans that cheating at the voting booth is an urgent requirement to protecting the sanctity of the vote.
The real fraud being practiced is Trump’s own action to establish an autocracy and abolish our democracy. He only believes what he calls his “morality” to guide his decision making. With that and his vice grip over a pliant GOP, he is repeating the lie of 2020 that he had actually won the election. He did nothing to prevent the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021 in a baldfaced effort to keep the Constitution from working. This time he wants to cement autocratic control to ensure that there will never again be an opposition party or independent sources of legitimate power to protect what Americans have worked for over the last two and one half centuries.
He is desperately trying to deprive enough voters of their right to vote to leave him with a House controlled by the GOP. There is no Constitutional barrier, no commitment to rule of law or due process that will impede his campaign to federalize the American election process to ensure that his chosen voters will vote for him. For those for whom he can raise barriers, instill a sense of helplessness, put burdens on casting a ballot, or reward for not voting, he will move aggressively to make that happen.
The current bill, now having passed the House and before the Senate, may be the most corrupt, most anti-democratic piece of voter legislation seen in decades, perhaps ever. On Monday March 9 in Florida at the House GOP’s annual issues conference, Trump said the bill’s passage “will guarantee the midterms”, adding “if you send it up there, you will win the midterms and you will win every election for a long time.” Democrats have excoriated the legislation. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a “Jim Crow type law” to “suppress voters” and “disenfranchise millions of American citizens, seize control of our elections, and fan the flames of election skepticism and denialism.”
The SAVE Act represents a Rubicon for Americans to preserve our nearly flawless system of voting. This is not a usual moment; it is a moment of extraordinary significance. Americans all the way back to the Founders, against great odds and despite failures, used their rights to vote to open the doors of opportunity to all regardless of origins, faiths and views. We have much to admire about America. We need now to stand tall against these brazen assaults and move toward the next 250 years of enjoying the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.