Reader Q&A: what does Trump’s restrictive voting bill mean for US democracy? Live now

The latest version of the Save America Act could, if it is passed, upend voting for all Americans in the middle of a federal midterm election year and create costly, chaotic changes for elections workers. As this explainer by Rachel Leingang sets out: “this year’s version [of Save] includes expansive documentary proof of citizenship requirements and criminal liability for election officials from the initial Save act, in addition to a very strict voter ID requirement for casting a ballot and a provision that requires states to regularly turn their voter rolls over to the Department of Homeland Security.”

George Chidi is the Guardian’s politics and democracy correspondent. His recent reporting has included looking at the states bringing in strict proof-0f-citizenship requirements to register to vote and covering efforts by the FBI to investigate Fulton county in Georgia over the 2020 election, the results of which are still challenged by Donald Trump’s supporters.

Guardian reporter Sam Levine has spent years focusing on voting rights in the US, including for our ongoing series The fight for democracy. His recent stories include covering fears about Donald Trump’s hopes to “take over the voting” in November’s midterms, as well as efforts to stop Trump limiting mail-in voting by civil liberties groups.

George and Sam are answering your questions now. Post your questions in the comments now about the impact of the Save act on November’s midterms, what they’ve witnessed in years of covering voter crackdowns in the United States and their hopes and fears for American democracy.

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An illustration of election day “I voted” stickers

What will the full impact of Save be?

IcommentthereforeIam asks: Is it possible to model the likely effects of the changes in the SA act on elections? And in purely numerical terms, how many people are likely to be disenfranchised or intimidated into losing their vote?

George: I think the Kansas example is instructive. Kansas enacted a law in 2013 requiring voters to prove their citizenship when registering. Evidence presented in a federal lawsuit challenging the law showed that 18,000 people were blocked from registering – about 8 per cent of people trying to register. That statistic only covers motor voter registrations; another study showed the overall number was closer to one in eight voters. Only about a quarter of those who were initially blocked ended up registering. (And no, these were not non-citizens – they were by and large born Americans who couldn’t lay hands on their birth certificates.) The blocked registrants were disproportionately young people with no party affiliation. The federal court struck down the law in 2018.

Arizona enacted a similar law in 2005, with similar results. Elections officials attributed the large number of blocked registrants to people whose married names didn’t match their birth certificates, or people who couldn’t get their birth certificate. In 2024, the US supreme court blocked the use of documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections in the Arizona case.

One man shows ID to another at a polling station

How do we let more people know about the implications of the act?

GrammySue22 asks: Q: The Save act is based on some lies that apparently many Americans are being told: that there are large numbers of non-citizens who are voting (absolutely not true), that mail-in voting invites fraudulent voting (again, not true), and that somehow the “radical leftist antifa democrats” will “steal” an election “again” if something isn’t done. We all know the facts about this, and we also know that the opposite is true: many elderly, women, rural, poor, and minority legitimate Americans will be disenfranchised if this legislation passes. Question: how can we drive home the truth to the broader audience in such a way as to get them to put more pressure on their Republican representatives?

George: The hard part here is making an argument that will be heard by people who believe the “mainstream media” exists to lie to conservatives. I think the best answer is to show examples of people who look and sound – and perhaps believe the same things – as the people demanding high levels of documentation to vote. One of the less-spoken corollaries to voting registration changes as proposed is that it will disproportionately affect voters with a propensity to vote for Republicans. Married women. Rural voters. People who have never drawn a passport and don’t have easy access to a county clerk who can send them a new birth certificate.

Protesters gather, holding placards against the proposed voting changes.

Have people not just had enough?

CalinaZumurrud asks: If Save comes in for the midterms and the GOP aren’t wiped out, can the US system take a repeat of the last two years and have the US people (even Maga) just not had enough?

George: It is stunningly unlikely for this to become federal law in time for the midterms. States are more likely to enact this at the local level, but even there, I believe courts will look at the examples of Arizona and Kansas and are likely to block immediate implementation. I will withhold my opinion about the prudence of voters’ choices: democracy is a contact sport.

Lock them up?

jimbles asks: Can we solve our problems in America by jailing Republican criminals?

George: I say this with love in my heart; the real scandal is always what’s legal.

Photograph of the Capitol building in Washington DC at sunset

How is it different from buying alcohol or boarding a plane?

MartWPD writes: You need ID to buy alcohol, drive a car, board a plane, and enter government buildings – no one calls that oppression. But for voting – the foundation of the system – we’re told requiring basic proof of citizenship is outrageous? Over 80% of Americans support voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements (see polling from Pew). This isn’t about “defending democracy”. It’s about ignoring what the public actually thinks and hoping no-one notices.

George: The right to buy alcohol is not in the constitution (but, by all means, begin a pedantic conversation with me about the 21st amendment). Neither is driving a car, boarding a plane or entering a government building. But the right to suffrage is explicitly stated in the 15th amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. From this precept flows correlaries. Does the duty of a voter registrar to prevent people barred by law from voting supersede the right of people lawfully entitled to vote? That duty is not explicit in the constitution; the right is. From this, we get 100 years of precedent on voting law.

Very, very few people are credulously arguing that noncitizens should be able to vote. The problem is proportionality. You may be of the view that it would be legal and proper for the police to, say, bomb an apartment building in a crowded Philadelphia neighborhood in order to facilitate the arrest of someone accused of shooting at a cop. But the law doesn’t actually support that. If the threat of undocumented noncitizen voters were great enough to materially affect an election, I think this would be a different conversation. But it is not. If a law that will in practice reduce noncitizen voting from, say, 10 people to zero will also predictably prevent 10,000 citizens from voting, the law is constitutionally questionable … as courts have repeatedly found.

Sam: Just one thing to add to George’s point. We often hear the talking point that people have to show ID to get on an airplane so they should have to show it to vote. But in the US, there’s a process that allows someone to go through airport security and get on their flight if they don’t have an acceptable form of ID. I think this is a point that often gets lost when it comes to the debate over voter ID – there’s often a lot of focus on whether ID should be required or not, and much less discussion about an equally important question: what happens if someone doesn’t possess an acceptable form of ID but is otherwise eligible to vote? How much of a burden should that person face to prove their eligibility?

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