By Michelle Moore, Bridge2Blue (“a grassroots volunteer organization in Virginia dedicated to electing Democrats. We create and distribute clear, reliable information that helps voters understand issues and take action. By partnering across local, state, and national organizations, we help close information gaps and strengthen the capacity needed to boost voter awareness, engagement, and turnout.”)
After intense pressure by President Trump and Elon Musk, on February 11, 2026, the U.S. House passed the Save America Act. Contrary to its seemingly benign name, the SAVE America Act would make it much harder—and in some cases impossible—for millions of eligible Americans to register and vote. And the people affected are our fellow citizens – eligible voters in every neighborhood across America. Every one of our Virginia Republican Representatives – Jennifer Kiggans (VA-2), Rob Wittman (VA-01), John McGuire (VA-05), Ben Cline (VA-06), and Morgan Griffith (VA-09)- voted to support the SAVE America Act. No matter your political affiliation, this bill is blatant voter suppression and those who supported this bill should be held accountable.
The voters affected by this bill span a wide cross-section of our communities: married women whose names have changed, seniors born at home without formal birth records, service members who rely on military IDs, naturalized citizens with hard‑to‑access paperwork, low‑income Virginians who cannot afford replacement documents, students, and first‑time voters. These are precisely the people those representatives were elected to represent.
The SAVE America Act would require people to present documentary proof of citizenship—a U.S. birth certificate, U.S. passport, certificate of naturalization, certificate of citizenship, or Consular Report of Birth Abroad. These documents are not always easy or even possible for folks to obtain. To make matters worse, the bill would reject the IDs that thousands of Virginians have been using for years to vote, such as state driver’s licenses and non‑driver IDs, military IDs, Veterans IDs, student IDs, tribal IDs, and government employee IDs. These are the IDs that eligible voters—your neighbors, coworkers, and family members—have used at the polls.
Republicans have claimed the SAVE America Act “ensures that only American citizens vote,” but they are very aware that the facts don’t back that up. It’s already totally illegal, and even punishable by prison, for non‑citizens to vote in federal elections. States already verify voters’ identities, and they routinely audit their voter records. And many credible investigations have come to the same finding: documented cases of non‑citizen voting are extremely rare and usually the result of clerical errors, not intentional fraud.
So, the problem the SAVE America Act claims to solve is not a real problem. But the harm it will cause is very real.
By supporting this bill, Representatives Kiggans, Wittman, Griffith, Cline and McGuire voted to impose irrational and unneeded barriers on the very Virginians they were elected to serve. The SAVE America Act would force eligible voters to track down costly, hard‑to‑obtain documents; it would reject the IDs they already use, and it would create confusion at the polls. What’s really alarming is that it would also invite targeted and wrongful voter purges. This is not how trust in elections is built. It is how eligible voters are disenfranchised and pushed out of the process.
The SAVE America Act is the Republicans’ reboot and harsher version of the previous SAVE Act passed by the U.S. House in 2025 and defeated in the Senate. These Acts do not protect democracy – to the contrary, they restrict it and purposely silence eligible voters. And our Virginia Republicans voted for them – twice.
