Republicans' $250M grant bill revives (Jun 2026)

On June 4, 2026, the Senate blocked the SAVE America Act for the second time. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) offered it as an amendment to a nearly $70 billion immigration enforcement funding package, and the measure failed 48-50. Four Republican senators — Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Mitch McConnell (KY), and Thom Tillis (NC) — joined all 46 Democrats in voting no.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) had forced the first Senate floor vote in April 2026, also failing 48-50 with the same four Republicans defecting. The SAVE Act would have required every American to provide a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate to register to vote in any federal election. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats but the requires 60 votes, and Democrats have pledged uniform opposition.

Hours after the Senate vote, Reps. Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) and Laurel Lee (R-FL) introduced the SAVE America Through REAL ID Act. The bill would authorize $50 million per year from FY2027 through FY2031 — $250 million total — as a federal grant program for states to help low-income residents obtain REAL ID-compliant driver's licenses and identification cards at no cost to the applicant.

Fedorchak serves as North Dakota's at-large House member, elected in 2024. Lee, who chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, served as Florida's Secretary of State from 2019 to 2022 under Gov. Ron DeSantis and has made election integrity her signature legislative focus.

Congress passed the of 1993 (P.L. 103-31) after decades of state-by-state barriers that suppressed registration rates — particularly among lower-income, minority, and young voters. Sen. Wendell Ford (D-KY) and Rep. Al Swift (D-WA) wrote the primary provisions requiring states to offer voter registration simultaneously with driver's license applications (the 'Motor Voter' rule), by mail, and at public assistance agencies. The NVRA requires registration applicants to attest under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens — but does not require documentary proof.

The SAVE Act would amend the NVRA to add a documentary proof requirement. In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, 570 U.S. 1 (2013), the Supreme Court held 6-2 that the NVRA preempts Arizona's Proposition 200, which had imposed the same documentary requirement at the state level. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, held that the NVRA's mandate that states 'accept and use' the federal registration form means the form must be accepted as sufficient — states can't demand additional proof of citizenship on top of it. The SAVE Act is Congress's attempt to undo that ruling by changing the underlying federal statute.

The strategic logic behind the new bill is . Under Senate rules, reconciliation bills require only 51 votes — a simple majority — rather than 60. Republicans used reconciliation to pass their 2017 tax cuts and are using it again in 2026 for the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' spending and tax package. Reconciliation is governed by the , codified at 2 U.S.C. § 644, which bars provisions whose budgetary impact is 'merely incidental' to their non-budgetary components.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) authored the rule in 1985 (Pub. L. 99-272) after Republicans used reconciliation to pass major policy changes that had little to do with deficit reduction. The Senate parliamentarian applies the by advising the presiding officer on which provisions are 'extraneous.' Voting mandates — telling states they must collect proof of citizenship — are policy changes, not spending decisions, and experts say they would almost certainly fail the Byrd Rule test. A grant program that spends federal dollars on REAL ID infrastructure has a direct budgetary footprint, giving Republicans a stronger argument that the provision belongs in a reconciliation bill.

The SAVE America Act passed the House 218-213 on February 11, 2026. Every Republican voted yes. Every Democrat voted no except Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who crossed the aisle. The bill requires states to obtain documentary proof of citizenship in person before registering anyone to vote in federal elections, mandates photo ID to cast a ballot, and requires a copy of an eligible ID when requesting or submitting an absentee ballot.

The legislation amends the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which currently requires voter registration applicants to attest under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens but doesn't require documentary proof. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-252) — passed after the 2000 election chaos — strengthened federal requirements for first-time voters who registered by mail, but it also stopped well short of documentary proof of citizenship.

Four Republican senators have voted against the SAVE Act twice. Collins said requiring passports or birth certificates could create 'an unnecessary burden on voters.' Murkowski argued the bill would 'federalize elections' in violation of the Constitution's reservation of election administration to the states, and cited specific barriers for rural Alaskans.

McConnell, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the bill would give any future administration the legal machinery for a 'complete federal takeover of American elections.' Tillis called the legislative push 'a waste of time' and said the bill lacked the 60 votes needed. With Democrats uniformly opposed, the defection of any two Republicans is enough to block cloture.

The REAL ID Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-13, Division B) was passed by Congress as an emergency supplemental spending bill, attached to a military funding package, after the 9/11 Commission recommended federal minimum standards for state-issued ID. Obtaining a REAL ID requires proof of identity (a passport or birth certificate), a Social Security number, and two proofs of state residency. The May 7, 2025 enforcement deadline means REAL ID-compliant ID is now required to board domestic flights and enter most federal facilities.

The Fedorchak-Lee bill would fund states to help residents get REAL ID cards. But because REAL ID itself already requires a birth certificate or passport to obtain, critics argue the grant program doesn't solve the underlying access problem — it subsidizes the process for people who already have the documents, and does nothing for the 3.8 million who lack them entirely.

Brennan Center researchers Kevin Morris and Cora Henry, conducting a national survey for VoteRiders, the University of Maryland's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, and Public Wise, found that 21.3 million eligible Americans — 9.1 percent of the voting-age citizen population — lack ready access to documentary proof of citizenship. At least 3.8 million don't have such documents at all. The survey polled 2,386 U.S. citizens between September and October 2023 with a margin of error of ±2.6 percent.

The disparities track race and geography. Eleven percent of citizens of color can't readily produce citizenship documents, compared to 8 percent of white citizens. The Native American Rights Fund documented that Arizona's prior citizenship-proof law — the same documentary standard the SAVE Act would impose federally — blocked approximately 35,000 eligible voters from registration, with disproportionate impact on people living on tribal lands. Tribal IDs don't include place of birth, which the SAVE Act requires, meaning tribal members would need additional documents to register.

Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, has been a leading advocate for the legislation. The organization argues that the NVRA as currently interpreted prevents states from requiring proof of citizenship even when they want to — a reading the Supreme Court confirmed in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council (2013) — and that noncitizen voting represents a real enforcement gap.

The empirical record doesn't support the scale the bill implies. Georgia's 2024 review of 8.2 million voter registrations identified 20 noncitizens — 0.0002 percent. The Heritage Foundation's own Election Fraud Cases database recorded 77 confirmed instances of noncitizen voting between 1999 and 2023 nationwide, all investigated and prosecuted under existing law.

Democracy Docket, the election law organization founded by attorney Marc Elias, published an analysis on June 4 calling the SAVE America Through REAL ID Act an attempt to sneak parts of the SAVE America Act past the Senate through the appropriations process. The organization noted that the Senate parliamentarian — not senators themselves — has the authority to rule on whether any provision violates the Byrd Rule under 2 U.S.C. § 644.

Roll Call reported in March 2026 that voter ID provisions face real Byrd Rule challenges even inside reconciliation, quoting experts who said the policy-change character of the provisions made them extraneous under Senate rules. Whether the grant-program framing is enough to survive a parliamentarian challenge remains an open legal question.

The Bipartisan Policy Center concluded that the partisan effects of documentary proof requirements are real but complex — the 21 million affected voters aren't uniformly partisan, but racial and income disparities mean lower-propensity Democratic-leaning constituencies bear more of the burden. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Campaign Legal Center, and NARF all issued statements opposing both the original SAVE Act and the new REAL ID bill, arguing the effect on eligible voters is the same regardless of the legislative mechanism.

Republicans' $250M grant bill revives proof-of-citizenship voting