Elections · analysis
The cost of the cure
New voting requirements (proof of citizenship to register, stricter ID, aggressive purges of the rolls) are sold as fraud prevention. Measured against the fraud they target, they fail the trade. Kansas's proof-of-citizenship law blocked 31,089 people, over 99% of them citizens, in a state that had found 39 noncitizens on its rolls in 19 years. Where roll checks have been run since, they have flagged eligible voters by the hundreds or thousands for every noncitizen confirmed. The fraud is measured in dozens; the burden, in millions.
This section makes an argument, unlike the rest of this site: that proven voter fraud is far too rare to justify new barriers to voting. Every number is sourced, and the strongest evidence on the other side is shown, not hidden. The other side →
Four real programs: how many people each blocked or flagged, against the noncitizens found. Kansas's 39 are all the noncitizens found on its rolls since 1999, not people its law caught. Each row is drawn on its own scale, with everyone flagged as the full bar.
Who doesn't have the papers
The SAVE Act and its successor, the SAVE America Act, both passed by the House, would require documentary proof of citizenship, typically a passport or birth certificate, to register. A 2023 national survey (for VoteRiders, the University of Maryland, and the Brennan Center) found 21.3 million voting-age citizens, 9.1%, can't readily produce one, and at least 3.8 million have none at all. About half of Americans don't hold a passport. And as many as 69 million married women have a birth certificate that no longer matches their legal name. Photo ID is a smaller barrier: about 1% of citizens (2.6 million) have no government photo ID at all, though about 9% lack an unexpired driver's license and 12% have one with an out-of-date name or address.
Rules that already misfired
| Rule | What it caught | What it cost |
|---|---|---|
| Kansas proof of citizenship, 2013–16 | No measurable number: the state's own expert put the noncitizens among those blocked at “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” Kansas had found 39 noncitizens on its rolls since 1999 (many from clerical errors); the secretary of state's own prosecutions produced 9 convictions, 1 of a noncitizen | 31,089 applicants blocked, ~12% of all new registrants; struck down by a federal court (2018) and the 10th Circuit (2020) |
| Texas mail-ballot ID rules (SB1), 2022 | Aimed at mail-ballot identity fraud | 24,636 mail ballots rejected in the March 2022 primary, 12.4%, vs 0.8% in 2020; still 2.7% that November |
| Alabama purge, 2024 | No count published; the judge wrote that the list held “thousands of United States citizens” and “far fewer noncitizens” | 3,251 targeted 84 days before the election; a federal judge halted the program and ordered eligible voters restored. A separate check through the federal SAVE database removed 186 registrants who did not send proof of citizenship |
| Virginia removals, 2024 | About 1,600 removed as possible noncitizens | Lawyers identified citizens among them, at least 18 identified by plaintiffs' lawyers; the Supreme Court let the removals stand |
| Texas SAVE check, 2025–26 | 117 referred for investigation | 2,724 flagged; 578 later proved citizenship, about 1 in 5 flags wrong |
| Florida felon purge, 2000 | Some ineligible felons removed | About 8,000 eligible voters wrongly listed, per the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in a state decided by 537 votes |
Where the proposals stand
| Measure | Status, September 2026 |
|---|---|
| SAVE Act (proof of citizenship to register) | Passed the House 220–208, April 2025 |
| SAVE America Act (adds photo ID at the polls) | Passed the House 218–213, February 2026; has not passed the Senate, where an attempt to attach it to a funding bill failed 48–50 in April 2026 |
| Executive Order 14248 (proof of citizenship on the federal registration form) | Blocked: permanently by federal courts in D.C. (Oct 2025), Washington state (Jan 2026), and Massachusetts, in a suit by 19 states (June 2026). The government has appealed the D.C. and Massachusetts rulings |
| Expanded SAVE database (bulk citizenship checks of voter rolls) | The Supreme Court, 6–3, let states use it on Sept 25, 2026; the federal law still bars systematic purges within 90 days of an election. So far: 28,635 flagged of 65 million+ records, before any review |
The strongest case on the other side
What cuts against this argument
Undetected fraud can't be counted, and supporters of new rules argue that is the point: the Heritage list is a floor. The most rigorous national study of strict photo-ID laws (Cantoni & Pons, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2021) found no significant drop in turnout, for any group, though a GAO study found turnout fell 2–3 points more in Kansas and Tennessee after their laws. Only about 1% of citizens (2.6 million) lack any government photo ID. And noncitizen ballots are real, if rare: Iowa counted 35 in 2024, and Texas and Kansas charged noncitizen voters in 2026.
Why the argument still holds
Grant all of it. The same QJE study found strict ID laws had no effect on fraud either: unsurprising, since the one kind ID stops, impersonation at the polls, is 34 proven cases in 43 years. Proof-of-citizenship rules are a far bigger burden than photo ID: 21.3 million citizens can't readily produce the papers. Where such rules and purges have actually been run, they have flagged or blocked eligible citizens by the hundreds or thousands for every noncitizen found, and the fraud that does occur is caught and prosecuted under existing law. A rule whose costs land on thousands of eligible voters to stop dozens of cases is a bad trade, whichever party proposes it.