The Trump administration's SAVE America Act is officially dead after the US Senate voted against it on Thursday, according to media reports.
The far-reaching Republican overhaul backed by President Donald Trump was an amendment of part of a lengthy debate over an immigration funding package that had barely passed in the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives along party lines.
The most controversial part of the legislation would have required voters to show documented proof of US citizenship through a passport or birth certificate when they registered to vote and would have taken effect immediately, including during congressional primaries that have already begun in many states.
Research showed that millions of Americans do not have easy access to those documents, and experts said such a provision is unnecessary, as noncitizens have never been shown to vote illegally in American elections, with the exception of a few outlier cases.
Trump pushed the SAVE Act in the wake of his false claim that the 2020 presidential election, in which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen from him, due in part to voting by undocumented immigrants.
"Congress should unite and enact this common-sense, country-saving legislation right now, and it should be before anything else happens," Trump said during his State of the Union address, adding that the only reason Democrats opposed the legislation was because they want to "cheat."
The SAVE Act would have also required all voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot, and it would have mandated that all states submit their voter lists to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Political experts said that Republicans have been "staunchly opposed" to any legislation that would nationalize how voting is done.
Regardless, Trump has openly said that he thinks the United States should nationalize voting.
University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller said in an interview that the SAVE America Act, had it been enacted, would have been "among the most significant nationalization(s) of elections in American history."
It could end up being the act's legacy, Muller wrote in a blog post in March.
"It does strike me that the debate has shifted from whether to nationalize elections to how, at least for many Republicans," he said. "And that may well, even in failure to pass the Act, make the conversation for Democrats next time they are in power much easier to have."
