By Art Harman, Senior Vice President – Policy, The Conservative Caucus
There are two important bills in Congress regarding elections. One protects your vote. The other institutionalizes fraud.
You know all about the SAVE America Act that over 80% of Americans support — the one that the House passed and that the Senate has refused to pass.
But there’s another bill awaiting a Democrat Congress and President: The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
That bill would outlaw or restrict almost everything in the SAVE America Act.
The SAVE America Act
Let’s review how the SAVE America Act will protect your vote, assure only American citizens can vote, and by requiring photo ID, prevent Democrat activists from going from many polling places under fictitious names or voting with the names of dead people.
Key Provisions
- Mandates that states ensure only U.S. citizens remain on voter rolls and remove non-citizens. States will have access to federal citizenship databases, such as those run by DHS and the passport agency.
- Requires proof of citizenship to register to vote — DMV applications, mail registration forms, voter registration agencies (e.g., public assistance offices), online processes, and same-day registration. This requires in-person presentation of documents and eliminates purely mail/online options without follow-up.
- Requires official photo identification with matching name and address to vote. This assures nobody can vote under your name or for deceased people. Democrat activists will no longer be able to go to multiple polling places, registering and voting each time using false names.
- Requires states to establish an alternative process to allow applicants to attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury and submit other evidence, with election officials making a determination and documenting their basis.
- Additional ID copy requirements for mail and absentee ballots in federal elections.
- Allows private lawsuits against election officials who register applicants without required proof, and imposes criminal penalties (fines and up to 5 years in prison) on officials or employees who register non-citizens or provide certain assistance.
- Requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to promptly notify state election officials of individuals who become naturalized citizens.
- Prohibits mail or online registration without in-person proof of citizenship — ending automatic or ‘motor-voter’ loopholes that enable illegal voting, and which are how perhaps millions of illegal aliens get registered to vote.
We must pass the bill THIS YEAR to safeguard our elections. Democrats will spend billions and increase cheating to win the House — which would prevent next year’s Congress from passing our bill and, of course, impeach and investigate President Trump.
Now, the Democrats’ “Steal the Election” Bill
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (JLVRAA) is the exact opposite of the SAVE America Act. It would institutionalize and legalize many forms of election fraud.
It’s the “Illegals Vote Act.” It’s the “Election Fraud Act.”
If passed, it would prevent much of the SAVE America Act’s provisions from being legal unless the JLVRAA were also repealed. It would empower radical judges to block conservative efforts to secure the vote.
1. Voter ID and citizenship documentation are “presumptively discriminatory”
This is the most direct collision with SAVE. The JLVRAA’s provisions sweep certain election-administration changes into mandatory federal review nationwide — not just in covered jurisdictions — whenever they are adopted in areas with sufficiently large minority populations. Two of the explicitly enumerated triggers are:
- “Imposing stricter requirements for documentation or proof of identity to vote” — the exact mechanism at the heart of the SAVE America Act.
- “Making it easier to remove voters from the rolls” — which is what SAVE’s DHS-database roll-comparison and required purge processes are designed to do.
In practical terms, even if SAVE became law, the JLVRAA would route its implementation through DOJ or a three-judge D.C. District Court panel before states could enforce it — and the burden of proof would sit on the state to show non-discrimination, not on challengers to show discrimination.
Removing the names of dead, duplicate and apparently fraudulent voters would become effectively impossible.
2. A “voter fraud” justification is explicitly downgraded
The bill rewrites the Section 2 standard so that a state defending a challenged law must produce evidence that fraud is actually occurring and that the challenged rule will stop it. Claims of ‘voter fraud’ are not enough to justify a discriminatory rule. This is significant because the entire policy rationale for SAVE rests on the threat of noncitizen voting; the JLVRAA would require empirical proof of that threat in court rather than treating it as a legitimate legislative interest on its face.
3. A new, automatic preclearance coverage formula
The JLVRAA rebuilds the Section 4(b) coverage formula that the Supreme Court struck down in Shelby County v. Holder (2013). The new formula uses a rolling 25-year lookback of voting-rights violations to automatically pull states and localities into Section 5 preclearance. States with recent §2 violations, consent decrees, or federal objections get swept in — meaning roll maintenance, ID rules, polling-place consolidation, and redistricting changes in those states cannot take effect until DOJ approves them.
4. Codification of the Gingles “Senate Factors”
The bill writes the nine Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) Senate Factors directly into statute for vote-dilution and vote-denial claims — effectively mandating that if minority districts don’t elect minorities, the district lines are racist. This locks in a results-based (rather than intent-based) test and explicitly overrides the Supreme Court’s Brnovich v. DNC (2021) decision, which had narrowed the path for §2 challenges to voting rules. For practical purposes, the bar to overturn a SAVE-style ID or registration law in court drops considerably.
5. The “partisan intent” loophole closure
A notable provision: a voting rule that is intended to benefit a political party still violates Section 2 if it also has the intent or effect of vote dilution or vote denial on minority voters. This is aimed at the defense — frequently raised successfully in redistricting and election-rule cases — that a law was partisan, not racial. The JLVRAA makes that defense unavailable when the two motivations overlap.
6. 180-day public notice and expanded private right of action
Covered jurisdictions would have to publicly announce voting changes at least 180 days before an election, and the bill broadens standing and expedites injunctive relief for private plaintiffs and civil-rights organizations. Combined with the lowered substantive standard, this would substantially increase pre-election litigation against state election administrators.
7. Federal observer dispatch authority
The bill restores and expands DOJ authority to send federal observers into polling places in jurisdictions with “a noted pattern of discrimination” — a determination made administratively by the Attorney General, not by a court. For SAVE supporters concerned about federal intrusion into state-run elections, this is a structural concern independent of any specific policy.
The Bottom Line
The JLVRAA does not directly repeal SAVE America Act policies — it does something more durable. It creates a federal review architecture in which:
- The specific tools of SAVE (documentary proof of citizenship, stricter ID, DHS-database roll purges, polling-place changes) become presumptively suspect.
- The rationale of SAVE (fraud prevention) is no longer self-justifying.
- The enforcement of SAVE would require advance DOJ approval in a large number of states.
The two bills are not parallel policy proposals; they are operating on different levels of the system — SAVE sets state-level voting rules; JLVRAA sets the federal gating mechanism those rules must pass through — effectively prohibiting changes to secure elections from fraud.
In short, the bill would take power away from the states and give it to federal officials, radical judges, and liberal groups — making it much harder to make and keep elections secure and fair.
Action Items
Let’s make a big push to get the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act before the elections start in just a few months.
- Keep calling and writing your Senators to pass the SAVE America Act using the ‘talking filibuster’ ASAP. U.S. Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121.
- Call their local offices in your state and ask for a short meeting to discuss the bill. Bring community leaders for more impact.
- Send an instant message to your Senators.
- Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
- Call talk radio shows and encourage everyone listening to take action too.
- Use your social media to get friends to take these actions.
— Art Harman, Senior Vice President – Policy, The Conservative Caucus
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About the author: Art Harman is Senior Vice President – Policy at The Conservative Caucus.
About The Conservative Caucus: Founded in 1974, The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization. Under President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus advances free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.
Published May 21, 2026 by The Conservative Caucus.
Peter J. Thomas is a veteran conservative political strategist and seasoned policy expert dedicated to upholding the principles of the Constitution and democracy. As a founder and the chairman of the Conservative Caucus, he has played a pivotal role in promoting and shaping the conservative agenda across the nation for over half a century.