When Jaynie Parrish, the executive director and founder of Arizona Native Vote, saw the details of the Republican elections bill President Donald Trump has called his “number one priority,” her first thought was: “Here we go again.”
Parrish, who is Navajo, has seen firsthand how Native voters living on tribal lands already face significant challenges to voting access. She views this legislation, which would add proof of citizenship and photo ID requirements to participate in federal elections, as yet another roadblock for Native voters to overcome in order to exercise their voting rights.
“It’s going to make it more labor-intensive, more impossible, and it’s putting that much more burden on the voter to even get registered successfully, and then even to be counted,” said Parrish.
At Trump’s behest, the Senate this week is engaging in extended debate over the SAVE America Act, which has already been approved by the House of Representatives. The measure would require that Americans present proof of citizenship, such as a U.S. passport or a birth certificate, to cast a ballot. It would also require voters to present a photo ID, such as a driver’s license, at their polling location; for citizens in states with mail-in voting, this would entail sending photocopies of the necessary documents. The bill would mandate states submit their voter rolls to a federal database to identify noncitizen voters, even though the program has been riddled with errors.
Trump has threatened not to sign any other legislation until the SAVE America Act is passed, which may prove easier said than done. The debate is expected to take several days, but the measure currently does not have the votes to pass in the upper chamber without blowing up the legislative filibuster—a strategy that also does not have sufficient support, even among Republican lawmakers. Trump has also said that he wants language added to further restrict voting by mail, despite skepticism from some GOP senators, and a vote on such an amendment is expected at some point during the marathon debate.
The legislation purports to solve the problems of noncitizen voting and voter fraud, both of which are already illegal and exceedingly rare, as Trump continues his crusade to reshape federal elections in Republicans’ favor and relitigate his 2020 loss. The president has said that the legislation is critical to safeguarding the GOP majorities in the House and Senate in the November midterm elections, when Republican control of both chambers is under threat from Democratic takeover.
The legislation could make it more difficult for several demographics to vote, including Native American voters, who already face systemic barriers when casting a ballot. It would require a person voting by mail to provide proof of citizenship in person before the registration deadline, which advocates argue undermines the very purpose of mail-in voting.
“It simply doesn’t accommodate the realities of Native communities and how they are treated by the elections system,” said Jacqueline De León, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, or NARF, and a member of the Isleta Pueblo. “Election services are simply too far from Native communities—sometimes fifty miles, sometimes a hundred miles, sometimes a thousand miles away.”
Because many Indigenous Americans live in rural tribal communities, the nearest election office may be an hours-long drive away. This makes it difficult not only to cast a ballot but to register to vote at all. Native voters may also not have a traditional street address, which can lead to their votes being rejected.
It can even be difficult to reach a voter to ensure that their mail-in ballot is “cured,” or corrected, before the election deadline. Parrish recalled driving two hours on dirt roads to find the home of a Navajo-speaking elder during the 2024 election cycle, and then calling a county clerk to translate the questions needed to cure the ballot just minutes before the deadline for the ballot to be counted. Of the hundreds of voters that Parrish’s team tried to locate, only 24 ballots across Navajo and Apache counties were cured in time.
The measure does carve out an exception for tribal IDs to be permitted to register to vote, but it would not accept IDs without an expiration date—which many tribal IDs do not have. Tribal IDs also often do not contain the holder’s birth information, and it can be difficult for tribal members to obtain birth certificates due to expense, travel, and waiting periods. Many Native American elders in particular do not have birth certificates; De León noted that the lack of adequate medical care historically led to a greater number of home births on tribal lands. But the logistical hurdles of travel can add to the base cost of obtaining a birth certificate or a passport, making it a near-impossible endeavor.
“The distances that folks would have to travel—I think people just don’t realize that that’s so incredibly far and so incredibly burdensome for Native communities, and really adds another level of unfairness,” De León continued.
In Alaska, for example, a birth certificate costs $60 and can take one to two months to process, according to NARF. In many cases, Alaska Natives lack easy road access, meaning that traveling to obtain their birth certificate or other identifying documents could require a plane flight. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican to oppose opening debate on the measure; in a February op-ed, Murkowski noted the challenges that rural and Alaska Native voters in particular would face in meeting ID requirements.
Tom Lopach, the president and CEO of the Voter Participation Center, noted that 4.5 percent of those identifying as Native American or Alaska Native lacked government-issued photo identification, around twice the rate of white Americans.
“For Native voters on tribal lands, these requirements aren’t just inconvenient, they’re potentially disqualifying,” said Lopach in an email. “When participation requires multiple documents, fees, and long trips to government offices, many eligible voters simply cannot clear all the hurdles.”
Evidence from previous “show your papers” state voting restrictions shows the effect on voter participation. A law passed in Kansas more than a decade ago imposing such a requirement ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 voters, and was overturned by federal courts. In Arizona, proof of citizenship is required to vote in state and local elections. A 2024 Votebeat analysis found that voters living on Native land in Arizona were disproportionately represented among those unable to provide proof of citizenship, and thus only able to vote in federal elections.
The irony of forcing Native Americans to prove citizenship in order to vote is not lost on Parrish. Federal and state governments have historically tried to make it more difficult for Indigenous voters to cast a ballot, and so legislation like the SAVE America Act just intensifies suspicion among people who already feel deliberately disenfranchised.
“Racism and discrimination is not new, so a lot of folks know that underneath all of this stuff is, they don’t want Native people to vote,” said Parrish.
