WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats introduced a bill Tuesday to counter President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to verify voters’ citizenship status for federal elections.

The Defending America’s Future Elections Act would also prevent the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing voter registration data and state records.

What You Need To Know

  • Senate Democrats introduced a bill Tuesday to repeal President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to verify voters’ citizenship status for federal elections

  • The Defending America’s Future Elections Act would also prevent the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing voter registration data and state records

  • The executive order Trump signed last week requires documentary proof of United States citizenship when people register to vote

  • The Democrats’ bill comes as House Republicans prepare to bring another voting bill to the floor for a vote this week; the GOP’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act requires voters to provide documentary proof of their U.S. citizenship when they register to vote

“This illegal and unconstitutional power grab by President Trump is another attempt to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote,” Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said in a statement. “It would disproportionately impact women, rural communities, members of our military and millions of Americans who don’t have every piece of identification Trump wants to require.”

The executive order Trump signed last week requires documentary proof of United States citizenship when people register to vote. It also requires a state or local official to record the type of document voter applicants present as proof of citizenship. 

The order said documentary proof of U.S. citizenship could be a U.S. passport, a Real ID, an official military identification card or a valid federal or state government-issued photo ID.

Padilla said more than 21 million voting-age Americans lack easy access to the documents Trump’s order requires. Half of all American citizens do not have a valid passport, and millions of others have legal names that differ from their government-issued documents, including 69 million married women whose birth certificates do not match their legal names.

To help identify unqualified voters, Trump’s order directed the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate with the U.S. DOGE Service to review each state’s publicly available voter registration list and voter list maintenance activities.  

“We cannot allow Elon Musk and DOGE to wreak havoc on state voter registration lists, threatening to access sensitive voter information and undermine our free and fair elections,” Padilla said.

The U.S. DOGE Service has been working to access federal databases at several agencies, and has been barred from doing so in many cases by federal judges.

The Democrats’ bill comes as House Republicans prepare to bring another voting bill to the floor for a vote this week. The GOP’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, requires voters to provide documentary proof of their U.S. citizenship when they register to vote.

Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, it is already unlawful for a noncitizen to vote in federal elections.