On May 14, 2026, the Election Integrity Network published the May 2026 edition of its Model Election Laws Handbook — 116 pages of model legislation organized around ten principles, signed by founder and chairman Cleta Mitchell and president Sharon Bemis, and credited to five years of work by EIN's state coalitions, National Working Groups, and Policy Authentication Groups. It is publicly available at modelelectionlaws.org.
The same network has championed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (the SAVE Act, H.R. 22) since its introduction and the broader SAVE America Act since Senator Mike Lee introduced it in the Senate. EIN's principals have promoted both in press appearances, op-eds, and sustained advocacy. The SAVE Act (H.R. 22) passed the House on April 10, 2025; the SAVE America Act is the broader and more restrictive Senate package, incorporating the SAVE Act's documentary-proof-of-citizenship provisions and adding photo ID at the polling place, mail-voting restrictions, ballot-counting deadlines, and federal voter-roll sharing with the Department of Homeland Security. The two are routinely referred to interchangeably.
Both documents are now publicly available. Both address the same core subject: documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, voter roll maintenance, and federal oversight of state election administration. Both bear the same network's fingerprints.
The handbook contains safeguards the SAVE America Act lacks. In every category where the two documents overlap on subject matter, the handbook is more careful and the SAVE America Act is more restrictive. The handbook builds in free state-issued IDs, written notice and cure periods before removal, a "pending status" pathway during verification, broader categories of acceptable identification, and references to additional verification databases. The SAVE America Act has none of these protections, and adds criminal liability for officials and provisions that go further than anything in the handbook.
What follows is a textual comparison. Every claim is supported by direct quotation from one of the two source documents, by federal statute, or by Supreme Court case law. The handbook is at modelelectionlaws.org; the SAVE Act text is at congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22.
Reference A note on what to call the bill
The legislation EIN champions is known by different names depending on the speaker. The "SAVE Act" technically refers to H.R. 22 in the 119th Congress — Rep. Chip Roy's documentary-proof-of-citizenship bill, passed by the House on April 10, 2025. The "SAVE America Act" refers to the broader Senate package introduced by Senator Mike Lee, which incorporates SAVE plus additional provisions: photo ID at the polling place, restrictions on mail voting, ballot counts within 24 hours of Election Day, voter-roll sharing with the Department of Homeland Security, and elements of the "Make Elections Great Again" framework.
In practice, the White House, the RNC, Senator Lee, the Bipartisan Policy Center, PolitiFact, CBS News, and most pollsters use the two names interchangeably. EIN itself uses both. This article uses "SAVE America Act" when referring to the broader package EIN champions, and "SAVE Act" or "H.R. 22" when referring specifically to the House DPOC bill. Where a poll or quote uses one term to mean the other, the original wording is preserved.
The constitutional anchor: Crawford v. Marion County
In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's voter ID requirement in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181. The decision turned on a specific feature of the Indiana law: Indiana provided free state-issued photo IDs to any eligible voter who did not already have one. Justice Stevens, writing the lead opinion, emphasized that the record contained no evidence that any specific voter would be unable to obtain an ID — in part because the state covered the cost and provided alternative documentation pathways.
Crawford is the constitutional anchor for every state voter ID law passed since 2008. State laws that fail to provide free IDs and reasonable alternative documentation procedures face equal protection challenges. Laws that include those safeguards generally survive them.
Courts have applied this distinction repeatedly. The Missouri Supreme Court struck down Missouri's voter ID law in Weinschenk v. State (2006) specifically because it imposed costs on indigent voters that the state had not adequately offset. The Fifth Circuit found Texas's voter ID law discriminatory in Veasey v. Abbott, 830 F.3d 216 (5th Cir. 2016), in part because Texas's free "Election Identification Certificate" was effectively inaccessible — the underlying documents required to obtain the free ID themselves cost money. The Tenth Circuit struck down Kansas's documentary-proof-of-citizenship law in Fish v. Kobach, 840 F.3d 710 (10th Cir. 2016), after finding it blocked tens of thousands of eligible citizens with no meaningful remedy. The pattern is consistent: laws that impose documentary or financial burdens without offsetting safeguards lose; laws that include the safeguards survive.
The handbook is structured around Crawford compliance. The SAVE America Act is not.
Where the two documents say the same thing
Before getting to the gaps, it is worth being precise about where the handbook and SAVE America overlap. Both documents:
- Require documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration.
- Require DPOC for registration updates triggered by a move or a name change.
- Accept a defined list of qualifying documents (passport, certain government IDs with citizenship indicators, naturalization certificates, certified birth certificates).
- Refer to the USCIS SAVE program (the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database) as a verification tool.
- Frame the goal as preventing non-citizen registration in federal elections.
Within those overlaps, the SAVE America Act is consistently more restrictive than the handbook. The handbook's Model Law 1 (Principle I) allows online and mail registration with verification mechanisms. SAVE America requires in-person presentation of DPOC. The handbook's acceptable-ID category includes "enhanced driver's license or other state or federal government identification document that, by its terms, denotes United States citizenship status." SAVE America accepts a narrower list and rejects standard driver's licenses, REAL IDs without citizenship markers, state IDs, and student IDs.
Every place the two documents address the same subject, the bill goes further than the handbook the same organization just published.
Free state ID
"The State shall provide, at no cost to the applicant, a state-issued 'For Voting Only' photo identification card to any eligible applicant who: (1) Is a United States citizen; (2) Is a resident of this State; and (3) Lacks another acceptable form of voter identification."
"The [Chief Election Official], in coordination with the [State Driver's License Agency], shall establish procedures for issuing 'For Voting Only' identification cards, including mobile or remote issuance options to serve voters who lack transportation or live in rural areas." — Citizen-Only Voter Identification Act, §4, Principle I
The bill requires documentary proof of citizenship at registration but provides no free-ID mechanism. There is no "for voting only" ID, no fee waiver, no mobile issuance, no transportation accommodation.
The handbook's model state law mandates a free state-issued photo ID for any eligible citizen who lacks one. It explicitly requires mobile and remote issuance for voters who cannot travel to a state office. This is the Crawford compliance feature.
Who is affected. The University of Maryland's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement estimated in 2025 that approximately 21.3 million U.S. citizens of voting age lack ready access to a citizenship document. The Center for American Progress found that 69 million women and 4 million men have a name on their birth certificate that does not match their current legal name — typically due to marriage. A passport costs $130 plus documentation and processing time. A certified birth certificate costs $25 to $50 depending on the state.
EIN's model state law acknowledges this problem and provides a free document with mobile issuance. The federal bill EIN champions has nothing.
Additional verification databases
This is the cleanest single contradiction in the comparison, and it sits in EIN's own first principle.
"For that purpose, the [Chief Election Official] shall compare the statewide voter registration list against available state and federal data sources, including: (1) State driver's license agency records, including REAL ID-compliant records; (2) Databases maintained by the United States Department of Homeland Security, including the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, to the extent permitted by federal law; (3) State and federal court records identifying individuals disqualified from jury service on the basis of non-citizenship; and (4) Any other state or federal data source lawfully available for confirmation of citizenship status." — Citizenship Verification of Existing Voter Rolls Act, §2, Principle I
Federal agencies must respond to state verification requests within 24 hours. The bill does not require states to cross-reference multiple databases before acting on a match. Implementation falls to state election officials operating under criminal liability for getting it wrong.
The handbook lists four verification sources. The USCIS SAVE database is one of them — not the foundation. The handbook acknowledges that DMV records, court records, and "any other state or federal data source lawfully available" should also be consulted before a citizenship determination is made.
Why this matters. The USCIS Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program — the federal database the bill's centerpiece relies on, and which both documents reference — was built in the 1980s to help state and local agencies verify whether non-citizens are eligible for public benefits like Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, and unemployment insurance. It is an immigration-status lookup tool, designed for benefits eligibility determinations. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published a fact sheet in February 2026 stating explicitly that the SAVE system "does not determine eligibility to register to vote" and is not a comprehensive citizenship database. Naturalized citizens whose status has not yet propagated to the SAVE database — often a delay of weeks or months after naturalization — appear as unverified.
This is a stakes mismatch that the handbook implicitly recognizes and the federal bill does not. An error in a SAVE benefits-eligibility query delays a benefit while the matter is sorted out. An error in a SAVE-driven voter registration query, under the federal bill, costs a citizen the ability to vote in an election — and the bill provides no notice, no cure period, and no remedy mechanism for the affected citizen. A database built to manage entitlements decisions is being repurposed to gate a constitutional right, and the bill imposes no additional verification layer to account for the difference.
The Social Security Administration has publicly acknowledged it cannot meet the bill's 24-hour turnaround requirement. The handbook's multi-database approach is the safeguard against single-source errors on a database not designed for the purpose to which the bill puts it. The bill does not require it.
EIN's own model state law builds in the redundancy. The federal bill EIN champions does not.
Notice and cure
"If a comparison under Section 2 reasonably indicates that a registered voter may not be a United States citizen, the [Chief Election Official] or local election official shall: (1) Provide written notice to the registrant at the address on file, stating the basis for the potential non-citizenship finding; (2) Provide the registrant a period of not less than [X] days to submit documentary proof of United States citizenship; and (3) Treat the registrant as in a pending status during the notice period, without canceling the registration or denying a ballot solely on the basis of the initial data match." — Citizenship Verification of Existing Voter Rolls Act, §3, Principle I
The bill creates new registration requirements but contains no notice-and-cure framework, no minimum response window, and no protection against summary removal based on an initial data match.
The handbook builds in a three-step protection: written notice with the basis explained, a cure period of statutorily defined length, and an explicit prohibition on canceling the registration or denying a ballot during the cure window based solely on the initial data match.
The consequence cascade. Without notice-and-cure, the chain of events is predictable:
This is not hypothetical. It has already happened.
The handbook's notice-and-cure provisions are the safeguard against exactly this pattern. The SAVE America Act has no equivalent.
Pending status during verification
"An applicant shall not be added to the official voter registration list until citizenship has been verified. Pending verification, the applicant's record shall be maintained in a provisional registration status and shall not be eligible for issuance of a ballot." — Citizens-Only Elections Act, §3(C), Principle I
An applicant whose documentation does not satisfy the bill's requirements is either registered through the alternative-evidence pathway (under which the registering official faces criminal and civil liability) or not registered at all.
The handbook creates a middle category: an applicant whose citizenship cannot be immediately verified is held in "provisional registration status." The applicant is not added to the active voter list and is not eligible for a ballot during the pending period — but the registration record is preserved while verification proceeds, rather than the application being summarily rejected. The pathway is incomplete (the applicant cannot vote in the meantime), but it preserves the file and the relationship to the election office for resolution.
The handbook's own framework, in other words, requires election offices to hold voter records in unverified status while paperwork is sorted out — which is materially the same condition (registered but pending) that EIN and affiliated groups have elsewhere cited as evidence of fraud when they appear as "inactive" voters on state rolls. The handbook acknowledges what its own advocacy frequently denies: that legitimate registrations can sit pending for procedural reasons, and that the answer is process, not summary rejection.
The handbook recognizes that verification takes time and that some applicants will have legitimate documentation difficulties that are resolvable with a few weeks. The bill does not.
Criminal liability for election officials
"An election official or member of a canvassing board shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability solely for refusing or failing to certify election results that the official reasonably believes are inaccurate or incomplete due to unresolved reconciliation or verification issues, provided that the official: (1) Acts in good faith; (2) Documents the reasons for refusal or delay in writing; and (3) Cooperates with lawful efforts to resolve outstanding issues." — Election Reconciliation, Certification, and Audit Act, §6, Principle VI
The handbook does include a private right of action against election officials — but it is structured against officials who fail to comply with list-maintenance duties (Principle IV, §4), and is explicitly paired with a good-faith carve-out: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to penalize good-faith errors made while reasonably implementing list-maintenance programs in compliance with state and federal law."
§2(j) creates fine and/or up to five years' imprisonment for election officials who register an applicant without DPOC, and for executive-branch employees who provide "material assistance" to non-citizens registering. §2(i) creates a separate private right of action — a federal civil cause of action against any official who registers an applicant without DPOC. There is no good-faith defense.
Both documents create private rights of action. They run opposite directions.
The handbook's private right of action targets officials who under-purge — who fail to remove people from voter rolls as required by list-maintenance procedures. It is paired with explicit statutory protection for good-faith errors. The handbook also provides separate certification-stage protection: officials who refuse to certify results they believe are inaccurate are protected from civil and criminal liability, provided they act in good faith and document their reasoning.
The SAVE America Act's private right of action and criminal liability run in the opposite direction. They target officials who register applicants whose documentation a federal prosecutor or private litigant later finds inadequate. There is no good-faith defense. There is no carve-out for officials who applied the bill's alternative-evidence pathway in reasonable reliance on the materials before them.
The private right of action is broad. The 2024 election cycle saw a documented surge of organized challenges to voter registrations across multiple states — tens of thousands of challenges filed by individuals and outside groups, many of which were later found by election officials and courts to lack any basis. State-level challenge processes generally require some form of probable cause and operate under established rules of evidence. The SAVE America Act would shift this activity into federal court, with election officials as personal defendants in civil litigation, and with the bill's broad standing language allowing virtually any individual to bring suit.
The asymmetry is the point. Combined with the alternative-evidence provision — which allows registration on a sworn attestation plus "such other evidence … demonstrating that the applicant is a citizen" — the criminal and civil penalties create a one-directional incentive. An official who accepts the alternative-evidence pathway faces a five-year felony and a civil lawsuit if a federal prosecutor or a private litigant later disagrees with the judgment call. An official who rejects the application faces nothing.
If the bill imposed equal penalties on wrongful rejection — the same criminal exposure, the same private right of action — the structural incentive would be neutral. An official would have to make a careful judgment call in either direction and would face the same risk either way. The bill does not do this. It penalizes only one of the two possible errors. The structurally rational decision under the bill's incentives is rejection, even for clearly eligible citizens, because rejection carries no personal risk.
This is still a bad position to put election officials in. Asking registrars and election judges to make verification judgments under the threat of felony prosecution and federal lawsuits is, by itself, a recruiting and retention problem for state and local election offices. But the deeper issue is the asymmetry: the bill is not structured to ensure accurate registration determinations. It is structured to ensure that one type of error costs the official personally and the other type does not.
The handbook's framework on official conduct — explicit good-faith protections, due-process procedures, and private-right-of-action standing aimed at compelling rather than punishing list maintenance — is the structure that would protect officials acting reasonably in either direction. The federal bill EIN champions creates the opposite: new criminal liability and new civil liability with no good-faith defense, attached only to the error of registering an eligible citizen whose documentation is later found inadequate.
Identification flexibility
"Acceptable identification documents shall include … an enhanced driver's license or other state or federal government identification document that, by its terms, denotes United States citizenship status." — Citizens-Only Elections Act, Principle I
Acceptable DPOC: (1) REAL ID indicating citizenship; (2) U.S. passport; (3) military ID + service record with U.S. birthplace; (4) government photo ID showing U.S. birthplace; (5) any government photo ID combined with a "list-B" document.
The handbook accepts any state or federal government identification document that denotes U.S. citizenship status on its face — a broad category that includes Enhanced Driver's Licenses, REAL IDs with citizenship markers, and other government-issued identification.
A standard driver's license does not qualify under the SAVE America Act. A REAL ID that does not separately indicate citizenship does not qualify — and most existing REAL IDs in circulation today do not, as a matter of fact, contain a citizenship indicator on their face. Only five states (New York, Vermont, Michigan, Minnesota, and Washington) issue Enhanced Driver's Licenses with citizenship status. A state ID without a citizenship marker does not qualify. A student ID — even from a state university — does not qualify.
The handbook's broader category accommodates documents the bill rejects. The bill EIN champions narrows them.
Mail and absentee voting
The handbook (Principle III) provides for verifying absentee voters using "clear, objective criteria" and a unique-identifier scheme for absentee ballot envelopes. It does not generally restrict who can vote by mail, though it imposes verification requirements and a single-deadline ballot return rule.
Adds restrictions the handbook does not include — in some versions, photo ID requirements for mail ballots and ballot-counting deadlines (24 hours after Election Day) that exceed anything in the handbook.
This is one of the clearest places where the SAVE America Act goes further than the model state law EIN published.
Federal vs. state authority
Its premise is that citizenship verification, voter ID, and voter roll maintenance should be implemented at the state level, within frameworks each state writes to its own circumstances. The handbook's introduction reads: "This Model Election Laws Handbook equips legislators and citizen advocates with the principles of the US Citizens Elections Bill of Rights and adaptable legislative language to strengthen election integrity for every state." The premise is state flexibility — adaptable language, state-by-state implementation, room for each legislature to write to local circumstances.
Imposes federal mandates on state voter registration procedures, federal verification timelines, federal data-sharing requirements with the Department of Homeland Security, and a federal private right of action against state and local election officials. Includes provisions for state voter rolls to be shared with DHS — a federal centralization the handbook does not propose.
Under the Supremacy Clause, federal restrictions operate as a floor that states cannot legislate around. A state that wanted to adopt the handbook's free-ID, notice-and-cure, multi-database framework as additional protection for its citizens could do so — but only on top of the SAVE America Act's narrower rules, not in place of them. The handbook's "adaptable legislative language" premise — the idea that each state writes its own framework with its own safeguards — becomes inoperative the moment federal law sets a more restrictive floor. And once a federal floor is in place, states have less political incentive to add protections above it: the federal restriction becomes the operative law, the legislative work has already been done in Washington, and adding state-level safeguards becomes a separate political fight in every state legislature.
This is the largest single divergence in framework. The handbook says these decisions belong with the states, with adaptable language and state-level flexibility. The federal bill EIN champions takes them from the states, and removes the safeguards the handbook says belong in the framework.
The conflation problem
EIN, the White House, the RNC, and affiliated organizations routinely cite generic photo-ID polling as evidence of public support for the SAVE America Act. This is not the same question. Supporters know it is not the same question. The conflation is intentional, repeated, and serves a function.
Photo ID at the polls is a question about identity verification at the moment of voting. It is supported by roughly 80% of Americans across pollsters and across time:
- Pew Research Center, August 2025: 83% favor requiring photo ID to vote.
- Gallup, October 2024: 84% favor photo ID at the polling place.
- CBS News/YouGov, March 2026: 80% support photo ID to vote.
Documentary proof of citizenship at registration is a different question. It asks whether a citizen must produce a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate to register — not show ID at the polls. Support is lower and depends heavily on question wording.
The SAVE America Act by name is a third question. It asks whether the public supports the specific bill, with its specific provisions. Support is lower still.
The CBS News/YouGov poll fielded all three questions in the same survey, in the same week, on the same sample of 2,500 adults:
Among Republicans, support for the bill by name was 60% — but 34% of Republicans said they were unsure, and only 16% of Republicans said they knew "a lot" about what is in the bill.
When the conservative group Restoration of America ran television advertisements in April 2026 citing the Pew Research Center's 83% photo-ID figure as evidence of support for the SAVE America Act, PolitiFact rated the ad "Half True." The fact-check noted that the Pew poll was conducted in August 2025, before the bill in its current form was unveiled; that the question asked about photo ID, not the bill's centerpiece; and that more recent polling specifically about the bill shows substantially lower support.
The conflation persists because it works. A bill polling at 28% by name and 80% by stand-in concept is a bill whose advocates have every incentive to keep stand-in concepts in front of the public.
Polling on the actual provisions
When pollsters ask about the SAVE America Act's actual provisions — rather than the photo-ID concept — support is consistently lower, and collapses further when respondents are informed about the bill's specific effects.
The named-bill numbers (non-partisan pollsters)
The named-bill numbers (partisan-affiliated pollsters, flagged)
The pattern. Non-partisan pollsters who ask about the SAVE America Act by name, or describe its full provisions, find support in the 28%–50% range. Pollsters using a single descriptor (or packing multiple concepts into one question) find 60%–75% support. The gap between the two methodologies is the gap between what the public says when it knows what is in the bill and what it says when it does not.
The information effect. Both Navigator and Defend the Vote tested the same methodology: ask about initial support, then expose respondents to specific information about the bill's provisions, then ask again. Both polls found the same pattern. Support collapses by 5 to 26 percentage points when voters learn:
- That the bill would require all Americans to prove citizenship with documentation millions do not have.
- That rural Americans would have to travel substantial distances to register in person.
- That the bill would upend the way most Americans currently register to vote.
- That married women whose names do not match their birth certificates would face additional hurdles.
- That confidential voter roll information would be shared with the Department of Homeland Security (25% support, 65% oppose among independents).
The CBS poll's director Anthony Salvanto put it directly: most Americans "favor ID and proof of citizenship requirements" but "aren't sure about the SAVE Act, and say they don't know the specifics of what's in it."
The consequences, made specific
If the SAVE America Act passes in its current form, here is what changes for specific groups of eligible American citizens. None of these are hypotheticals from opponents of the bill. They are the documented consequences of the bill's specific provisions, drawn from the bill text and from existing pilot programs that operate under similar rules.
If you are a married, divorced, or remarried woman whose legal name does not match your birth certificate
Approximately 69 million American women have changed their last name upon marriage and have birth certificates that do not match their current legal name. Pew Research found in 2023 that 79% of opposite-sex-married women took their spouse's name. Roughly 4 million American men are in the same documentary position; the population is overwhelmingly women.
This is not a question of whether affected voters can sort out the documentation. Many can. It is a question of whether the federal government may impose additional documentary requirements on a population defined almost entirely by one gender. Documentary requirements that fall disproportionately on a single protected class raise equal protection concerns regardless of the affected individuals' capability. The constitutional question is the disparate impact, not the competence of the people impacted.
Some defenders of the bill have characterized this concern as condescending — as implying that women cannot handle additional paperwork. That is a deliberate misreading of the argument. The constitutional issue is not whether any individual woman can navigate the documentation. Many can, and many will. The issue is whether a federal law may impose additional documentary burdens on a population defined almost entirely by gender. A law requiring 69 million voters to produce additional documents to register — voters who are, as a matter of demographic fact, overwhelmingly women — raises an equal protection question regardless of whether each affected woman is individually capable of compliance. The "you're calling women dumb" framing is not a response to the equal protection argument. It is an attempt to change the subject.
Under the SAVE America Act, the affected voter — overwhelmingly a woman — must either produce a valid U.S. passport in her current legal name (about 48% of Americans have a passport; the Bipartisan Policy Center found that 52% of registered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name), or produce additional documents establishing the legal name change — typically a certified marriage certificate, divorce decree, or court order — alongside the birth certificate. The bill does not specify which combinations of documents satisfy the alternative-evidence pathway, and the registering official who accepts a documentation chain that a federal prosecutor later finds inadequate faces criminal exposure and a civil lawsuit. The affected voter will not know whether her documentation is sufficient until she tries. If it fails, she does not register, and she does not vote.
The handbook recognizes this problem. Its alternative-pathway provisions and notice-and-cure period are the safeguards. The SAVE America Act has neither.
If you live in a rural area
This is not a partisan question. Ballot access for eligible citizens is a constitutional concern regardless of how those citizens vote.
Vote.org's analysis found that in the 30 largest U.S. counties by area in the western United States, voters would average 260 miles to reach an election office under the SAVE America Act's in-person presentation requirement. Independent analyses have found rural voters facing average round-trips of approximately 4.5 hours to register or to update registration.
Mail registration would no longer satisfy the federal requirement. Online registration would no longer satisfy the federal requirement. DMV registration would no longer satisfy the federal requirement. The bill requires DPOC be presented in person at an election official's office, during business hours, with documentation in hand.
The handbook anticipates this. Its model state law mandates "mobile or remote issuance options to serve voters who lack transportation or live in rural areas." The SAVE America Act has no such provision.
If you are a recently naturalized citizen
The USCIS SAVE database is not updated in real time. Naturalized citizens whose status has not yet been recorded in the system appear as unverified — meaning your registration can be flagged as a possible non-citizen even though your naturalization certificate is in your hand.
Under the SAVE America Act:
- A SAVE database query returns a non-citizen flag (because your status has not yet been updated).
- The bill has no notice-and-cure requirement, so you are not informed.
- The bill has no pending-status provision, so your registration is not preserved while DHS catches up.
- You arrive at the polls and discover you are not registered.
- To register, you must now present your naturalization certificate in person at an election official's office under the bill's documentary-proof-of-citizenship rules.
The handbook anticipates this scenario directly. Its model state law requires election officials to consult "any other state or federal data source lawfully available for confirmation of citizenship status" — not just the SAVE database — and includes the notice-and-cure period. The bill EIN champions does not.
If you are disabled, homebound, or have limited mobility
The SAVE America Act's in-person DPOC presentation requirement assumes a voter can travel to an election official's office. The bill provides no exemption for voters who cannot. The bill provides no mobile or remote issuance procedure for voters who cannot travel. Mail-in registration — the standard accommodation for voters who cannot reach a registration office — does not satisfy the federal requirement under the bill.
Mail-ballot voting, where the SAVE America Act layers on its own photo-ID-for-mail-ballots provision, creates a second barrier. A voter who cannot travel to register also cannot, under the bill's mail-ballot ID rules, easily produce the additional verification the bill requires.
The handbook's mobile and remote issuance provisions are the accommodation. The bill removes them.
If you are erroneously flagged on the voter rolls
This is the cascade that ties the rest together. Under the SAVE America Act, if you are flagged as a possible non-citizen by a database match — correctly or not — there is no notice requirement, no cure period, and no pending-status protection.
The existing pilot programs show what this looks like in practice:
Without notice-and-cure, an erroneously flagged voter discovers the problem at the polls. To regain registration, the voter must re-register under SAVE America Act rules — in person, with documentary proof of citizenship, with all the burdens described above. Erroneous flagging becomes a one-way trip through the re-registration gauntlet for the people least able to navigate it: those without passports, those whose names have changed, those in rural areas, those who are disabled, those who are recently naturalized.
The handbook builds in the safeguard. The bill does not.
What this comparison establishes
The handbook contains the safeguards. The bill does not.
In every category where the two documents address the same subject, the handbook provides protections the SAVE America Act omits — free state ID, multi-database verification, written notice and cure periods, pending-status pathways, broader identification categories, and good-faith conduct standards for officials. In every category where the bill goes beyond the handbook, it does so in the more restrictive direction — narrower acceptable IDs, in-person-only DPOC, mail-voting restrictions, federal centralization of state voter rolls, and criminal and civil liability for officials.
The throughline is friction. Each individual provision adds a layer of cost, distance, paperwork, or risk to the act of registering or remaining registered. The provisions compound. The voter who needs a passport but does not have one, who lives 60 miles from an election office, whose birth certificate does not match her driver's license, whose registration may be flagged by a database not designed for voter registration, whose pending status has no protection while DHS catches up, whose notice never arrives because there is no notice requirement, whose recourse is to re-register under the same rules that blocked her the first time — each layer is small, each layer is defensible in isolation, and together they form a barrier. Friction is the mechanism. The more friction the system imposes between an eligible citizen and a cast ballot, the fewer eligible citizens vote. This pattern is observable in every direction American election administration has been pushed: closing polling places in urban areas, narrowing early voting windows, restricting mail registration, eliminating same-day registration. The SAVE America Act layers federal friction onto the existing state-level friction. The handbook is a framework that, by its own terms, would reduce that friction.
The handbook is the document that exists. The bill is the document being pushed. Both documents bear the same network's fingerprints.
This article does not characterize EIN's motives. It does not claim secret coordination, hidden agendas, or behind-the-scenes manipulation. It does not require the reader to accept any inference beyond what the documents themselves establish.
It does claim what the documents say. The handbook published on May 14, 2026 contains a comprehensive framework with safeguards for eligible citizens. The SAVE Act (H.R. 22) and the SAVE America Act — which EIN has championed since their respective introductions and continues to champion — strip those safeguards out and add restrictions the handbook does not propose. The handbook frames its work as "adaptable legislative language" for state legislatures to tailor to local circumstances. The bills EIN champions remove that adaptability — federal preemption sets the operative floor, and the handbook's safeguards cannot function as a state-level alternative to a more restrictive federal rule.
The gap is documentable. The polling shows the public supports the handbook's framework when its provisions are described and rejects the bill when its provisions are described. The bill EIN is fighting for is the version voters do not support when they know what is in it. The handbook EIN just published is the version voters would support — and is not the bill EIN is fighting for.
Timeline Between handbook and article: five days, three escalations
This article was drafted in the days following the handbook's publication. Between May 14 and May 19, 2026, the Election Integrity Network and its principals have made three public escalations of the SAVE America Act campaign:
May 14, 2026. EIN publishes the May 2026 edition of its Model Election Laws Handbook — 116 pages of model legislation containing the safeguards documented above.
May 17, 2026. EIN posts publicly that "Speaker Mike Johnson should attach every provision of the SAVE America Act to every bill until it becomes law."
May 18, 2026. EIN posts an escalation: "No business as usual until elections are secured" — framing the SAVE America Act as a legislative-hostage demand. The same day, EIN reposts a public statement from founder and chairman Cleta Mitchell asserting she has "all the original drafts of the SAVE Act in 2024, and everything since" — placing the bill's authorship within the same network that published the handbook.
The handbook the same organization published four days before the first escalation contains the safeguards those provisions lack. The question this article asks is what it means for an organization to publish a comprehensive model framework with safeguards and, within four days, demand the attachment to every bill in Congress of legislation that contains none of those safeguards.
That is the comparison. The questions it raises are ones EIN can answer:
Sources
Election Integrity Network · Model Election Laws Handbook (May 2026)
- Web version: modelelectionlaws.org
- PDF: EIN-Handbook2026-v3.pdf
- Principle I: modelelectionlaws.org/principle-i
SAVE Act · SAVE America Act
- H.R. 22, 119th Congress: congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22
- Engrossed (House-passed) text: BILLS-119hr22eh.pdf
- The broader SAVE America Act as introduced by Senator Mike Lee incorporates H.R. 22 and adds further provisions.
Federal statutes and case law
- National Voter Registration Act, 52 U.S.C. § 20501 et seq.
- Help America Vote Act, 52 U.S.C. § 20901 et seq.
- REAL ID Act of 2005.
- Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).
- Weinschenk v. State, 203 S.W.3d 201 (Mo. 2006).
- Veasey v. Abbott, 830 F.3d 216 (5th Cir. 2016).
- Fish v. Kobach, 840 F.3d 710 (10th Cir. 2016).
- Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, 570 U.S. 1 (2013).
USCIS SAVE database
- USCIS February 2026 fact sheet on the SAVE program's role in voter registration verification.
Polling sources (all primary, with field dates)
- Pew Research Center, August 4–10, 2025: pewresearch.org
- Gallup, October 1–12, 2024: news.gallup.com
- CBS News/YouGov, March 16–19, 2026: cbsnews.com
- UMass Amherst Poll, March 20–25, 2026: umass.edu
- Navigator Research, March 12–16, 2026: navigatorresearch.org
- Economist/YouGov, March 13–16, 2026: yougov.com
- Politico/Public First, April–May 2026: thehill.com
- Defend the Vote / PPP, February 23–24, 2026: wedefendthevote.org
- Harvard CAPS/Harris (HarrisX), February/March 2026: harvardharrispoll.com
- Rasmussen Reports, March 2026: rasmussenreports.com
- Heritage Action battleground polling, February 2026: heritageaction.com
- PolitiFact, April 17, 2026: politifact.com
Disenfranchisement and document-possession data
- University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, 2025 study (21.3 million figure).
- Center for American Progress, name-mismatch analysis based on Pew 2023 marriage survey (69 million women / 4 million men).
- Bipartisan Policy Center, document-possession analyses.
- Center for Election Innovation & Research, December 2025 update: electioninnovation.org
- Brennan Center for Justice, SAVE Act analyses.
- Vote.org, rural-distance analysis on in-person registration.