In In the United States you can vote without ID. There is no national identity document. Neither a single electoral roll. The system changes from one state to another. And the voter must register beforehand to participate.
For the Spanish reader, it sounds, to say the least, strange. In the United States it is not. This fragmented model was not born by accident, but from a deep distrust of federal power.
Now Donald Trump wants to change it. His proposal, SAVE America Actwould require proof of citizenship to register as a voter and would require presenting a federal valid identification at the polls.
To understand why this reform has opened a political battle, we must first understand how the chaotic electoral system in the country really works.
50 states, 50 ways to vote
In the United States You vote one way or another depending on where you live.. The Constitution left the organization of elections in the hands of the states and that decision continues to influence the entire system today. Each establishes its own voter registry and sets its own rules.
In almost the entire country—except in North Dakota— you must register in advance. The citizen must register online, by mail or when renewing your driver’s license. Otherwise, you cannot vote.
Sometimes, this registry is not even in the hands of the states but of the electoral districts or municipalities. Then comes the identification. And here the rules change again depending on the state.
In TexasFor example, the voter must present identification with photograph: a driver’s license, passport, military card, or state-issued voting document.
In ColoradoHowever, the law allows identification with a much broader list of documents, from an electricity bill to a university card or library.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 states require some type of identification to votewhile the rest use other methods. But the difference with Europe does not end there.
In several states it is not even necessary to go to an electoral college. In Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah or Hawaiimost of the voting is done by mail. Ballots are sent directly to voters’ homes, who can return them by mail or drop them off at electoral mailboxes.
A voter places her ballot in a ballot drop box in Seattle in 2024.
In Colorado, for example, More than 90% of votes are cast that way.
All this would be solved with a national identity document. Proposals to create an official one have appeared several times in Congress, especially after the 9/11 attacksbut neither Democrats nor Republicans consider this solution acceptable.
The reason is political and cultural. For many Americans, a mandatory ID system would give the federal government excessive control on the citizens. This distrust of central power is part of the country’s political DNA.
‘SAVE America Act’, Trump’s reform
What Trump is proposing now is to force voters to prove their citizenship with documents that already exist — such as the passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers— when they register to vote.
In most states it is enough to fill out a form and declare under oath that one is a citizen. Lying on that document is a federal crime.
The requirement would also apply to voting by mail. Voters requesting a ballot would have to submit a copy of their identification document and repeat the process when they return the ballot.
The project also includes other measures. It would require states to periodically review their election records for potential voters without citizenship and verify their status through federal databases.
It would also tighten the responsibilities of election officials. Local authorities could face criminal penalties if they register voters without having properly verified their citizenship.
The text also contemplates another more severe consequence: investigating and potentially deport to illegally registered people to vote.
Little fraud, eternal debate
The reform is presented as a response to a specific problem: the electoral fraud. But the data show a very different reality.
A Department of Homeland Security analysis reviewed 49.5 million electoral registrations before the 2024 elections. Only 10,000 cases They were sent for second verification due to doubts about citizenship. Approximately 0.02% of the total.
Even the conservative’s voter fraud database Heritage Foundation has documented less than one hundred cases of non-citizen voters nationwide between 2000 and 2025.
For many experts, the reason is simple. Electoral fraud at the individual level lacks logic.
Jurist Rick Hasen, an election law specialist at the University of California, summarizes the problem. Individual voter fraud requires signing documents under penalty of perjury and risking criminal penalties or deportation.
Everything to broadcast a vote that will hardly change the outcome of an election. That calculation—high risk, virtually no benefit—helps explain why documented cases are so rare.
But SAVE Act advocates see the problem from another angle. They argue that even a small number of illegal votes can erode trust in the system and that requiring documentary proof of citizenship reinforces electoral integrity.
Critics respond that the cure may be worse than the disease.
Around half of Americans do not have a passport. And more than 21 million citizens do not have documents proving their citizenshipaccording to the Brennan Center.
For many people, obtaining them is not so simple. A passport costs more than 130 dollars and getting a birth certificate may require additional paperwork, not to mention It is not even valid for married women who changed their last name for her husband’s when she married.
Voting access advocates point out that many people—for example, older people who no longer drive or low-income citizens—don’t have incentives to vote. spend money and time in obtaining a document that they would only use to vote.
In that scenario, they argue, many citizens would end up doing something simpler: do not vote. And therein lies the core of the debate.
For many Europeans the solution seems obvious: national identification, uniform rules and a centralized system. In the United States the logic is different.
The country was founded on distrust of central power and that continues to mark its electoral system. Something as common in Europe as presenting a national document to vote can become a political battle here.
It is not just a discussion about documents or procedures. It is about where the balance should be between electoral security and access to voting. And who benefits from all this?.
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