President Donald Trump says his “show your papers” bill is critical to American democracy, but in Minnesota there’s no need for citizenship documents in order to register to vote.
And Secretary of State Steve Simon, like most Democrats, says that system is working fine.
If passed, Simon said a bill before the U.S. Senate requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration would disenfranchise many Minnesota voters. It would also require a chaotic overhaul of the current voting system just before the midterm elections, he said.
“This would be changing the rules very close to an election in a very substantial way,” Simon said in an interview Monday.
The U.S. Senate will debate what is known as the SAVE America Act this week. The legislation would require everyone registering to vote to provide a document verifying their citizenship and implement strict photo ID requirements to vote.
Trump and his congressional allies say a national voting law is needed to prevent fraud that impacts elections, like voting by noncitizens. But there’s little evidence of widespread electoral fraud.
Minnesota has nearly 3.8 million registered voters and voter turnout is the highest, or among the highest, in the country. But the incidence of noncitizens voting in Minnesota, Simon said, is “microscopic.”
He pointed to a 2024 study that found three state convictions of green card holders for illegal voting between 2015 and 2024. In that timeframe, Minnesota voters cast over 13.4 million ballots in general and primary elections, according to the University of St. Thomas study.
The state allows someone to register to vote online with a Minnesota driver’s license, state ID or the four digits of their Social Security number.
To prevent noncitizens from voting, it then cross-references its Statewide Voter Registration System with various databases.
Related: Trump-backed SAVE Act ties up U.S. Senate.
The Save America Act would require those Minnesota voters to show evidence of citizenship such as a birth certificate, naturalization document, passport or U.S. military documentation that shows the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States.
And Minnesota is one of about a dozen states – including Maryland, California, New Mexico, New York and Maine – that does not require proof of identification to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The SAVE America Act would require that Minnesotans show up at the polls with a photo ID issued by a government agency.
A University of Maryland study determined that more than 21.3 million eligible voters (9%) across the country do not have, or do not have easy access to, the types of documents that would be required by the SAVE America Act.
Currently, each state is responsible for its election laws. But Trump has recently raised the need for a national election law.
“It will guarantee the midterms. If you don’t get it, big trouble,” he told House Republicans at a GOP retreat in Florida last week.
To the front of the line
Trump also has tied the Senate in knots by saying he will not sign any other legislation until the chamber approves the SAVE America Act.
“It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE,” he said in a Truth Social post last week. “I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed.”
But approval of the legislation is not assured.
Senate Democrats are firmly opposed to the bill. To pass the legislation, it needs 60 votes to break the filibuster threshold. While Republicans have a majority in the Senate, they only hold 53 seats.
The Senate is considering a bill that was approved by the U.S. House last month. But Trump wants the Senate to amend that voting bill to include bans on gender-affirming surgery for children and transgender women from participating in women’s sports and to restrict mail-in voting.
Minnesota’s Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith oppose the bill. Smith has said she’s concerned the bill would not recognize or acknowledge tribal IDs as proof of citizenship.
When the legislation was considered in the U.S. House last month, Minnesota’s Republican members supported it and the state’s Democrats opposed it.
Simon said the SAVE legislation is driven by a “false storyline” that millions of noncitizens are voting across the country.
“I can’t help but feel that it’s driven in large part by the fact that President Trump has convinced himself, despite all the evidence and all the facts, that the election system throughout America is dishonest and corrupt,” Simon said.
Instead Simon said the election system is “fair, accurate, honest and secure.”
The SAVE law would have the effect of turning away eligible voters, he said.
In Kansas, a law requiring citizenship documentation similar to SAVE – which was found unconstitutional in 2020 – made 30,000 people in the state ineligible to vote.
Minnesota’s population, about 5.8 million, is twice the size of Kansas’.
“You can do the math there,” he said.
Simon said the SAVE bill would require Minnesota to overhaul its current infrastructure for running elections. That’s because state election officials would need to be prepared to administer elections with the new proof of citizenship requirements, which require gathering and verifying documents like a U.S. passport, birth certificate or REAL ID.
It would require the state to set up a “vast and detailed election infrastructure to handle all these questions about citizenship documentation, and what counts, and what doesn’t count, and that’s going to be very difficult.”
The SAVE America Act would go into effect 60 days after implementation. Simon said no other major election law in U.S. history operated on a timeframe like that.
And it could go into effect just months before the fall 2026 midterms.
“It is a recipe for some chaos in our election system,” Simon said.
