Ahead of the anticipated vote on the rule and final passage of H.R. 8800, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (NDAA), the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) urged representatives to oppose inclusion of the SAVE America Act (S.1383) and any anti-environmental riders in the NDAA. LCV will strongly consider including these votes in our 2026 National Environmental Scorecard.
***
Subject: LCV: NDAA – Oppose the SAVE America Act & anti-environmental riders
Hi Representative,
Ahead of the anticipated vote on the rule and final passage of H.R. 8800, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (NDAA), the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) urges you to vote against any efforts to advance the SAVE America Act (S.1383) with the passage of the NDAA. LCV also urges members to oppose any anti-environmental riders to the NDAA.
The SAVE America Act attempts to exploit harmful anti-immigrant sentiments to undermine the freedom to vote. This bill would make registering to vote significantly harder for tens of millions of eligible citizens and would insert the Department of Homeland Security into state and local election systems, violating voters’ privacy.
Existing legal penalties for non-citizen voting are severe and election administrators are already well-equipped to prevent what has been shown to be an extraordinarily rare occurrence. This bill purports to prevent non-citizen voting by requiring all those registering or updating their voter registration to present documentary proof of citizenship in person, such as a passport or birth certificate. Over one hundred forty million U.S. citizens do not have passports, many millions cannot readily access their birth certificates, and millions of Americans, particularly married women, do not have birth certificates showing their current legal names. Under this bill, driver’s licenses would not suffice even in states with strict voter ID requirements.
We oppose the SAVE America Act in any form, including being merged with the NDAA in this rule or any other action that would attach the SAVE America Act to the passage of the NDAA. The SAVE America Act would not make our elections more secure. Instead, it would weaken our democracy by denying eligible Americans their rights, create significant barriers to voting for massive numbers of eligible American voters, and cause the biggest federal voting rights rollback in the history of the United States.
For all these reasons, LCV strongly urges you to vote NO on any efforts to include the SAVE America Act in passage of the NDAA, along with any anti-environmental riders. LCV will strongly consider including these votes in our 2026 National Environmental Scorecard. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions.
Thank you,
Doug
Doug Lindner
Senior Director of Judiciary & Democracy
League of Conservation Voters
©2026 League of Conservation Voters