Bill

The Senate this week is expected to begin marathon debate on the elections bill that would require proof of U.S.

citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to cast a ballot.

Trump, GOP hardliners and conservative influencers like Elon Musk say the Senate must pass the bill , which the House advanced in February.

Democrats strongly oppose the legislation, and voting rights groups warn it could disenfranchise millions.

Here is a breakdown of what is in the bill, who it could affect and why it has been the subject of so much controversy:
Most Democrats and voting rights groups have warned the legislation could disenfranchise millions of voters by imposing citizenship and photographic identification requirements.

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Trump for years has warned about the threats of noncitizen voting and claimed — without evidence — that U.S.

elections are not secure.

He has doubled down on these claims in recent months ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, warning he will be impeached for a third time if Democrats take back the House and Senate.

Trump in recent months has called to nationalize elections and threatened to impose voter-ID laws and ban mail-in voting by executive order .

Are we the only country in the world that allows mail-in voting?

No.

While most countries do not allow mail voting, more than two dozen do have some system of postal voting, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance .

Canada, the UK and Germany are among those with mail voting systems.

Do voters already have to present ID to vote or register to vote?

Laws vary from state-to-state.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures , 36 states have laws requiring or requesting voters show some form of ID to vote.

Of those, 10 have strict photo-ID laws.

Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., do not require any ID to vote and instead use other information to verify voters' identity, like a signature that is checked against a database.

Registration rules also vary by state, but a 2002 federal law requires first-time voters who vote by mail and have not provided verification of their identity to do so before casting a ballot.

Valid documents include photo ID, bank statements, utility bills or paychecks.

Most states require voters to attest to the fact that they are U.S.

citizens before registering to vote.

It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

Have there been efforts like this in the past?

There have been numerous attempts in the past to establish federal voter-ID laws, some of which picked up momentum in Congress.

One such proposal was led by Rep.

Henry Hyde, R-Ill., and advanced out of the House in 2006.

That legislation would have created a voter-ID requirement for the 2008 election and by 2010 would have required photo ID to prove citizenship.

It also would have required states to set up programs to distribute IDs to voters, in some cases at no cost.

The bill never got a vote in the Senate.

Democratic opposition to these efforts also goes back decades.

In 2005, Barack Obama , then an Illinois senator, introduced a resolution expressing the sense of Congress that voter-ID requirements should be rejected.

Voting rights groups generally agree voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

In Georgia, where after losing the 2020 election, Trump claimed thousands of dead people voted.

A report commissioned by the president found scant evidence .

A voter fraud database compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation lists 1,620 instances of documented fraud dating back to 1982 -- amounting to a tiny fraction of total ballots cast in that more than 40-year period.

Would people who are registered to vote be taken off voter rolls?

What documents would qualify as proof of citizenship?

If passed, when would these changes take effect?

The legislation's provisions would take effect immediately upon passage.

Some state election officials have warned of the potential difficulty of implementing such changes in an election year if the legislation passes before the November midterms.

The California attorney general's office in a statement in February said the measure "would require states to fundamentally restructure their voter registration procedures" by creating new systems for document verification and criminalizing mistakes made by election officials with penalties of up to five years in prison.