CT Governor Opposes SAVE America Act Voting Rules

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas came out swinging Thursday against the SAVE America Act, a Republican-backed federal election bill moving through the U.S. Senate that they say would suppress voting access for hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents.

The three Democrats, all up for reelection this fall, gathered with reporters to voice their opposition to a bill they described as a solution in search of a problem. The legislation, backed by President Donald Trump, would impose sweeping new requirements on voters across the country, demanding documentary proof of citizenship at registration and a government-approved photo ID every time a voter casts a ballot, whether in person or by mail.

“I for the life of me can’t understand why we are doing this,” Lamont said. “I want people to vote. I want them to be encouraged to vote. And I don’t want to put up all these bureaucratic road blocks to make it tougher.”

Lamont also pushed back on what he called misplaced lecturing from the White House. “Frankly, I don’t think I need any lectures about election fraud from a President of the United States who famously called the Secretary of State down in Georgia and told him to ‘find me 11,780 votes,’” he said, pointing to a recorded call Trump made following the 2020 presidential election.

Under the SAVE America Act, anyone registering to vote for the first time, updating their address or switching party affiliation would need to submit documentation proving they were born in the United States or became a naturalized citizen. The kinds of documents eligible under the bill include items like birth certificates, something that election officials and voting rights advocates say millions of Americans simply do not have on hand.

Connecticut’s Democratic leadership argued those requirements would disproportionately burden lower-income voters, elderly residents and communities of color who face greater barriers to obtaining such documentation. Thomas, whose office oversees the state’s elections infrastructure, warned that the bill would upend Connecticut’s existing registration systems and create confusion at a scale the state is not equipped to absorb quickly.

State Republicans fired back, calling the news conference a political distraction. State Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, argued that Democratic leaders have repeatedly refused to address documented cases of election fraud in Connecticut, pointing specifically to Bridgeport, where 11 people have faced criminal charges in recent years for violating the state’s absentee ballot rules.

“The reason why this is happening is because of blue states like Connecticut that have refused to address real, live examples of election fraud,” Sampson said. “The whole point of the SAVE America Act is to make elections honest.”

The dispute cuts to a long-running national argument about the proper balance between ballot access and ballot security. Democrats contend that in-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare and that strict ID requirements function primarily as barriers. Republicans counter that documented absentee ballot violations, like those in Bridgeport, justify stronger federal guardrails.

Connecticut has in recent years expanded voting access considerably, adding automatic voter registration, early voting and no-excuse absentee balloting. Lamont and Thomas have both framed those changes as proof that the state takes elections seriously. Lamont said Thursday that Connecticut has always prioritized voter integrity while actively working to remove obstacles from the process.

The SAVE America Act still faces significant hurdles in the Senate, where its path remains contested. But the debate in Washington carries real stakes for states like Connecticut that have built their election systems around different assumptions about how identification and registration should work. Retrofitting those systems to comply with new federal mandates would require time, money and a bureaucratic overhaul that state officials say they are not prepared to undertake.

Lamont, Bysiewicz and Thomas each emphasized Thursday that they intend to keep pushing back as the bill moves forward, and signaled that Connecticut would use whatever legal or political tools are available to protect the state’s current voting framework.