Republican bill requiring proof of citizenship for voting passes US House

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed one of Republicans' signature issues for the year on Thursday, approving legislation to require proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote for federal elections, one of President Donald Trump's top election-related priorities.

Nearly all Democrats lined up against the bill and warned that it risks disenfranchising millions of Americans who do not have ready access to the proper documents.

Trump has long signaled a desire to change how elections are run in the U.S. and last month issued a sweeping executive order that included a citizenship requirement among other election-related changes.

Republicans argued the legislation, known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, is necessary to ensure only citizens vote in U.S. elections and would cement Trump’s order into law.

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House committee that handles election legislation, said during Thursday's debate that the bill is meant to “restore Americans’ confidence in our elections” and prevent noncitizens from voting.

This marks Republicans’ second attempt at passing the SAVE Act. It passed the House last year but failed in the Senate amid Democratic opposition.

It’s unlikely to fare any better this year. While Republicans won control of the Senate last fall, they have a narrow majority that falls short of the 60 votes they would need to overcome a filibuster.

Republicans hammered on the issue during last year’s presidential election, even though voting by noncitizens is rare, already is illegal and can lead to felony charges and deportation.

The SAVE Act would require all applicants using the federal voter registration form to provide documentary proof of citizenship in person at their local election office. Among the acceptable documents are a valid U.S. passport and a government-issued photo ID card presented alongside a certified birth certificate.

Democrats and voting rights groups warn the legislation could lead to widespread voter disenfranchisement if it were to become law. The Brennan Center for Justice and other groups estimated in a 2023 report that 9% of U.S. citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, do not have proof of their citizenship readily available. Almost half of Americans don’t have a U.S. passport.

In Kansas, a proof-of-citizenship requirement that passed in 2011 ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens in the state who were otherwise eligible to vote. The law was later declared unconstitutional by a federal court and hasn’t been enforced since 2018.

“Just to exercise their inalienable right as citizens of this country, Republicans would force Americans into a paperwork nightmare,” said Rep. Joe Morelle, a Democrat from New York. “This bill is really about disenfranchising Americans — not noncitizens, Americans.”

A further concern came up several times Thursday: Married women would need multiple documents to prove their citizenship if they have changed their name.

It was a complication that arose in town hall elections held last month in New Hampshire, which was enforcing a new state law requiring proof of citizenship to register. One woman, since divorced, told a local elections clerk that her first marriage was decades ago in Florida and that she no longer had the marriage certificate showing her name change. She was unable to register and vote for her town election.

“This legislation would immediately disenfranchise the 69 million women who have changed their names after marriage or divorce,” said Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat from North Carolina.

Rep. Laurel Lee, a Republican from Florida, said the bill “contemplates this exact situation” of married women whose names have changed, saying it “explicitly directs states to establish a process for them to register to vote.”

Morelle countered by saying, “Why not write it in the bill? Why are we making the potential for 50 different standards to be set? ... How much paperwork do Republicans expect Americans to drown in?”

On a call with reporters Thursday, Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, a Democrat, said she started trying to gather her own personal documents that would be required under the bill about 10 days ago. She doesn't yet have them together despite having more time and know-how than many other people.

“It pushes women out of the democratic process,” she said of the documentation requirement. “And it’s not a coincidence. It’s part of a strategy to make voting harder, to sow distrust in our elections."

Democrats also said the bill would disproportionately affect older people in assisted care facilities, military service members who wouldn’t be able to solely use their military IDs, people of color and working-class Americans who may not have the time or money to jump through bureaucratic hoops.

“The SAVE Act is everything our civil rights leaders fought against,” said Rep. Nikema Williams, a Democrat from Georgia.

Republicans have defended the legislation as necessary to restore public confidence in elections and say it allows states to adopt procedures to help voters comply. They have disputed Democratic characterizations of the bill.

Four Democrats voted in favor of the legislation: Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Perez of Washington.

“The truth is, those who were registered to vote would still be able to vote under their current registration,” said Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who sponsored the bill. “We have mechanisms giving the state fairly significant deference to make determinations as to how to structure the situation where an individual does have a name change, which of course is often women.”

On Thursday, Roy said Cleta Mitchell, a key figure in Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election results, “had a significant hand in what we’re doing here.” Mitchell, a longtime GOP lawyer, has played a central role in coordinating the movement to tighten voting laws across the country.

Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden but has repeatedly made the bogus claim that it was stolen from him. There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim: Elections officials and his own attorney general rejected the notion, and his arguments have been roundly dismissed by the courts, including judges he appointed.

Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who serves as Arizona’s top state election official, described the voting proposal as a solution in search of a problem, given how rare noncitizen voting is.

“What it is doing is capitalizing on fear -- fear built on a lie,” Fontes said. “And the lie is that a whole bunch of people who aren’t eligible are voting. That’s just not true.”

Cassidy reported from Atlanta, Fernando from Chicago. Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

FILE - Santa Fe County, N.M., residents fill out general election ballots during the first day of general election voting, Oct. 11, 2022, in a hallway outside the Santa Fe County Clerk's Office in Santa Fe, N.M. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee, File)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., takes questions from reporters at a news conference, at the Capitol, in Washington, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Voters mark their ballots while voting at Centennial Hall at the Milwaukee Central Library on Election Day Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ruth Buzzi, who rose to fame as the frumpy and bitter Gladys Ormphby on the groundbreaking sketch comedy series “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and made over 200 television appearances during a 45-year career, has died at age 88.

Buzzi died Thursday at her home in Texas, her agent Mike Eisenstadt said. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and was in hospice care. Shortly before her death, her husband Kent Perkins, had posted a statement on Buzzi's Facebook page, thanking her many fans and telling them: “She wants you to know she probably had more fun doing those shows than you had watching them.”

Buzzi won a Golden Globe and was a two-time Emmy nominee for the NBC show that ran from 1968 to 1973. She was the only regular to appear in all six seasons, including the pilot.

She was first spotted by “Laugh-In” creator and producer George Schlatter playing various characters on “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour.”

Schlatter was holding auditions for “Laugh-In” when he received a picture in the mail of Buzzi in her Ormphby costume, sitting in a wire mesh trash barrel. The character was clad in drab brown with her bun covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead.

“I think I hired her because of my passion for Gladys Ormphby,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir “Still Laughing A Life in Comedy.” “I must admit that the hairnet and the rolled-down stockings did light my fire. My favorite Gladys line was when she announced that the day of the office Christmas party, they sent her home early.”

The Gladys character used her purse as a weapon against anyone who bothered her, striking people over the head. On “Laugh-In,” her most frequent target was Arte Johnson’s dirty old man character Tyrone F. Horneigh.

“Gladys embodies the overlooked, the downtrodden, the taken for granted, the struggler,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post in 2018. “So when she fights back, she speaks for everyone who’s been marginalized, reduced to a sex object or otherwise abused. And that’s almost everyone at some time or other.”

Buzzi took her act to the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in Las Vegas, where she bashed her purse on the heads of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Lucille Ball, among others.

“Ruth Buzzi brought a singular energy and charm to sketch comedy that made her a standout on ‘Laugh-In’ and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. Her characters, especially the unforgettable Gladys Ormphby, captured the delightful absurdity of the era," said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.

Her other recurring characters on “Laugh-In” included Flicker Farkle; Busy-Buzzi, a Hollywood gossip columnist; Doris Swizzler, a cocktail-lounge regular who got drunk with husband Leonard, played by Dick Martin; and an inconsiderate flight attendant.

“I never took my work for granted, nor assumed I deserved more of the credit or spotlight or more pay than anyone else,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post. “I was just thrilled to drive down the hill to NBC every day as an employed actor with a job to do.”

Buzzi remained friends through the years with “Laugh-In” co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley.

Born Ruth Ann Buzzi on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Rhode Island, she was the daughter of Angelo Buzzi, a nationally known stone sculptor. Her father and later her brother operated Buzzi Memorials, a gravestone and monument maker in Stonington, Connecticut, where she was head cheerleader in high school.

Buzzi enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse at age 17. Two years later, she traveled with singer Rudy Vallee in a musical and comedy act during her summer break. That earned her an Actors’ Equity union card before she graduated from the playhouse’s College of Theatre Arts.

Buzzi moved to New York and was immediately hired for a lead role in an off-Broadway musical revue, the first of 19 such shows she performed in on the East Coast.

She got her national television break on “The Garry Moore Show” in 1964, just after Carol Burnett was replaced by Dorothy Loudon on the series. She played Shakundala the Silent, a bumbling magician’s assistant to Dom DeLuise’s character Dominic the Great.

Buzzi was a regular on the CBS variety show “The Entertainers” whose hosts included Burnett and Bob Newhart.

She was in the original Broadway cast of “Sweet Charity” with Gwen Verdon in 1966.

Buzzi toured the country with her nightclub act, including appearances in Las Vegas.

She was a semi-regular on “That Girl” as Marlo Thomas’ friend. She co-starred with Jim Nabors as time-traveling androids on “The Lost Saucer” in the mid-1970s.

Her other guest appearances included variety shows hosted by Burnett, Flip Wilson, Glen Campbell, Tony Orlando, Donny and Marie Osmond and Leslie Uggams.

She appeared in Ball’s last comedy series “Life With Lucy.”

Buzzi guested in music videos with “Weird Al” Yankovic, the B-52’s and the Presidents of the United States of America.

She did hundreds of guest voices in cartoon series including “Pound Puppies,” “Berenstain Bears,” “The Smurfs” and “The Angry Beavers.”

She was Emmy nominated for her six-year run as shopkeeper Ruthie on “Sesame Street.”

Her movie credits included “Freaky Friday,” “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash,” “The North Avenue Irregulars” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.”

Buzzi was active on social media and had thousands of followers whom she rewarded with such one-liners as “I have never faked a sarcasm” and “Scientists say the universe is made up entirely of neurons, protons and electrons. They seem to have missed morons.”

She married actor Perkins in 1978.

The couple moved from California to Texas in 2003 and bought a 640-acre ranch near Stephenville.

Buzzi retired from acting in 2021 and suffered a series of strokes the following year. Her husband told The Dallas Morning News in 2023 that she had dementia.

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Associated Press National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

FILE - "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" cast members, from left, Lily Tomlin, Henry Gibson, Ruth Buzzi and Gary Owens pose for the media Tuesday, April 2, 2002, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, file)

FILE - "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" co-stars Ruth Buzzi and Gary Owens share a laugh during NBC's 75th Anniversary Party, in Los Angeles, Jan. 9, 2002. (AP Photo/Rene Macura, File)