With the November midterm elections just months away, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California has emerged as one of the leading Democrats in Washington to advocate for measures that he says would protect voting rights and help maintain the integrity of elections.
Over the past few months, California’s senior senator has introduced a handful of election-related bills to address issues ranging from voting rights and election security to speeding up the ballot-counting process.
Although no Republican has signed on as a co-sponsor of any of the proposed pieces of legislation, Padilla said he doesn’t view the bills as partisan. In fact, he said during an interview this week, the principles behind the bills have historically received bipartisan support.
“These bills are about protecting voters, not about protecting one party or another,” said Padilla, who once served as a secretary of state, in charge of elections in California, and who is now the ranking member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which has oversight of federal elections.
The bills come amid efforts by President Donald Trump to change election rules.
Trump has long suggested, without proof, that there is widespread voting by non-U.S. citizens and has pushed for reforms.
The president issued an executive order last year that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. A federal judge permanently blocked most of that executive order last month, though the Trump administration could appeal the ruling.
And in another executive order earlier this year, Trump called for the creation of a federal voter list and for the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail ballots to people who aren’t on each state’s list. A federal judge halted that executive order last month as well, though a spokesperson for the White House said at the time that the administration would appeal the decision.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, in an email, said the Civil Rights Act, National Voting Rights Act and Help America Vote Act give the U.S. Department of Justice full authority to make sure states are compliant with federal election laws.
She added that the president “is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters.”
“This campaign pledge from the president is why millions of Americans sent him back to the White House,” Jackson continued. “The president will also continue urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act – which remains hugely popular with the American public – and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting.”
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, would require individuals to prove they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote and also mandate that they present a valid photo identification before casting their ballot. The bill cleared the U.S. House of Representatives in February, but there hasn’t been enough support to pass it in the Senate.
A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 83% of respondents support voter ID.
Padilla, meanwhile, insisted that elections already are safe and secure and accused Trump and his allies of “doing everything they can to make it harder for eligible people to stay registered to vote and to cast their ballot.”
The public, Padilla said, should know there are members of Congress “fighting for their fundamental right to vote.”
Since late April, the senator has introduced or co-sponsored the following bills:
• The Absentee and Mail Voter Protection (MVP) Act, which would nullify Trump’s executive order regarding the creation of a federal voter list and for the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail ballots to people who aren’t on each state’s list. Padilla said he had no plans to withdraw the bill despite the judge halting the order.
• The Fraudulent Artificial Intelligence Regulations (FAIR) Elections Act, which would ban the distribution of false AI-generated content to thwart another person from voting, such as by providing false information about the time, place or manner of a federal election or one’s voting eligibility. It also would allow voters to sue the federal government if they’re removed from a state’s voter roll because the government ran their information through a federal database, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program. The SAVE system, used to verify citizenship and immigration status, has been denounced by critics who say it uses unreliable data that leads to flawed results.
• The Protect Our Polls Act aims to prevent armed military and federal law enforcement from being deployed to polling places. It would require Congress to pass a joint resolution of approval before the president could send troops or federal law enforcement to such sites.
And, for at least 48 hours before deployment, members of Congress must be presented with information — including “specific intelligence that … armed enemies of the United States are threatening the places where those elections are being held” — as well as the legal authorization for activating armed forces, plus evidence that a state or local government isn’t able to handle such situations on its own.
• The State and Local Election Security Act would authorize $10 billion in federal funding over three years — $5 billion for this year and $2.5 billion each in 2027 and 2028 — for state and local election offices to purchase upgraded voting equipment, invest in measures to combat and respond to security threats, hire more staff or take other actions to improve the administration of elections.
Padilla also recently helped reintroduce the Federal Right to Vote Act, which would allow any U.S. citizen to challenge in court a policy that restricts ballot access. States seeking to restrict voting access would have to meet a high standard in justifying a policy that would make it more difficult for a U.S. citizen to vote, according to the bill’s sponsors.
In addition, Padilla and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last month announced a new “election observer program.”
Senate Democrats’ staff members will be trained to serve as election observers to “protect against any meddling in the 2026 midterm elections.” These observers will document any attempts at voter interference, threats against election workers, mis- or disinformation or other attempts to interfere with the election process.
The Senate Democrats’ election observer program will be similar to an existing U.S. House program, according to Padilla’s office.
Asked what he thought the chances were that his election-related bills would pass out of a Republican-controlled Congress, or that Trump would sign any of them if they crossed his desk, Padilla suggested they could be signed into law — if not before this November’s midterm elections, then down the road.
“If this Republican majority won’t advance these bills, then maybe once Democrats are back in the majority, we can advance them more. If Donald Trump isn’t inclined to sign these bills into law, then a future president might,” the senator said.
“But we should constantly be seeking ways to maintain the safety and security of our elections while also affording opportunities for eligible people to participate and vote,” Padilla said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.