Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., center, speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on February 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. At left is Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and at right is Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat, will protest President Donald Trump’s attempt to exert more control over election infrastructure by bringing her state’s secretary of state, Steve Hobbs, as her guest to the State of the Union on Tuesday night.
Trump pressured senators to agree a bill passed by the House of Representatives This would require the public to present a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, involve the federal Department of Homeland Security in elections and ban universal mail-in voting popular in Washington, Oregon and other states.
Members of Congress often bring guests to the State of the Union to highlight certain issues, and Democrats have raised numerous objections this year to the president’s tariff program and his immigration crackdown – including a weeks-long operation in Minneapolis in which two U.S. citizens were killed by immigration agents – and other issues.
Cantwell told States Newsroom in a telephone interview hours before Trump’s address began that changing election infrastructure could have a longer-term impact on U.S. democracy than other Trump measures.
“I’m not saying the tariff issue didn’t have an impact,” Cantwell said. “I’m not saying it’s not terrible that you killed two American citizens who were just trying to express their right to free speech. But you could upend a lot of things if you change our electoral system overnight. I don’t know how you recover from that right away.”
The Republican bill would amount to nationalizing elections, a contradiction to the constitutional provision under which states administer elections, Cantwell and Hobbs said.
The framers of the Constitution gave states this power to protect themselves from executive overreach, Hobbs said.
The bill would violate that idea, Cantwell said.
“We would basically say, ‘It’s OK for a federal leader … and his agency, Homeland Security, to mess around and determine who is eligible to vote,'” Cantwell said. “The reason for the separation of powers is … that there was no federal oversight so that people could have confidence that they were not being manipulated by federal power.”
Republicans’ endorsement of the bill follows that of President Donald Trump Comments advocate Nationalize electionsa mid-decade campaign to redistrict state congressional districts in favor of Republicans and more than two dozen justice departments Complaints Demands that Democratic-led states turn over unredacted voter lists to the Department of Homeland Security.
Senate rules in danger?
Cantwell’s concerns about the bill, known as the SAVE Act, have grown after seeing Trump’s pressure campaign on Republicans, as well as a recent show of support for the bill from moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine and comments from the bill’s Senate sponsor, Mike Lee of Utah, about adjusting the chamber’s rules to ensure the bill’s passage.
And Cantwell said she expects Trump to address the issue in his address on Tuesday.
Under Senate rules and traditions, 60 of the 100 senators must agree to a procedural vote to achieve final passage of almost all legislation. Because Republicans hold 53 seats, this means bills must have support from both parties to pass in the chamber.
Lee has said he wants to adjust Senate rules to require a bill’s opponents to continually speak out to block consideration of a bill that would otherwise have the support needed to pass.
Cantwell said she and Hobbs would look for ways to get Republicans on their side on the issue Tuesday night.
“He and I had a busy night tonight,” she said. “We need to attack some Republican senators.”
Non-Citizens and Elections
Republican supporters of the bill say it will boost election security and ensure that non-citizens do not vote in US elections.
But non-citizens are already barred from federal elections and cases of voter fraud are extremely sporadic, even in studies by conservative groups.
And the bill contains several provisions that could reduce voter turnout, Cantwell and Hobbs said.
Many Americans don’t have a passport or simple access to their birth certificate. Nearly 70 million married women have changed their names, creating an additional barrier to voter registration.
“I don’t think they think about these things,” Hobbs said.
The bill would also jeopardize Washington’s general mail-in voting system, in which every voter receives a ballot that they can return by mail.
Postal voting has “nothing to do with partisanship,” Hobbs said. “It’s about the convenience of the voter to be able to take the time to choose the people they want to vote for. It’s about safety, it’s about transparency, it’s not about partisanship.”
The system, popular for years among Republicans and Democrats because of its convenience, became a partisan issue when Trump blamed his 2020 election loss in part on the COVID-era boost in mail-in voting during that election.
“We are here to proclaim that this system has given people the right to vote, to vote more and to have higher voter turnout, which should be our goal,” Cantwell said Tuesday. “That’s why the League of Women Voters is with us in this debate and against the SAVE Act because the entire goal is to have a more participatory government and mail-in voting contributes to that.”
