WASHINGTON — The SAVE America Act to require proof of citizenship nationwide to register to vote and overhaul voting laws has now topped 50 votes in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The bill is supported by President Donald Trump and passed the House last week, meaning the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster rule is the only thing standing in the way of it becoming law.
The tally guarantees a battle over the bill on the Senate floor as Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has promised a vote. But he warned last week that there are “not even close” to enough votes for getting rid of the filibuster, despite Trump’s calls to do so. If the filibuster remains intact, the legislation will still fail as Democrats are certain to use every tool to block it.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the chief sponsor of the bill, is pushing Republicans to use existing rules to force Democrats to engage in a “talking filibuster” on the floor of the Senate. The idea is to tire out opposing Democrats and pass it. But the tactic is a long shot, viewed by previous Senate majorities as doomed to fail if attempted. The rules make it considerably easier for a filibustering minority to sustain the 60-vote threshold than for a majority to break their will and advance a bill with 51 votes.
Sen. Susan Collins, the centrist from Maine who faces a competitive re-election bid this fall, became the 50th Republican supporter of the legislation, an elated Lee announced last week.
“I support the version of the SAVE America Act that recently passed the House,” Collins said in a statement. “The law is clear that in this country, only American citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections. In addition, having people provide an ID at the polls, just as they have to do before boarding an airplane, checking into a hotel, or buying an alcoholic beverage, is a simple reform that will improve the security of our federal elections and will help give people more confidence in the results.”
She said the revisions to the bill resolve her earlier concerns by easing the proof-of-citizenship rule for casting a ballot, instead requiring states to see it only when registering a person to vote.
If it were a simple majority vote, Collins’ support would be enough. Vice President JD Vance could break the tie and send it to Trump’s desk to become law. But Collins made clear she does not support gutting the filibuster to do that.
“I oppose eliminating the legislative filibuster,” she said. “The filibuster is an important protection for the rights of the minority party that requires senators to work together in the best interest of the country.”
Republicans control 53 seats in the Senate. Some in the party have not signed on to the measure, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Murkowski called it an example of the “one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington” that Republicans regularly criticize. And McConnell, who hasn’t commented on the bill, has long said he believes states should run their own elections without federal intrusion.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has slammed the bill as “Jim Crow 2.0,” designed to disenfranchise Americans who don’t readily have access to a birth certificate or passport.
“They make it so hard to get any kind of voter ID that more than 20 million legitimate people, mainly poorer people and people of color, will not be able to vote under this law,” Schumer said Sunday on CNN. “We will not let it pass in the Senate. We are fighting it tooth and nail. It’s an outrageous proposal that shows the sort of political bias of the MAGA right.”
Schumer was responding to a question about a poll last August by the Pew Research Center that shows 83% of American adults support “requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.”
In addition to mandating a photo ID to vote, the SAVE America Act requires people to show proof of U.S. citizenship in person to register. That includes those voting by mail, who would also have to enclose a copy of a photo ID to vote.
Thune has said Senate Republicans will have a “robust” discussion about how to proceed on the SAVE America Act, while warning that attempting a “talking filibuster” would eat up considerable floor time and “entail a tremendous amount of effort, work and cooperation” — all with no guarantee of success.
Trump has repeatedly pressed for passage of the bill and Lee has framed it as an existential question for the U.S.
“This is high-stakes legislation,” he wrote on X. “Pass it and we save the republic. Don’t pass it and we roll the dice.”
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