Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They have the White House. And they still can't get the SAVE America Act passed. Let that sink in. And for quite a while now, we’ve been blaming Democrats for obstructing it in the Senate. Now, yes, they are very responsible for the bill being stalled, but they don’t deserve all the blame. I would say 80% is fair. And the final 20% of the blame belongs to Republicans.
Let me explain.
This week, four GOP senators crossed the aisle to help Democrats kill Sen. John Kennedy's amendment that would have directed the Senate Rules Committee to draft election legislation incorporating the core elements of the SAVE America Act: proof-of-citizenship voting requirements, mandatory voter ID, and some limits on mail-in voting.
Yeah, we lost that vote, 48–50, because of Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis, and Mitch McConnell.
Yup. The usual suspects.
Kennedy had made the stakes crystal clear before the vote. "This amendment would instruct our Rules Committee to come up with an elections bill," he said. "It's my version of the SAVE America Act, but you can call it what you want." Simple enough, right? Apparently not.
Some proponents of the SAVE America Act, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), have argued that the legislation wasn’t drafted to pass the Senate under the budget reconciliation process, which generally prohibits policy changes with only a tangential budgetary impact from passing with a simple-majority vote.
Kennedy, however, argued that it was worth trying to fit it into the budget reconciliation package.
“Some say it can’t be done under the Budget Act and under the Byrd Rule and reconciliation. And you know what? They may be right. But you know what else? They can’t predict the future. They’re not clairvoyant,” Kennedy said.
The SAVE America Act is one of President Donald Trump's top legislative priorities heading into the midterms. It already passed the House in February, and polls have repeatedly shown that bipartisan majorities support its core provisions.
Yet, for some reason, Republicans, when they have other ways to get it done, can’t.
What do we need to do to make this happen? Seriously, Democrats have shown zero reluctance to nuke the filibuster when it suits their agenda. Zero. They will do it the moment they can. They’ve tried before, and once they have the House, Senate, and the White House again, they will try again. We can’t beat them to the punch and do it ourselves to make it happen, and any attempt to pass the SAVE America Act without nuking the filibuster seems to be DOA as well.
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The window is closing fast. This is our moment for meaningful election-integrity reform, and we may not get another chance at it for years. Every month that Republicans spend hand-wringing about process is another month closer to losing the leverage they have right now.
Republicans were given a mandate in 2024. Voters sent them to Washington to actually govern, to pass the priorities they've been campaigning on for years. The SAVE America Act is exactly that kind of priority — straightforward, popular, and desperately needed. Instead, four members of the conference decided their comfort with the status quo mattered more than the will of the voters who gave their party this majority.
If Republicans lose their shot at election-integrity reform because they couldn't hold their own coalition together for a procedural vote, they'll have no one to blame but themselves.
