Four GOP Sens vote with Dems to block SAVE Act—AGAIN

The SAVE Act was blocked overnight by four GOP senators after efforts were made to attach it to a reconciliation bill. Those Seantors include Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, and Thom Tillis. Later, Collins joined with other GOP colleagues and voted in favor of the bill with Sen. Mike Lee's amendment added in, making 50 votes in favor of the bill.

Although the bill did not pass, getting 50 votes with Lee's amendment during the vote-a-rama on the package is significant as the bill could pass if the filibuster was lifted. Despite those efforts, the bill was blocked from going in the package. House Majority Leader John Thune has said repeatedly he opposes abolishing the filibuster, even to get the SAVE Act passed. A majority of Americans favor citizen-only voting.

The SAVE Act seeks to require those voting in federal elections to prove citizenship as well as requirements for voter ID laws. Lee said of the bill before presenting the amendment to the floor, "Our elections need to be characterized by two things: we need to make it easy to vote, and hard to cheat. We need to do that by making sure that people establish their citizenship and therefore their eligibility to vote when they register and that they show who they are when they show up on election day."

He added that many other countries already have similar voter ID requirements, and that adversarial nations can take advantage of the current lack of voter ID requirements. Although Collins voted in favor of the bill with Lee's amendment, bringing the count to 50, she voted against attaching the bill to a budget reconciliation package just hours before along with Murkowski, McConnell, and Tillis. They joined with Democrats in striking down the effort to attach the bill to the $70 billon package geared toward funding ICE and Border Patrol.

This was the second attempt from the GOP to attach the SAVE Act to the budget reconciliation package as well as the second time that they have failed in doing so. There have been other calls to nuke the filibuster entirely in order to pass the SAVE Act. However, Senator Majority Leader John Thune has been opposed to such as a measure as well as going with the talking filibuster.