Collins backs SAVE America Act, but won’t buck filibuster

Senate Republicans have found a key ally in their quest to enshrine voter ID into law, but the lawmaker’s support comes with one condition.

A trio of lawmakers, led by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, launched a campaign to convince colleagues to support the Saving America’s Voters Eligibility (SAVE) Act, working on social media and holding closed-door meetings to secure votes.

The campaign proved successful, with the cohort securing a crucial vote from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who announced she would support the SAVE America Act, which recently passed the House. With Collins, Senate Republicans have at least a slim majority in favor of the law.

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Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, announced her support for the SAVE America Act, but will not go so far as to neutralize the Senate filibuster. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“I support the version of the SAVE America Act that recently passed the House,” Collins said in a statement first reported by the Maine Wire. “The law is clear: In this country, only American citizens have the right to vote in federal elections.”

“Additionally, requiring people to provide identification at polling places, as they must do before boarding a plane, checking into a hotel or purchasing an alcoholic beverage, is a simple reform that will improve the security of our federal elections and help give people more confidence in the results,” she continued.

Collins noted that she did not support the previous version of the bill, known simply as the SAVE Act, because it “would have required people to prove their citizenship every time they vote.”

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Sen. Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, is leading the Senate push to pass voter ID legislation and is offering Republicans several paths to get there. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

His decision gives Lee and Senate Republicans the votes needed to overcome a key procedural hurdle in the Senate.

“We now have enough votes to pass a motion to move on to the House-passed bill – even without any additional votes – with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie,” Lee said in a post on X.

This decisive scenario would only arise if Republicans turned to the filibuster, or speaking. It’s a decision Lee pushed his colleagues to make, and one that would require an actual physical debate on the bill.

It’s the precursor to today’s version of the filibuster, where the only hill lawmakers have to climb is to get 60 votes. Lee and other conservatives believe that if they turn to the filibuster, rather than the “zombie filibuster,” they can crush Democratic resistance.

But some fear that resorting to this tool could paralyze the Senate for weeks or even months, depending on the determination of Senate Democrats.

And Collins’ support isn’t enough to break the Senate filibuster that garnered 60 votes.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., supports voter ID laws but acknowledged there are no votes in the Senate to override the filibuster to pass it. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Complicating matters, Collins has made it clear that she does not support eliminating the filibuster, as do several other Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who reiterated earlier this week that the Republican Party does not have the votes to eliminate the legislative tool.

“I oppose eliminating the legislative filibuster,” Collins said. “The filibuster is an important protection of the rights of the minority party that requires senators to work together in the best interest of the country.”

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“Removing this protection would, for example, allow a future Democratic-controlled Congress to pass provisions on anything it wants — statehood in Washington, D.C., open borders, or the creation of a Supreme Court — with a simple majority of senators,” she continued.

Republican Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska remain the only Republicans who have not pledged support for the SAVE Act.