The House of Representatives is slated to vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would expand on the version it approved last year.
The bill, which has also been introduced in the Senate, would simply require individuals to present an eligible photo ID before voting, and it would maintain provisions from the original SAVE Act requiring states to verify citizenship when registering individuals to vote and to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
The enhanced SAVE America Act should once again be approved by the House, where only a simple majority is required for passage, but passage in the Senate is more problematic, where 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster.
Some conservative activists and lawmakers are urging GOP leadership to use every procedural tool available—including removing the filibuster—to overcome Democratic opposition, but GOP leadership says currently they do not have the votes to change the rule, as many Republican senators publicly oppose changing the filibuster.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, says they are ignoring the majority of their constituents.
"If you look at public opinion about this, it's 80-20," he notes. "Eighty percent of the American public feel it's not just reasonable, but it is advisable that people demonstrate, No. 1, that they are citizens of this country when they register to vote, and, No. 2, that they can identify themselves when they show up and vote."
But since Republicans currently hold 53 seats, Mehlman says the Senate cannot deliver 60 votes on an 80-20 issue without changes to Senate rules or bipartisan support.
"If people in the Senate decide to vote this down — and Chuck Schumer (D-New York) has said that it's going to be dead on arrival, that they're not going to get the number of Democratic votes they need to get it passed — then he should explain to the 80% of the American public who thinks it's a good idea why he's blocking it."
Republicans could technically change Senate rules with a simple majority, but political resistance within their own conference on this makes that unlikely.
A dramatic shift in the Senate's composition after the upcoming elections could increase the chances of doing away with the filibuster.
