Election integrity bill faces uncertain fate in Senate … again

WASHINGTON—Janet Merkle received the usual notice: The email from the city clerk in Chaska, Minn., asked if she would again serve as an election judge for upcoming elections this year. For the first time since she began filling the role in 2020, she’s not sure if she will.

“I am losing faith in whether or not we are actually checking [citizenship], when we are registering these people,” Merkle told me.

Although Merkle has never witnessed what she credibly believed to be a noncitizen voting, she worries about Minnesota rules that prevent election officials like her from verifying identifying documents like driver’s licenses and allow one voter to vouch for the residency of up to eight other voters. Minnesota also allows same-day registration and automatically registers residents to vote when they apply for driver’s licenses unless they opt out.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed election reform legislation that would add proof of citizenship requirements for federal elections. According to the Republican Party, loopholes such as those in Minnesota could allow illegal immigrants to vote and exploit federal elections. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, also called the SAVE America Act, would override some state rules and require uniform identification standards for federal elections.

The House passed the bill in previous versions in 2024 and 2025, but it has not moved through committee in the Senate. Democrats strongly oppose the legislation, arguing it places undue burdens on voters. Additionally, there is no data that noncitizen voting is common or widespread enough to affect federal election results. Still, President Donald Trump has championed the measure, even while giving conflicting messages about what the bill would do. Some conservative supporters are pressuring the Senate to do everything necessary to pass the legislation.

“It’s difficult in the Senate. I can only say that,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told me on Wednesday. “First, you have to figure out exactly, if we go through this process, what all do we want included in the package? And we’re not even at that stage yet.”

The original election reform bill would have amended the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by adding a requirement to provide documentation proving citizenship to register to vote. It also would have added legal penalties for election officials who register voters without the proper documents. The newest version adds more requirements to include a photo identification in order to cast a ballot.

The White House has touted an August 2025 Pew Research poll showing that 83% of American adults support requiring photo identification for voters. Trump has vigorously defended the SAVE America Act, describing it as a way to prevent election fraud, which he has repeatedly claimed stole the presidency from him in 2020. He argued on The Dan Bongino Show on Feb. 2 that the federal government should manage elections if the states allow voter fraud to occur.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” Trump said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many—15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was referring to the SAVE America Act. Since then, Trump has called the legislation necessary to ensure confidence in elections. During a news conference on Tuesday, a reporter asked House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., if Americans can’t trust the midterm election results in November if the SAVE America Act does not pass.

“I’m not saying that,” Johnson said. “I think we can trust the outcome of the election, but what I will tell you is there is still a great concern that in certain pockets of the country that there’s not strict enforcement of the laws. … If you can provide an ID and eliminate the possibility of illegals participating in elections or people who are not who they say they are, that is good for everybody.”

Noncitizen voting is already a federal crime. It is also rare. Each state has different checks in the process, from registration to counting, to verify ballots are valid. A 2025 Michigan audit found that 15 noncitizens voted in the 2024 presidential election, out of 5.7 million voters. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska became the first Republican to publicly oppose the bill on Wednesday.

“The challenge that I have is not requiring proof of identification to vote,” Murkowski told me on Thursday. “We exclaim a lot as Republicans that we talk about state control, we talk about the states’ rights, and we have acknowledged for a long time that it shall be up to the states to determine the aspects regarding voting time and place.”

“We want to get the SAVE America Act passed,” Trump said during a Tuesday interview with Fox Business. “We want people to have voter ID, people to have proof of citizenship, and we want to have no mail-in ballots other than if you’re in the military or sick or you’re away or some reasonable but good excuse.”

The SAVE America Act does not eliminate mail-in ballots. It does require registrants to mail in a copy of proof of citizenship both with a registration request and the actual ballot. Accepted documents include passports, REAL ID driver’s licenses that show citizenship status, birth certificates, name change documentation, and military documents that indicate citizenship.

But voting rights organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice argue that the SAVE America Act would enact too many barriers to vote. Vulnerable populations, including the homeless and the poor, do not always have such documents readily available. Democrats on the Hill have called the bill “Jim Crow 2.0,” arguing it would disproportionately affect black voters and women.

“If you’re one of the 50% of Americans who doesn’t have a passport, or if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who can’t quickly access your birth certificate, the SAVE Act could, in effect, take away your right to vote,” Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement online. “The SAVE Act is dead on arrival in the Senate.”

The SAVE America Act does include an exception: If voters don’t have all the necessary documentation, they may sign an affidavit confirming citizenship. It is then up to local election officials to offer a provisional ballot and decide if they will accept that affidavit.

Still, the Senate appears unlikely to muster the 60 votes required to pass the bill, prompting some House Republicans to urge their counterparts in the upper chamber to allow the “talking filibuster.”

Memorialized in the 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the filibuster used to be a vehicle by which senators who opposed a bill could talk on the chamber floor indefinitely in an attempt to stop its passage. Whenever he or she gave up, the bill was subject to a simple majority vote. But in 1917, the Senate introduced the cloture rule, which limited debate on bills. According to that rule, if two-thirds of the chamber agreed on the bill, no one would be allowed to filibuster. In 1975, that benchmark was lowered to 60 votes. Since then, the Senate has been dominated by what is called the “silent filibuster,” where lawmakers quietly place a “hold” on a bill and tell party leadership that it needs 60 votes in order to be considered.

Under the approach advocated by some House GOP members, the Senate leadership should waive the cloture rule and allow Democrats to use the talking filibuster for as long as they wish. Whenever they end the filibuster, Republicans could pass it with only 51 votes.

While most Senate Republicans have co-sponsored the SAVE America Act, they are also rebuking their House colleagues for attempting to pressure them to change procedural rules.

“No, no, we’re not changing the filibuster,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told me after a caucus lunch on Tuesday. When asked why House Republicans want that change, he said, “I get it, but there’s a lot more that comes with that.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has also resisted the recommendation.

“It’s not just me not being willing to do it. There aren’t anywhere close to the votes, not even close, to nuking the filibuster,” Thune said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Changing the filibuster rules could have consequences for the chamber’s productivity for the rest of the year.

“If you think the Senate is slow moving now, just imagine what it would be if you gave 47 Democratic senators indefinite periods of talking to stall legislation,” George Washington University associate professor Casey Burgat told me. Under the filibuster rules, each dissenting member may speak for as long as he or she likes, twice. “That’s why we’ve seen a weaponization by both parties of the filibuster. Returning it to a standing filibuster would flip the burden from the majority to get 60 votes, which is incredibly difficult in today’s age, to the minority to stand up and talk to prevent that cloture motion to come into the floor.”

Despite the debate in Washington, some conservatives say the SAVE America Act does not go far enough since it does not eliminate mail-in voting or “nationalize” elections. It also does not override state laws that allow same-day registration.

Back in Minnesota, those are the points that worry Merkle.

“I’m not saying it won’t have any effect, but I don’t feel like I’m going to wake up tomorrow if they pass it and say, well, that’s going to solve all of our problems,” she said.

But as in the Senate, Americans still don’t agree on the strictest measures. In the August Pew survey, while most respondents supported a voter ID law, nearly 60% also supported same-day voter registration and automatic voter registration for citizens.