How Republicans Can Fix Our Elections Without Nuking the Filibuster
For years, Republicans have talked the talk about election integrity, particularly after the 2020 election, which resulted in confidence in elections taking a massive nosedive. Well, now Republicans have their moment to do something about it. And it’s not one they’ll get often, if ever again.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is currently before Congress. All it requires is proof of citizenship and a voter ID—naturally, the left is screaming bloody murder.
“The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0. It would disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in a post on X. “Every single Senate Democrat will vote against any bill that contains it. Speaker Johnson should tell SAVE Act Republicans to stand down or else this shutdown will be on them.”
Technically, Republicans don’t need Democrats to pass the legislation. They have majorities in the House and Senate and could pass the SAVE Act without a single Democrat vote. There’s also the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which is even more comprehensive. Not only does it include photo ID requirements and citizenship verification for voter registration, but it also mandates enhanced voter-roll maintenance and deadlines for mail-in ballots to arrive by the time the polls close, auditable paper ballots, while banning ballot harvesting, ranked-choice voting, and universal mail-in voting. All commonsense reforms that the public supports.
The real hurdle is the Senate floor: under current rules, ending debate requires a 60-vote cloture motion to overcome a filibuster. That’s never going to happen. So how does the GOP make this happen, especially since they’ve already ruled out nuking the filibuster?
