Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) sent a letter Monday to senators laying out a simple way the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act can be brought to the floor for a vote without “nuking” the filibuster.
The SAVE Act would require both documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID to cast a ballot. The legislation passed the House, but is stalling in the Senate, despite 50 Republican senators who co-sponsor or support the SAVE America Act, according to Roy’s letter, which was exclusively obtained by The Federalist. As Roy pointed out, Senator Majority Leader John Thune can “put the bill on the floor any time.”
Roy, preempting talking points from some Republicans, lays out how Thune could successfully bring the SAVE America Act to a vote without nuking the filibuster.
Roy explains that as long as all Senate Republicans who have either co-sponsored or publicly supported the legislation show up and presents a live quorum, it would force Democrats to talk non-stop to delay a vote at just 51 votes, rather than the typical 60-threshold filibuster.
“The commonly accepted 60-vote ‘filibuster’ threshold to ‘shut off debate’ is not the ONLY way to force a vote in the Senate – the majority can force opposing Senators to speak,” Roy said.
Under current Senate rules, according to Roy, if there is a quorum, the Senate must either be voting or a member must be speaking.
“In other words, if no one is speaking and a quorum is present, the vote on the pending business happens automatically,” Roy explained.
Roy said Thune could “proceed to the SAVE America Act with a simple majority vote … as soon as he chooses. Under current practice, he would call it up, debate it for a while, and proceed to a 60-vote cloture vote to ‘shut off debate.’ It would fail, Republicans would shrug and say ‘we tried, we need to elect more Republicans.'”
“This is what we call a ‘fake’ or ‘zombie’ filibuster,” Roy said. “There’s no real speaking, just a failure to get 60 votes to ‘shut off debate’ and then default to a ‘quorum call’ (no business) rather than having 51 Senators show up to call the question at a simple majority.”
But as Roy points out, there are existing Senate rules that allow a present majority — 51 senators — to seek a vote on the SAVE Act. Democrats, the minority, would try to run a filibuster to stop the vote. But as Roy notes, “If Republicans stick together, and the minority exhaust their opportunities to speak in opposition or give up, a final vote on passage of the bill occurs automatically at a majority threshold.”
Roy said Republicans would need to be “disciplined” and table each amendment and enforce the “2-speech rule” in order to force an actual vote on the SAVE America Act.
“We can move the legislation under CURRENT rules without ‘nuking’ the filibuster,” Roy pointed out.
The SAVE America Act passed the House 218-213, with Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas voting to pass the legislation alongside his Republican colleagues. Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman has also come out in support of the legislation.
As The Federalist’s Matt Kittle pointed out, the proposal within the legislation is wildly popular, and forcing a vote in the Senate would force legislators to “explain to the 80 percent of Americans (including a significant number of Democrats) who support citizenship and ID requirements, why they so vehemently oppose basic election integrity.”
Noncitizen voting is already illegal, though the law lacks any enforcement mechanism. The SAVE America Act would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Currently, prospective voters must check a tiny square box on a federal registration form attesting under penalty of perjury they are a citizen, in other words, the honor system.
