Four separate national surveys show an average of 79% of all Americans support passage of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act that requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says there aren’t enough votes to pass the proposal.

President Donald Trump refers to the passage of the SAVE Act as “a national emergency,” but Thune told reporters Tuesday “it’s just not realistic,” a claim he has repeatedly made in recent weeks as the chief executive has steadily stepped up his pressure for Senate passage of the SAVE Act.

Current Senate rules require 60 votes to approve legislation unless it is considered as a “reconciliation” measure concerning spending issues, in which case only a simple majority of 51 votes is needed. But the Senate parliamentarian is likely to rule out the SAVE America Act in a reconciliation proposal because it’s not budgetary in nature, which means the measure would have to gain support from at least seven Democrats.

On Wednesday, Trump was scheduled to sign a much-ballyhooed housing reform bill, but he canceled at the last minute, then engaged in a fiery closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans. Tempers flared when Trump lashed out at four GOP senators who voted Tuesday with Democrats on a War Powers Resolution that the president claims undercut him as he negotiates with the radical mullahs of Iran. A second vote on the issue later in the day Wednesday defeated the Democratic measure.

The tense political debate about the SAVE Act comes in the context of an unusually high level of public support, including majorities in all three major voter groups, as seen in multiple national polls across many months for major provisions like requiring voter ID.

In August 2025, for example, 83% of the respondents in a Pew Research Center online survey of 3,554 adults favored requiring government-issued IDs in order to vote in national elections, including 95% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats. The survey also found 84% of all respondents backing requiring voting machines to produce paper ballots, and 74% want Election Day to be a national holiday.

A Center Square survey of 2,565 registered voters in October 2025 showed 71% of all respondents supporting the voter ID requirement for voting in national elections. This survey showed majority support among all age groups, with Gen Zers the lowest at 55%.

In February of this year, a Harvard-Harris survey of 1,999 registered voters produced these results:

• “71% of voters support the SAVE America Act (Democrats: 50%; Republicans: 91%; Independents: 69%), with 54% prioritizing stopping voter fraud over access for eligible citizens.”
• “The majority of voters support specific requirements of the act, including proof of citizenship (75%), voter ID (81%), states removing non-citizens from voter rolls (80%), and states sharing redacted voting rolls with the Department of Homeland Security (61%).”
• 73% of voters surveyed say the U.S. should have a national law requiring all ballots to be counted within 24 hours of the polls closing on Election Day.

And a March 2026 survey of 1,000 registered voters by McLaughlin & Associates added to the data showing deep support for the proposal, with 77% agreeing that “proof of United States citizenship should be required to register to vote in American elections.” That position was backed by 92% of the GOP respondents, 64% of the Democrats, and 75% of the Independents.

In addition, 60% of those surveyed by McLaughlin said they view it as “urgent” that the Senate approve the proposal “to ensure that only U.S. citizens are on the voter rolls and that photo ID is required before the first ballots are cast.”

On Thursday, House Freedom Caucus (HFC) members called a news conference to demand that Senate Republicans move now on the SAVE Act as the House of Representatives convened Thursday morning. The HFC represents the heart of the current, narrow conservative House Republican majority.

During the conference, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) told reporters that “just the other day, President Obama opened up his presidential library in Chicago, and you needed an ID to attend that event. So, if you are going to show up for President Obama’s library, you better show a photo ID to gain access to that event, but to vote in our elections, you don’t have to do that? That makes no sense. It’s crazy, and it’s stupid.” 

Rep. Chip Roy, the Texas Republican who authored the version of the SAVE America Act that has passed the House twice in the past year, said “the Constitution is clear that we have authority to address this matter, both from the standpoint of handling immigration and determining the rules involving our own elections. … The only question before us now is whether the Senate will put America first or continue to put the Senate first. We’re trying to say that the Senate needs to move forward, to force this through using all of the tools at their disposal and to stop hiding behind fake [voting] thresholds that the Senate itself has put in place.”

Roy, who recently lost a Republican primary contest to be the Texas GOP’s nominee to be the Lone Star State’s next attorney general, also observed that “there is no constitutional requirement for a 60-vote threshold. I am a former creature of the Senate, chief of staff to [Sen.] Ted Cruz (R-Texas). I was a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I understand the Senate, frankly, better than most.”

Roy noted that the Senate was viewed by the authors of the Constitution as the “cooling saucer” that would slow down or block too-hasty decisions by the House of Representatives. None of the HFC members, according to Roy, were suggesting the Senate should not fulfill that role.

“But for senators to blindly ignore the history of the Senate in passing, for example, the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s after three months of forcing people to go through the actual filibustering on the floor of the Senate, through the rules and the procedures, going through speech rules and so forth, to then burn their time and force the question to a 51-vote threshold, that’s the Senate working,” Roy continued.

“Today, they are hiding,” Roy said, referring to the fact that the Senate has gone into a two-week recess that members of the HFC were unanimous in condemning.

The frustration level of the HFC members with the Senate’s failure to act on the SAVE America Act was especially evident as Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) said, “This is the most popular bill in America in a long time. This is the most important bill that this Congress can pass in decades. President Trump has now made it a signature bill to be passed by the U.S. Congress.”

Self then said he introduced a bill Thursday providing for the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution that transferred the selection of senators from state legislatures to direct popular election.

“We are experiencing the effects of a Senate that refuses to move every single day in this country. This is only one bill that they refuse to move. They won’t do anything. I filed a bill today to repeal the 17th Amendment, to rear down the royalty known as the ‘U.S. Senate,’ to return the authority to the state legislatures to determine their senators. This will rebalance the U.S. Constitution as it was designed.”

Also on Thursday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) claimed conservatives have sufficient votes to prevent the House from moving any legislation forward until action is taken by the Senate on the SAVE America Act. A narrower version of the bill providing federal grants as an incentive to states to adopt the voter ID requirement floated by House GOP leaders is insufficient to break the developing logjam, Luna and members of the HFC acknowledged, because blue states will simply reject the grants and continue to allow anybody who shows up at the polls to cast ballots.

In a related development on Tuesday, a federal district court judge ruled that requiring Trump’s executive order directing the Election Assistance Commission to the voter ID requirement for mail-in voting is unconstitutional.