The two most significant federal voting bills of the past decade — Democrats’ Freedom to Vote Act under Joe Biden and Republicans’ SAVE America Act under Donald Trump — have both crashed into the same wall: the Senate filibuster, guarded by a handful of defectors from each party’s own ranks.
The parallel is exact. Trump is now exerting the greatest pressure on Senate Republicans to end the filibuster to pass the GOP’s SAVE America Act on a party-line vote. Biden did the same to Senate Democrats for the Freedom to Vote Act. In both cases, a tiny handful of senators refused. For Democrats, then-Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema doomed the effort. For Republicans, a minority has similarly declined to revoke the filibuster for their party’s bill.
Two Bills, Opposite Aims
In policy terms, the bills are irreconcilable. The Democratic legislation would have mandated that every state offer at least two weeks of early voting and no-excuse absentee mail ballots; provide online, same-day, and automatic voter registration; and restore voting rights to people with felonies upon release from incarceration.
The Republican bill moves in the opposite direction. It would order every state to require photo identification, limiting acceptable forms to a list more restrictive than any state except Ohio now allows. It would also mandate proof of citizenship to register to vote. Some versions would block the eight states that automatically provide mail ballots to all eligible voters.
Why Neither Side Crosses Over
Each bill demands the greatest changes from states controlled by the opposing party. The Democratic bill would have forced the largest overhauls in red states, because Republicans control nearly all the states that lack automatic voter registration, no-excuse absentee ballots, online voter registration, at least two weeks of early voting, and automatic rights restoration for formerly incarcerated people.
Conversely, Democrats fully control none of the seven states that currently require proof of citizenship to register to vote, none of the 10 states the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures identifies as having the most restrictive photo ID requirements, and just two of the 14 states with less restrictive photo ID laws. With each bill imposing its heaviest burdens on the other party’s territory, neither attracted a single senator from across the aisle.
Three Options, One Worth Pursuing
The country faces three possible paths. The first is accepting federal stalemate and letting state voting rules drift further apart — a trajectory that has already left voting systematically more difficult in red states than blue ones.
The second is ending the filibuster, or carving it out, to pass voting reform by simple majority. But Trump’s push for the SAVE Act exposes the flaw: if Democrats had jettisoned the filibuster to pass their bill under Biden, Republicans would now repeal it and impose their own rules with 51 votes. Democrats would retaliate the next time they hold unified control. The result is permanent whiplash.
The third option — a durable bipartisan compromise — is the one Congress scarcely considers anymore. Proof of citizenship is a nonstarter: the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School calculated that at least 25 million citizens lack the documents it would require, with minorities and women especially at risk. Multiple studies from across the political spectrum, and from states themselves, have found noncitizen voting exceedingly rare — though a New Jersey noncitizen registration glitch was disclosed Tuesday.
Photo identification, however, commands broad public support. With a reasonable list of acceptable documents, it need not be a deal-breaker for Democrats. In exchange, Republicans might accept widely popular reforms like nationwide automatic and same-day registration, guaranteed early voting, and rights restoration for the formerly incarcerated — even if no-excuse mail balloting remains off the table given Trump’s hostility to it.
What Happens Next
None of this is achievable while Trump pursues his campaign to seize unprecedented federal control of election administration. The SAVE Act will likely continue to stall, just as the Freedom to Vote Act did before it. The next president, from either party, will confront the same binary: end the filibuster or abandon voting legislation entirely. The road not taken — a bipartisan agreement setting nationwide standards on the rules each party cares about most — will remain open only if both sides decide that stability matters more than total victory.
— Jordan Blake, editorial desk, AXO News