Sen. Susan Collins announced Friday that she will support the SAVE America Act — a bill requiring photo ID at the polls for federal elections — clearing a critical hurdle for Senate Republicans trying to lock down enough votes to advance the legislation.
Collins, the Maine Republican known for bucking her party at inopportune moments, had declined just days earlier to tell the Daily Caller News Foundation how she would vote. Her support removes one of the biggest question marks hanging over the bill's Senate prospects.
But there's a catch. Collins made clear she will not support eliminating the Senate filibuster to get it done.
The bill passed the House on Wednesday by a razor-thin 218-213 margin, with exactly one Democrat — Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar — crossing the aisle, Daily Caller reports. Every other Democrat voted no. The legislation that arrived in the Senate, however, wasn't identical to earlier versions. Its language had been altered to require photo ID at the polls rather than proof of citizenship — a distinction Collins called "key" to her support.
Collins framed her position as common sense, not partisan warfare:
"The law is clear that in this country only American citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections. In addition, having people provide an ID at the polls, just as they have to do before boarding an airplane, checking into a hotel, or buying an alcoholic beverage, is a simple reform that will improve the security of our federal elections and will help give people more confidence in the results."
She's not wrong. Americans flash an ID to buy a bottle of wine. The notion that asking for one before casting a ballot in a federal election constitutes voter suppression is one of the left's most transparently absurd arguments — and one they've somehow maintained for years with a straight face.
Collins' support for the SAVE Act is tied to her insistence that the 60-vote filibuster threshold remain intact. She argued that eliminating it would allow a future Democrat-led Congress to pass provisions on anything they want — a concern shared, at least rhetorically, by several of her colleagues.
This is where the math gets uncomfortable. With Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska already declaring she would not vote for the legislation, Republicans cannot afford further defections. And reaching 60 votes means persuading Senate Democrats to support election integrity measures that their House counterparts just unanimously rejected.
One Democrat out of 213 voted yes. That's the current appetite on the left for ensuring only citizens vote in American elections.
Sen. Mike Lee, the bill's Senate sponsor, is pushing an alternative path: the talking filibuster. Under existing Senate rules, senators who want to block legislation can be required to actually stand and talk — indefinitely, with no set clock. It's a pressure mechanism that forces opponents to physically sustain their obstruction rather than simply registering a procedural "no" from the comfort of their offices. If Democrats want to block voter ID, they'd have to do it on camera, hour after hour, explaining to the American public why showing identification to vote is an unacceptable burden.
That's a fight worth having.
Collins faces voters this fall. Her opponents include Maine's incumbent Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and Democrat Graham Platner. The electoral calendar doesn't explain her vote — Collins has never been one to chase her base — but it does clarify the stakes. A Republican senator in a blue-leaning state just endorsed the core premise that the left has spent years calling racist: that voters should prove they are who they say they are.
That's nothing. When Collins, of all people, looks at a voter ID bill and says, "This is reasonable," it strips Democrats of their favorite excuse. They can't call this a MAGA fever dream when the Senate's most famous moderate is signing on.
The left's opposition to voter ID has always rested on a contradiction so glaring it's remarkable anyone still takes it seriously. They argue, simultaneously, that requiring identification is an intolerable barrier to voting — and that illegal immigrants don't vote anyway, so what's the problem? If no one is voting illegally, a verification requirement costs nothing. If the requirement would actually prevent people from voting, then someone who shouldn't be voting currently is.
Pick one.
The 218-213 House vote, with a single Democratic defection, tells you everything about where the party stands. Not one additional Democrat could bring themselves to vote for the principle that American elections should be decided by American citizens. They'd rather fight the concept itself than allow a safeguard they claim is unnecessary.
The SAVE Act now enters the Senate's procedural gauntlet. Collins' support matters, but it doesn't solve the fundamental arithmetic. Sixty votes are still sixty votes — unless the talking filibuster gambit shifts the dynamic. Sens. John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell have both warned that Democrats will abolish the filibuster themselves when they return to power, which makes Collins' principled stand on the 60-vote threshold feel less like strategy and more like unilateral disarmament.
But that debate is downstream. The immediate question is simpler: Will Senate Democrats filibuster a bill that asks voters to show a photo ID?
If they do, they'll own that vote heading into November. And no amount of rhetoric about "access" and "equity" will explain away the obvious — they fought harder to block election security than they ever fought to secure the border.
