Republican says Trump's top election priority 'dead' in Senate as GOP fractures ahead of midterms

A Senate Republican revealed that even if President Donald Trump’s flagship election integrity legislation had the votes to pass, there’s not enough time to actually have it take effect for the upcoming midterm elections.

The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act has increasingly become a problem for congressional Republicans desperate to move onto other must-pass legislation. But Trump has consistently demanded they find a way to pass it, particularly in the Senate, by any means necessary.

But Republicans aren’t unified behind the bill, and Democrats unanimously despise it. Even if it got 60 votes, which is an unlikely scenario, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., contended it wouldn’t have an impact in time for November.

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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the SAVE America Act lacks time and funding to implement voter ID provisions before midterm elections. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

"Unless they do the work to get to the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater," Tillis told the Raleigh, North Carolina-based News & Observer.

Tillis, who was one of four Senate Republicans to vote against attaching the legislation to an immigration enforcement funding bill last month and was called out by Trump, is familiar with pushing for voter ID laws, which is only a portion of what the proposed SAVE America Act would do. During his time as House speaker in the North Carolina legislature, he was a major proponent of enacting the state’s voter ID.

But doing so takes time and money, he argued.

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"And honestly, here in North Carolina, or in virtually any state, the ability, if we go back to when we implemented voter ID in North Carolina, it took a year to get everything in place with adequate funding," Tillis said.

The current version of the SAVE America Act doesn’t directly allocate funding to states to implement voter ID or its several other provisions. That is, in part, why the legislation wouldn’t work in the budget reconciliation process, as Trump has called for and House Republicans are mulling, which requires provisions to have a direct budgetary impact and not be policy only.

Tillis pitched the scenario that if everything worked out, it would eat into early voting periods or outright snuff them.

"Let’s assume you only allow early voting in the month of October," Tillis said. "Then do you honestly believe that we can have this thing up in 50 states? There’s no funding. There’s no specific implementation instructions."

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Signage regarding voter identification posted outside a polling location at the old Guilford County Courthouse during the last day of early voting in Greensboro, N.C., on Nov. 2, 2024. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"It’s become a joke, in my mind, for somebody that’s actually implemented voter ID law, how anybody can look the American voters in the eye and suggest that it could be implemented in time without just causing a huge impact on the elections, and ironically undermine the confidence of it," he continued.

Still, it hasn’t stopped a cohort of congressional Republicans, notably Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., from demanding that the Senate take action on the bill.

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And Trump is determined to strong-arm Republicans into passing it, demanding they nuke the filibuster, attach the SAVE America Act to must-pass legislation, or fire the Senate rules referee.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to allow mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day, he renewed his call.

"In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT," Trump said on Truth Social.