President Trump’s SAVE America Act came roaring back in the Senate late on June 5, and the vote count tells the real story.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, forced the question during an overnight vote-a-rama.

This time, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted yes.

That put the House-passed version of the bill at 50 Senate yeas. The only thing standing in the way was the procedural threshold, not the math.

TrendingPolitics captured the key political shift: the election-integrity measure suddenly had signs of life again after a vote switch.

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Lee teed up the moment as a direct dare to Democrats.

The bill is simple. It says only American citizens get to register and vote in federal elections, and it requires voters to show photo identification.

The official U.S. Senate roll call lays out exactly what happened on vote 151:

Question: On the Motion, Motion to Waive All Budgetary Discipline Re: Lee Amendment Number 5804; Vote Number: 151; Vote Date: June 5, 2026, 11:39 PM

Required For Majority: 3/5; Vote Result: Motion Rejected; Amendment Number: S Amendment 5804 to S Amendment 5453 to S. 2

Statement of Purpose: To ensure only citizens are registered to vote in elections for Federal office, and to require voters to provide photo identification.

Vote Counts: YEAs 50; NAYs 49; Not Voting 1.

Alphabetical by Senator Name: Collins (R-ME), Yea; Lee (R-UT), Yea; McConnell (R-KY), Nay; Murkowski (R-AK), Nay; Thune (R-SD), Yea; Tillis (R-NC), Nay; Vance was not listed because the official roll call records the senators’ votes.

Grouped By Vote Position: YEAs: Armstrong, Banks, Barrasso, Blackburn, Boozman, Britt, Budd, Capito, Cassidy, Collins, Cornyn, Cotton, Cramer, Crapo, Cruz, Curtis, Daines, Ernst, Fischer, Graham, Grassley, Hagerty, Hawley, Hoeven, Husted, Hyde-Smith, Johnson, Justice, Kennedy, Lankford, Lee, Lummis, Marshall, McCormick, Moody, Moran, Moreno, Paul, Ricketts, Risch, Rounds, Schmitt, Scott of Florida, Scott of South Carolina, Sheehy, Sullivan, Thune, Tuberville, Wicker, Young.

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NAYs: Alsobrooks, Baldwin, Blumenthal, Blunt Rochester, Booker, Cantwell, Coons, Cortez Masto, Duckworth, Durbin, Fetterman, Gallego, Gillibrand, Hassan, Heinrich, Hickenlooper, Hirono, Kaine, Kelly, Kim, King, Klobuchar, Lujan, Markey, McConnell, Merkley, Murkowski, Murphy, Murray, Ossoff, Padilla, Peters, Reed, Rosen, Sanders, Schatz, Schiff, Schumer, Shaheen, Slotkin, Smith, Tillis, Van Hollen, Warner, Warnock, Warren, Welch, Whitehouse, Wyden.

The motion needed three-fifths to clear. It got a simple majority instead.

So the measure did not pass the Senate. It was blocked by the 60-vote wall, not rejected by it.

What changed from the earlier attempt was Collins. She had joined Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Thom Tillis as a no on the first SAVE America Act vote.

Lee’s amendment mirrored the House-passed bill, and that brought her over.

Collins has been clear for months about where she stands on the policy.

Back in February, Fox News reported that she backed the House-passed version while still drawing a line on eliminating the legislative filibuster.

So the conservative bloc had its 50. With Vice President JD Vance available to break a tie, the policy lane was there.

Lee made the argument plainly after the vote.

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Democrats, led by Sen. Alex Padilla of California, spent the night working to stop it and then took a victory lap.

Padilla’s office confirmed the procedural facts in its own press release:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, led his Senate colleagues in defeating Republicans’ efforts to include the SAVE Act voter suppression bill in their anti-immigrant reconciliation bill.

Padilla took to the Senate floor twice to condemn the Republican amendments to limit eligible Americans’ voting rights, successfully blocking Senators Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) and Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) brazen attempts to jam through President Trump’s partisan election takeover ahead of the midterm elections.

Graham’s amendment failed in a bipartisan 48-50 vote, with 60 votes needed to pass it.

Later in the night, Padilla took to the Senate floor again to stop Lee’s similar amendment that would mandate burdensome, in-person citizenship documentation requirements that could disenfranchise millions and impose voter ID requirements stricter than any existing state law.

Lee’s amendment failed in a bipartisan 49-50 vote with 60 votes needed to pass it.

During the failed March 2026 ‘talking filibuster’ attempt, Padilla took to the Senate floor four times as a leader in the Democratic opposition to the SAVE Act.

Strip out the spin and the takeaway holds. A majority of senators voted to require citizenship and photo ID to vote in federal elections.

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That is the part Padilla does not want sitting in plain view. Requiring voters to prove they are citizens is not radical.

It is what most Americans already assume the law guarantees.

The fight now is over the procedure, and Republicans control whether to keep pressing it. The votes for President Trump’s election-integrity agenda are on the board.

The next move is making the chamber answer for the wall they hid behind.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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