Prices as of August 26, 2026, 8:47 p.m. Eastern. Record compiled from 28 dated sources; see the sourced record file for every citation.
The people with money on the question have answered it, and this week they answered it harder. On Kalshi, where a price in cents is a probability, the contract that pays $1 if the SAVE Act becomes law before January 4, 2027 was quoted at 8:47 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday at 3.8 cents by buyers and 4 by sellers: about a 4% chance, the lowest of the past 30 days and down from 7.5 cents on July 30. The record behind that number is five recorded Senate floor defeats since March 26, none closer than eight votes to the 60 the bill needs, the last a 52 to 46 vote on a stripped-down photo-ID measure at about 2 a.m. on August 8. The Senate then left Washington by unanimous consent and does not return until the afternoon of September 15.
The week's trading was people paying 96 cents to collect a dollar. In the 24 hours to 8:47 p.m., 267,704 contracts changed hands, and 81% of them were bought by the side betting against the bill. At 8:33 a.m. Wednesday one buyer took 176,221 of those contracts in 26 fills inside a minute, pushing the YES price from 3.9 cents to 3.0 before it recovered: about $170,000 put at risk to collect about $6,200. Two mornings earlier, at 8:17 a.m. on August 24, a larger one: 234,713 contracts in 41 fills, about $224,000 at risk for about $10,600. The biggest bet the other way all week, 18,140 YES contracts at 9:14 p.m. Tuesday, cost about $760. The market's answer to "will the SAVE Act pass" is about one chance in 25 in this Congress, and falling.
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The Board
As of August 26, 2026, 8:47 p.m. Eastern (Kalshi, cents = probability; the bid/ask is what buyers will pay and what sellers want):
| Outcome | Yes price (bid/ask) | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| YES | 3.8¢ / 4.0¢ | about 4% |
| NO | 96.0¢ / 96.2¢ | about 96% |
This is a single yes-or-no contract: YES pays $1 if the SAVE Act (H.R. 22) becomes law before January 4, 2027, NO pays $1 if it does not, and the two prices add to a dollar. Kalshi's rule, in full: "If the SAVE Act (H.R. 22) becomes law before Jan 4, 2027, then the market resolves to Yes." One caution the rule does not address: the bill the Senate has been voting on since February is the broader SAVE America Act, H.R. 7296, and Kalshi's public rule text names only H.R. 22. About 4.4 million contracts are open; at 4 cents the YES side is worth about $176,000 and the NO side about $4.22 million. The month's path: a high close of 7.5 cents on July 30, 6.2 on August 1, about 5 through mid-August, 4.8 on August 24 on the busiest day of the window, 275,278 contracts, and 3.8 to 4.0 tonight. Over seven days, 871,543 contracts traded and 71% were bought by the NO side, which spent about $597,000 against about $11,600 from YES buyers; about $12.7 million has traded since March 2025. Polymarket at about 8:55 p.m. had an H.R. 22-specific contract at 5.5 cents and a looser one, which pays on any proof-of-citizenship bill including H.R. 7296, at 13.
What the Models Think
We also put the question to our panel of forecasting programs, which we grade in public against real settlements, without showing them the price, only the sourced record below. Three of the panel's eight seats ran this board. Their middle answer put the bill at 4%, level with the 4-cent market, and the widest gap between any two of them was three points, from 2 to 5. All three reasoned from the same facts: the bill needs 60 votes and has topped out at 53, the same four Republicans have refused to force it through a budget bill, and the leader has said the filibuster stays. One model: "Six recorded Senate floor failures, uniform Democratic opposition plus four GOP defectors, and Thune's flat refusal to end the filibuster leave no 60-vote path before Congress ends Jan 3, 2027." The high answer, at 5, kept a little room for a lame-duck deal after November; the low one, at 2, added that even if the successor bill passed, the contract's rule names H.R. 22 and might not pay. The market has real money behind it. The panel has only the record. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
Five Floor Votes, A Ceiling Of Fifty-Three: How The Math Has Not Moved Since March
Start with what the bill is. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, H.R. 22, sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in a federal election: a passport, a birth certificate with a photo ID, a REAL ID that shows citizenship, or a military record showing a U.S. birthplace. A standard driver's license alone does not count. The House passed it 220 to 208 on April 10, 2025. The 2026 version, the SAVE America Act, adds photo ID at the polls and in-person delivery of the documents; the House passed that one 218 to 213 on February 11, 2026, with one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar, voting yes. The Brennan Center said that day more than 21 million citizens of voting age lack ready access to the documents; the National Association of Counties said counties would need 18 to 24 months to implement a bill that takes effect the day it is signed.
Then the Senate. Majority Leader John Thune told Votebeat on March 16, before the first vote: "For better or worse, I'm the one who has to be the cleareyed realist about what we can achieve here." On March 26 the Senate held two votes in one afternoon and lost both 53 to 47. On April 23 an attempt to move it through a budget measure failed 48 to 50, with Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis voting with the Democrats; on June 4 the same four blocked it as an amendment to the Homeland Security funding bill. And at about 2 a.m. on August 8, after a Friday-night deal among Thune, the White House and Senate conservatives to shelve the budget resolution and defer the full bill to September, Sen. Jon Husted's narrower photo-ID bill failed 52 to 46. Husted's pitch: "should you have to prove who you are when you vote?" The floor's answer was eight votes short.
Fifty-three is the ceiling, 60 is the bar, and every Democrat has voted no every time. The midterm board and the House control market price the next Congress; this contract is about the one that exists right now.
"Fire The Parliamentarian," "Terminate The Filibuster": The Fight Over The Side Doors
There are two ways around a 60-vote wall, and both have been fought over in public. The first is reconciliation, the budget process that needs only 51 votes. In May, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled the bill did not qualify under the Byrd Rule, and per Time on May 21 President Trump answered: "Senate Majority Leader John Thune should immediately fire the parliamentarian, who treats Republicans, and everything that they stand for, horribly." Thune did not. The House kept the door propped: on July 22 it passed a budget resolution 216 to 214 telling its Administration Committee to report a version by September 11, and the same day attached the bill to the defense authorization, 216 to 212. Thune's reply, per the Deseret News: "The folks that have consistently blocked it and voted against it are all the Democrats in the Senate. I think that's unlikely to change."
The second door is the filibuster itself. On July 27 Trump posted that "John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to 'leave town' until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER". Thune, per Democracy Docket the same day: "Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster." They had "voted on it two, three, four, five times already." Asked on July 30 whether Thune should keep his job, Trump said: "We will find out, and I will let you know." Nobody objected when Thune asked unanimous consent to recess through September 14. The price fell from 7.2 cents on July 31 to 5.5 by August 7 across that stretch and has not closed above 6 since.
What the White House could do alone, it did. Executive Order 14399, signed March 31, 2026, ordered Homeland Security to build state citizenship lists and the Postal Service to write mail-ballot rules; a lawsuit by 23 states and the District of Columbia won an injunction from Judge Indira Talwani on June 25, and on August 24 the Supreme Court lifted it 6 to 3, calling the list provision "an internal directive from the President to a subordinate," with Justices Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor dissenting. That is the executive order, not the bill, and it did not move this contract. As for the bill's effect on November 3 if it somehow passed, David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research told the Washington Examiner on August 3: "If for some reason it were to pass, I am very confident at this late date, less than 100 days before the election, it would be blocked."
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What Moves The Price From Here
- September 11 and September 15, 2026. The House committee's reconciliation deadline is the 11th; the Senate's first roll call after recess is a 2:15 p.m. vote on the 15th, on the crypto market-structure bill, not this one. A Thune floor announcement putting the SAVE America Act ahead of that, or one Republican senator publicly backing a filibuster exception for it, moves 4 cents toward 10. Another failed cloture vote moves it toward 2.
- November 3, 2026. Election Day, when polls close state by state and the lame-duck session begins. Tillis has said he will block the bill before the midterms; after them, the question is whether a Senate that may change hands in January takes up contested election law in December.
- January 4, 2027. The 119th Congress ends January 3, and any bill not signed by then starts over. The contract closes at 10 a.m. Eastern on January 4. This one settles on January 4, 2027.
Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. United States Senate chamber photo by United States Senate, licensed Public domain; photos cropped, toned, and composited.
Prices quoted are live Kalshi market prices as of August 26, 2026, 8:47 p.m. Eastern, and will keep moving until this market settles on January 4, 2027. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state). OddsShopper covers prediction markets as an independent analyst: any model or panel figures referenced are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. This article does not advocate for or against any candidate, party or bill. Trading involves risk; contracts can go to zero.
