SO, all such votes require 60? Wierd.
In1917, senators adopted a rule (Rule 22), at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote, a device known as “cloture.” The new Senate rule was first put to the test in 1919, when the Senate invoked cloture to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. Even with the new cloture rule, filibusters remained an effective means to block legislation, since a two-thirds vote is difficult to obtain. Over the next five decades, the Senate occasionally tried to invoke cloture, but usually failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote. Filibusters were particularly useful to Southern senators who sought to block civil rights legislation, including anti-lynching legislation, until cloture was invoked after a 60 day filibuster against the Civil Right Act of 1964. In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 of the current one hundred senators.
The 60 vote requirement is the threshold needed to invoke cloture and break a filibuster, which is commonly applied to prevent the Senate from taking up an issue. The adoption of Senate rules at the beginning of every Congress though requires only a majority vote, and it is those rules that specify that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. A new Senate could do away with the filibuster or reduce the number of votes or change its availability.