Senate Democrats are mounting a unified front this week against Republicans’ efforts to strengthen voter ID laws, betting that public pressure alone can kill the GOP’s most aggressive push yet to overhaul federal voting rules. But not presenting their own plan on an issue voters in both parties say they care about is a high-stakes gamble with no guaranteed payoff.
“We’re going to absolutely counter with the truth,” Sen. Alex Padilla of California said. “Noncitizens voting is already a felony, and it’s exceedingly, exceedingly rare. I was secretary of state for California, and I was intimately familiar with how elections are run. They are safe, they are secure, and we should be working to make it more accessible for eligible Americans, not harder.”
Despite united Democratic opposition, Republican leadership is working around the clock this week to try to push through legislation that would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Their bills would also require photo ID to vote in federal elections, among other stipulations. Debate on the legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, could last through the week, with the final vote expected to fail without Democratic support. Senate rules require the measure to clear a 60-vote threshold to cut off debate, and Republicans hold a 53-seat majority.
Democrats aren’t planning to fight fire with fire. Multiple Democratic senators told NOTUS they have no interest in crafting their own legislation to contrast with the Republican proposal.
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“We don’t need to pass something that keeps it with the states. Virginia has a voter ID law that’s been tried and tested, and there’s zero evidence of fraud,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said. “Plus, all the other protections around elections have generated a positive process, a process that people could trust in Virginia. So as a Virginia senator, I don’t feel a need to pass something federally to take care of a nonexistent problem.”
But support for voter ID laws is up from the last decade: A Pew Research Poll from last August found that support for photo ID requirements was popular, with 95% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats polled favoring requirements that all voters show government-issued photo identification to vote.
“I have been trying to strengthen voter protections since before I came to the Senate,” Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said. “There was a time when voting rights was bipartisan. The last time we passed the voting rights law, it passed the Senate unanimously. And sadly, we’ve entered a chapter in American history where politicians are trying to turn a democracy upside down, so that instead of the voters picking their representatives, representatives are trying to pick their voters. That’s what the SAVE Act is about. They’re not trying to save America. They’re trying to save their power. And I intend to do everything I can this week to block it.”
At the center of Democrats’ opposition is the bill’s documentation requirement. To register, or even update an existing registration, voters would need to provide proof of citizenship beyond a driver’s license or other standard forms of ID. For many Americans, that means a passport, which costs $130 to obtain and which only about 50% of Americans own. Democrats also take issue with the bill’s restrictions on how people would need to register to vote. Mail-in registration would effectively be eliminated, since the bill requires documentary proof to be delivered in person to an election office.
“The so-called SAVE America Act is an effort to disenfranchise U.S. citizens from voting, and we need to say what it is, but in addition to that, demonstrate what a distraction it is from the issues that Americans care most about, which is the high cost of things and getting out of an illegal war in Iran,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin told NOTUS.
Democrats have argued that the legislation is not an election-security measure but a voter-suppression effort targeting Americans who are already eligible to vote. They say Republicans are trying to fix a problem that does not exist on any significant scale.
“That’s the whole point of us being on the floor and exposing what the reality of the so-called SAVE Act is,” Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont told NOTUS. “This is not voter ID in any reasonable sense of that word.”
Trump has made the SAVE America Act his top legislative demand, declaring that he won’t sign any other bills into law until Congress delivers it. He continues to frame the measure as essential to preserving Republican control of both chambers after the November midterms. And many House conservatives are escalating threats that they won’t vote for any bills the Senate sends over unless the chamber passes the voter ID bill.
Trump also called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to reinstate the “talking filibuster” instead of the 60-vote threshold to pass the legislation, a rules change that is deeply unpopular within the halls of Congress and will not happen. A talking filibuster requires senators to hold the floor continuously, or speak without pause, to block any other Senate action from moving forward.
Even as the SAVE America Act heads toward defeat this week, it’s unclear whether Trump will abandon the push. Democrats, for their part, have no plans to mount a legislative response of their own.
“We’re going to be countering that narrative all day, all night, day in, day out, throughout this week and however long Republicans want to have this debate on the floor,” Padilla said.
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