Top Democratic lawmakers are digging their heels in opposition to a federal voter identification requirement, despite polling showing that close to three-quarters of their voters back it.
A colossal 83% of US adults support requiring some form of government-issued photo ID to vote, including 71% of Democrats and 95% of Republicans, a survey by Pew Research last year found.
Only 16% of American adults oppose it.
“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told MS NOW last week when presented with that polling data and asked about his opposition to the GOP’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
The SAVE Act, which has already cleared the House, would require voters nationwide to show proof of citizenship in order to cast their ballot. Democrats are leveraging the 60-vote filibuster to block it in the Senate.
“I called it Jim Crow 2.0, and the right wing went nuts all over the internet. That’s because they know it’s true. What they’re trying to do here is the same thing that was done in the South for decades to prevent people of color from voting,” Schumer added.
Schumer argued that the measure would potentially hamstring women who get married and change their last name, and individuals who have lost track of their birth certificates from voting.
The top Senate Democrat predicted the SAVE Act wouldn’t get any Democratic votes.
“It’s still going to be something that disenfranchises people that don’t have the proper real ID, driver’s license ID, that don’t have the ID necessary to vote even though they are citizens,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday when asked about the survey.
“This is another way to simply suppress the vote.” --->READ MORE HERE
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Congressional Democrats insist voter ID laws are a GOP scheme to suppress the minority vote, despite an overwhelming majority of Black and Hispanic Americans saying they want people to show a government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot.
Democrats are now lining up in opposition to the Republicans’ Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill scheduled for a vote this week in the House. It would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID at the polls.
Democrats in both chambers struggled to reconcile their diehard opposition when 82% of Hispanic voters and 76% of Black voters support a photo ID requirement at the polls, according to a Pew Research Center survey last year.
The survey also found that 85% of White voters and 77% of Asian American voters support requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote.
While a photo ID requirement is more popular among Republican voters, 95%, Democratic voters also widely support it, at 71%.
When pressed by The Washington Times to explain their opposition in the face of overwhelming public support, some Democratic lawmakers floundered. Others doubled down on allegations that it would disenfranchise voters who don’t have, or can’t afford, up-to-date licenses.
“It really depends on the text,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
On the text of the Save America Act, she compared it to Jim Crow laws that blocked Black voters from the polls: “What they are seeking to introduce is to bring us back to a time of poll taxes, and we cannot allow our nation to slide back into such a deep, dark and discriminatory time.”
Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said his state requires photo ID to vote, but he takes issue with “very specific provisions in many of the Republican proposals.” --->READ MORE HERE
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