WASHINGTON — Republicans are aggressively promoting a popular provision in their sweeping Save America Act to overhaul elections nationwide: requiring photo identification to vote.
It’s a policy long opposed by Democrats in Congress, who liken it to the infamous Jim Crow-era laws aimed at preventing African Americans from voting.
But that message has fallen flat with the American public, including black voters, as photo IDs are increasingly required for common activities like flying.
A Pew Research Center poll in August examined various election rules and found that 83% of US adults support “requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote,” while 16% oppose it. This is up from 77% support in a 2012 Pew poll.
Support now includes 71% of self-identified Democrats, 83% of independents and 76% of black voters.
“It feels like the only Americans who don’t support voter ID requirements are the Democrats here in Congress,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, RSD, said on the floor.
NBC News asked more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers whether they would accept some form of photo ID rule to vote. Only one has voted freely: Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.
“If they really want to have a real conversation, and they put together that 83% of Americans support showing basic ID — you know, I’m not going to tell 83% of Americans they’re crazy, or they’re trying to suppress the vote, or they’re Jim Crow,” Fetterman told NBC News. “I’m not going to describe people like that.”
But Fetterman also said he opposes the Save America Act as written, citing other provisions in the broader bill.
While Republicans have focused on the popularity of the voter ID provision, Democrats note that the Save America Act requires proof of citizenship — a passport or birth certificate — to register, a higher burden of proof than a photo ID. President Donald Trump has called for major new restrictions on mail-in voting and amendments to include provisions against trans athletes and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.
“The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0. It could disenfranchise millions of American citizens,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week.
Citing a Pew poll, Thune said comparing it to Jim Crow “insults the vast majority of Americans — including minorities — who look at voter ID and see nothing more than common sense.”
In a press call on Saturday, Schumer pointed to other provisions in the Save America Act when asked about the popular photo ID proposal, which would have given the Department of Homeland Security the authority to sift through states’ voter rolls and flag suspected non-citizens for ineligibility.
“This is not a voter ID bill,” the Democratic leader said. “It’s about mass-purging voter rolls so you never get the chance to show voter ID when you show up to vote because you’re kicked off the rolls.”
Trey Easton, a former Senate Democratic aide, said there is a workable compromise on voter ID that his party should be open to.
“I think Democrats should fully embrace the voter ID form. Why it’s such a boogeyman, and the way it’s implemented matters, matters,” said Easton, now vice president of public policy at the Searchlight Institute, which aims to broaden the appeal of the Democratic Party.
As one possibility, he floated a “national ID card” tied to Social Security or another federal program that would serve as a “one-stop shop for all your dealings with the government,” he said.
He said, “States obviously maintain individual voter registration, but having a national identity card is not unheard of.”
Still, for most Democratic lawmakers and the outside experts they trust, the GOP push is a solution in search of a problem. Non-citizen voting in federal elections is already illegal and extremely rare, according to an analysis by the liberal Brennan Center of a database produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“I don’t think there’s any one ID advanced at this point that’s universally owned by enough Americans to make it mandatory in every state,” said Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, suggesting alternative ways to verify voters, such as signature verification.
Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, added to the same Schumer-led call, “This bill isn’t necessary. It’s a huge burden on voters, election officials, everybody. It’s not a voter ID bill and there’s no voter ID problem.”
Sen. Angus King, an independent centrist from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, responded “no” when asked if any kind of nationwide photo ID mandate for voting would be acceptable to him.
“We don’t have that in Maine. Here’s what we have in Maine: We have Election Day registration, any voter ID, unlimited absentee voting by mail and drop boxes,” King said, citing studies that show voter fraud is statistically insignificant. “The old saying in Maine: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Other Democrats said they don’t take issue with the voter ID concept, but rather the way Republicans are trying to do it.
“When you vote you have to prove who you say you are. I’ve never been against that,” said Sen. said Raphael Warnock, D-Ga. “But they use voter ID as a pretext to determine which voters they think will keep them in power. That’s why, for example, a student ID isn’t enough, but a military ID is. So, I can tell you that somebody who ran in Georgia and saw what they tried to do in my race wouldn’t want to vote.”
Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., chairman of the moderate New Democrat coalition, stopped short of supporting any nationwide photo ID requirements to vote. “What the Republicans are trying to do is not what they’re saying they’re trying to do,” he said.
The Save America Act “by intent and design, in many cases, 80% of women change their name when they get married and 5% of men change their name when they get married,” Schneider said. “People, for whatever reason, can change their name, change their gender identity.”
Opponents of the bill note that a person’s birth certificate or passport may not match their married last name, and updating those documents would be expensive and time-consuming.
“It targets people to make it harder to vote,” Schneider said. “Additionally, that bill would require each state to turn over voter rolls to the federal government.”
D-Representative of Texas. Mark Vesey said he’s seen Texas Republicans in the state legislature trying to craft ID rules to arm voters — for example, by allowing handgun licenses but not state-issued ID from the University of Texas to register to vote.
“We don’t want Republicans to try to game the system by finding ways to keep people out,” Vesey said. “Because of Jim Crow and the legacy of segregation, there are many places where I live in Texas, and other parts of the South, where someone’s birth may be recorded in a family Bible or they may be born by a midwife. They may not be able to be born inside a county hospital.”
“Most people are going to give up,” he said. “They’re not going to go through those steps. They’re going to say: ‘Forget it, I can’t vote because I was born during segregation and there was no one there to register my birth.
