GOP’s SAVE America Act passes House, heads for showdown with Democrats in the Senate
House Republicans passed voter ID legislation amid vehement Democratic opposition, putting pressure on the Senate to act on the bill this election year.
The bill, known as the SAVE America Act, would require a photo ID at the polls and proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote.
It also would order states to remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls.
Only one of the chamber’s 214 Democrats, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, voted with the 217 Republicans to pass the measure.
The rest of the Democrats insisted that checking citizenship and requiring a photo ID to vote was a racist scheme to disenfranchise minority voters. Republicans argued that the measures prevent fraud, such as double voting, voter impersonation and noncitizen voting.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, called the bill “critically important to one of the most precious franchises in America, and that is that sacred right to vote.”
“Their own leaders would tell you if you actually increase the integrity of elections by requiring a picture ID, that somehow it’s going to suppress votes. The opposite happens,” he said during the floor debate. “More people will participate because they know that somebody’s not going to be stealing their vote by showing up when they’re not supposed to be there, just by requiring a picture ID.”
Earlier versions of the SAVE Act were passed twice in the Republican-run House but weren’t taken up by the Senate.
This time, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said his chamber is engaged in a “very robust conversation” to bring the bill to a vote, despite stiff resistance from Democrats.
“How we get to that vote remains to be seen,” he said earlier this week.
Some Republicans have floated amending the Senate filibuster rule to speed up passage of the bill, but Mr. Thune said “there aren’t anywhere close to the votes, not even close, to nuking the filibuster.”
In general, voter ID laws have broad support among Americans of all races and political affiliations.
A Pew Research Center poll from last year found that a majority of Americans support some form of photo ID at the polls, with 82% of Hispanic voters, 76% of Black voters, 85% of White voters and 77% of Asian American voters supporting it.
Still, the legislation has but a slim chance of surviving in the Senate. It would take significant support from Democrats, which is unlikely.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, has called the bill “Jim Crow 2.0.”
“Republicans bristle, the right-wing bristles, every time I say that the SAVE Act is Jim Crow 2.0. They don’t like it because sometimes the truth hurts. While the specific policies may have changed since the days of the Jim Crow South, the goal of the SAVE Act is the same: disenfranchising American citizens and making it harder for eligible people to vote, particularly low-income Americans and people of color,” Mr. Schumer said this week.
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