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.”
Critically, it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Republican backers of the SAVE Act contend that requiring proof of citizenship will help enforce existing law.
Members of the right flank in the House pressed to tack the SAVE Act into the government funding bill last week as a means of attempting to jam the Senate with it. Ultimately, leadership declined to do that, eager to end the four-day government shutdown as soon as possible.
“I haven’t said that they’re wrong,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday about voter ID.
“What Republicans are trying to do is to engage in clear and blatant voter suppression, and they know that if there’s a free and fair election in November, they’re going to lose,” he added.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) backed voter ID laws, telling Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that “those things are not Jim Crow.” It’s not fully clear where he stands on the SAVE Act, though he has predicted it won’t clear the Senate.
President Trump has been staunchly in favor of passing the SAVE Act, but Republicans will almost certainly be unable to wrangle it through the Senate without nuking the filibuster, a red line for many GOP senators.
“I am asking all Republicans to fight for the following: SAVE AMERICA ACT!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday. ” 1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW VOTER ID (IDENTIFICATION!).
“2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP TO REGISTER FOR VOTING. 3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).”
Ironically, during the first year of the Biden administration, Senate Democrats contemplated weakening the filibuster to pass an election reform law that would impose requirements such as same-day voter registration and mandatory 15 days of early voting nationwide.
Ultimately, that effort failed because former Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) opposed any effort to weaken the filibuster.
Pew Research had sampled 3,554 US adults from Aug. 4-10, 2025, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.
