The House passed legislation Wednesday that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote and provide photo identification before casting a ballot.
The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act cleared the lower chamber in a 218-213 vote. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was the only Democrat to join Republicans and vote yes.
President Trump strongly supports the bill and urged “all Republicans to fight” for the Save Act over the weekend, arguing in a Truth Social post that the country’s elections are “Rigged, Stolen, and a Laughingstock all over the World.”
“We are either going to fix them, or we won’t have a Country any longer,” the president asserted.
The Save Act, previously approved by House lawmakers last year, also requires states to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls and establishes criminal penalties for registering an applicant who fails to present proof of US citizenship to vote in a federal election.
“Our Founders set forth our electoral processes 250 years ago, based upon the simple and ultimate principle that only Americans should vote,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the sponsor of the bill, said on the House floor ahead of the vote.
“But in this age of progressive, suicidal empathy, basic concepts such as voter ID and proof of citizenship have been attacked as suppression,” he added.
Roy noted that polls show Americans overwhelmingly support voter-ID laws.
A whopping 83% of US adults are in favor of requiring some form of government-issued photo ID to vote, including 71% of Democrats and 95% of Republicans, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research. Only 16% of American adults oppose it.
Critics of the bill argue that it will disenfranchise voters, particularly women who change their name after marriage and people who have lost track of their birth certificates and other documents.
“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said of the Save Act in an interview with MS NOW earlier this month.
“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” recently.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) argued that “Republicans have adopted voter suppression as an electoral strategy” when discussing the Save Act during his weekly press conference on Monday.
“That’s what the so-called SAVE Act is all about,” Jeffries said.
The Democratic House leader argued the current version of the bill is “worse than” the previous iteration, which received support from four House Democrats.
The Save Act faces long odds in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to pass before it can head to Trump’s desk for his signature.
“Nothing in the Senate’s an easy move,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told reporters. “This one’s certainly not.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has signaled that there is not enough support in his caucus to nuke the upper chamber’s 60-vote requirement, which would make it far easier for the Save Act to pass.
Lee and others have floated holding the floor with a standing, or talking, filibuster for hours on end to get the bill passed.
“[I]f we want to do this, this is how we have to go about it,” Lee said.
