HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TNND) — Senate Democrats blocked a Saturday morning attempt by Republicans to pass a bill that would have set voter identification requirements, and it wasn’t the SAVE America Act.
Sen. Jon Husted, the Ohio Republican, introduced an untitled bill last week that would have directed states to deny ballots to voters who fail to show photo ID. All present Democrats voted against it, giving conservatives a line of attack against Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said earlier this year that his caucus supported “commonsense voter ID.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a Fox News article Monday on the weekend vote—a story titled, “Schumer said ‘Democrats support voter ID’ — then every Senate Democrat voted against GOP bill”—and wrote its headline in her X post.
Schumer, apparently confusing Husted’s bill with the SAVE America Act demanded by President Donald Trump, pushed back on the conservatives’ representation of his remarks.
“You mean the GOP bill that disenfranchises millions of American citizens and effectively eliminates mail-in voting?” the New York Democrat wrote in an X post. “Sorry, @PressSec – the SAVE Act will never pass the United States Senate. No amount of whining on Twitter will change that.”
Schumer said in a March speech on the Senate floor that Democrats backed voter ID requirements but not those included in the SAVE America Act. Trump’s bill, he argued, is part of the GOP’s attempts to undermine the midterm elections.
“This is suppression, a MAGA power grab that could disenfranchise more than 20 million American citizens,” Schumer claimed.