Schumer’s voter ID words meet Senate defeat

Senate Democrats blocked a voter ID bill late Friday and into the early hours of Saturday, brushing aside a measure that Republican leaders had cast as a basic election safeguard. The fight centered on Sen. Jon Husted’s voter ID bill, a stripped-down piece of the broader SAVE America Act effort that Republicans tried one more time to advance before lawmakers left Washington.

The vote put Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus on record against a proposal requiring identification to cast a ballot in federal elections. That stance landed awkwardly beside Schumer’s own public comments in March, when he said, “Democrats support voter ID,” and pointed out that voter ID had been included in the party’s Freedom to Vote legislation several years ago. Still, Schumer and every Senate Democrat voted against Husted’s bill.

The bill would have barred state and local election officials from issuing a federal-election ballot unless the voter showed a valid form of identification. The options in the measure included an unexpired driver’s license with a photo, an unexpired state-issued photo ID, a valid passport, a valid military or veteran ID with a photo, or an unexpired tribal ID with a photo. Republicans argued that the proposal was a straightforward way to strengthen election rules, while Democrats again lined up against it as part of a broader fight over the SAVE America Act.

The clash was not new. In March, Republicans tried attaching Husted’s bill to the SAVE America Act, and that effort failed on party-line lines as well. Since then, Republicans have repeatedly searched for a path forward on the package, but Democrats and a small group of Republicans have blocked it in several forms. The latest vote became the final major Senate push of the night, coming during a stretch of last-minute legislative business before the chamber headed toward a long break.