Chuck Schumer swore up and down this year that his party has no quarrel with showing an ID at the polls.
Then Senate Republicans put that promise to a vote with the midterms bearing down on Washington, DC.
And what Schumer’s caucus did next handed President Trump an argument Democrats can’t answer in the states they call home.
Schumer’s Promise Runs Into a Roll Call
Senate Republicans brought up the Stop Insider Trading Act, a House-passed bill that married two ideas most Americans back: a ban on Members of Congress buying individual stocks and a photo ID requirement for federal elections.
The Senate voted 53 to 47, according to CBS News. Every Democrat voted no, and the bill died seven votes short of the 60 it needed to advance.
Fox News reported that the vote came months after Republicans first pushed the SAVE America Act, a top priority for President Donald Trump that Schumer’s caucus has rejected again and again.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) once branded that bill “Jim Crow 2.0.” But he also told reporters on a press call earlier this year, “Democrats support voter ID.”
“In fact, we included it, and it is included, in our Freedom to Vote legislation several years ago,” Schumer said.
So Democrats support it. They just keep voting against it.
US Senator Jim Banks (R-IN) didn’t dress up his read of the situation. “Democrats are gonna vote against it because they don’t want to give the president a win,” Banks told Fox News Digital. “They don’t want to give Republicans a win. They’ll screw the country and stuff.”
Tim Kaine Gives the Game Away
The most revealing answer came from a Democrat.
“We already have it,” US Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) told Fox News Digital. “I mean, Virginia has a voter ID law that our citizens really like.”
Read that one twice. A Democrat Senator says his own voters like showing ID, and then he votes to keep the rest of the country from getting the same rule.
Kaine’s fallback was federalism. “Virtually every state has a voter ID law,” he said, before asking why Washington needs “a one size fits all federal thing.”
And there’s a fair point in there somewhere about states running their own elections. But Democrats spent years pushing the Freedom to Vote legislation Schumer bragged about, a federal rewrite of how states register voters and count ballots. One-size-fits-all bothered nobody in that caucus back then.
Fox News tallied the map. Thirty-six states already ask voters for identification. Twenty-three of them require a photo, and 13 take something else, like a bank statement. Nine of those states send Democrats to the Senate.
A bank statement. Some states will take a utility-drawer piece of paper, and Schumer’s caucus still won’t sign on to a national floor.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) went further than Banks. “Well, it’s evident Democrats want to make it easier to cheat,” Barrasso told Fox News Digital. “Republicans want to make it easier to vote, make sure nobody’s cheating.”
Republicans contend Democrats fear an ID rule would keep illegal aliens from casting ballots. That’s the GOP’s charge, and Democrats deny it. Schumer claims the ID language would gut mail voting, CBS News reported. But Barrasso ticked off where Americans already show a card: boarding a plane, buying a beer, even walking into some Democrat campaign rallies this cycle.
“They’re complete hypocrites on this,” Barrasso said.
Why 36 States Leave Schumer Nowhere to Hide
Barrasso called voter ID “an 80/20 issue,” and the pollsters back him up. Pew Research Center found 83% of Americans favor a photo ID requirement to vote, including 71% of Democrats. Gallup put the number at 84%.
Schumer isn’t fighting Republicans on this one. He’s fighting seven in ten of his own voters.
And none of this started with Trump. In 2005, a bipartisan commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker recommended a photo ID for voters nationwide. Only three of its 21 members objected. Nobody called Jimmy Carter a vote suppressor.
What changed? The idea didn’t. The party did. Every ballot an ineligible voter casts cancels one a citizen cast lawfully, and millions of Americans still have questions about how officials rewrote election rules on the fly in 2020. An ID check is the cheapest answer anyone has offered.
Then there’s the half of the bill everybody forgot. Democrats also killed a stock trading ban, which Schumer dismissed as toothless. Nancy Pelosi remains the poster child for why Americans want one. Her family reported stock holdings under $800,000 when she entered Congress in 1987, and published estimates put the portfolio’s profits above $130 million since, a return of roughly 16,930%. Nobody has proven insider trading. The appearance alone makes the case for a ban covering Members and spouses.
So Schumer’s caucus voted against clean elections and clean portfolios in one afternoon.
There’s a procedural lesson here too. Fifty-three Senators voted yes. A majority of the Senate wanted this bill, and the 60-vote filibuster rule killed it anyway. President Trump has called on Republicans to scrap that rule, and this vote shows why. Democrats won’t hesitate to junk it the day they hold power again, and they won’t spend that power on voter ID. They’ll spend it on extra Supreme Court seats, new states, and amnesty for illegal aliens, a package built to tilt the map their way for a generation.
But the bigger tell is the shifting excuse. First the SAVE America Act went too far. Then a photo ID rider poisoned a stock bill. Then the states already handle it, so why bother. Expect a fourth explanation before long.
Voters in 36 states already hand a poll worker a card without complaint. And Trump now gets to ask Democrats, state by state, why a rule their own constituents “really like” is good enough for Virginia and too dangerous for America.
Sources:
Fox News, “Dems hand GOP fresh midterm weapon by opposing widely used voter ID”
CBS News, “Senate Democrats block bill to limit lawmakers’ stock trades, citing voter ID provision”
Pew Research Center, national survey on photo ID requirements for voting
Gallup, “Americans Endorse Both Early Voting and Voter Verification”
Commission on Federal Election Reform, “Building Confidence in U.S. Elections” (2005)