WATCH: Chuck Schumer Stumbles When Confronted With Recognition Of Voter ID
While speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) gave a rambling answer when asked about the overwhelming, bipartisan popularity of voter ID legislation.
Schumer joined CNN’s “State Of The Union” to discuss the ongoing Democrat-led government shutdown, which affects a number of vital national security agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). All Senate Democrats with the exception of Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) voted to move forward with a shutdown after failing to secure federal immigration “reforms” — a number of which would effectively end the Trump Administration’s deportation agenda — over an allotted two-week negotiating period.
In response, Republicans have been angling to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, commonly known as the SAVE Act. The House-passed legislation requires individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, when registering to vote in federal elections.
It further amends the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by mandating that states verify citizenship in person and prohibits registration without such documentation.
Schumer was asked about his opposition to the SAVE Act during Sunday’s edition of “State Of The Union.”
“About 83 percent of the American people, including majority Democrats, support voter ID laws,” host Jake Tapper noted. “Well, yeah, the voter ID laws that, first, each state can have its own voter ID laws, and some do and some don’t,” Schumer responded.
“But secondly, what they are proposing in this so -called SAVE Act is like Jim Crow 2.0. They make it so hard to get any kind of voter ID that more than 20 million legitimate people, mainly poorer people and people of color, will not be able to vote under this law,” the senate minority leader further claimed.
“We will not let it pass in the Senate. We are fighting it tooth and nail. It’s an outrageous proposal that is, you know, that shows the sort of political bias of the MAGA right. They don’t want people of color to vote, because they often don’t vote for them.”
Schumer’s “Jim Crow 2.0” rhetoric mirrors arguments advanced by Democrats against Georgia’s election integrity bill in 2021, which made a number of amendments to the state’s voting process, including the banning of unsupervised ballot drop boxes. It also expanded early voting periods and provided resources to register voters.
Despite similar comparisons to Jim Crow laws, the bill was soon followed by record turnout in the 2024 presidential election, including among black voters.
Despite Democrat opposition, voter ID has long polled as an extremely popular position across both sides of the political aisle. One recent poll from Quantus Insights found that a whopping 74 percent of respondents support voter ID measures while just 16 percent oppose.