Over the next few days, perhaps even into next week, the United States Senate, that solemn and exalted deliberative body, will performatively waste time with impassioned speeches about the SAVE America Act, which they all know will never pass.
However, there may be a way out of this Mobius loop of pointless legislation: A proposal from Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., would have the upper body vote on a clean, simple voter ID bill, with no provisions on mail-in ballots or citizenship.
Senator John Fetterman says he will vote for a “clean” voter ID card. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
Make no mistake: President Donald Trump is right when he says that all provisions of the SAVE America Act, including the law banning men from women’s sports, have broad popular support and are critically important. But if the bill doesn’t pass, what then?
The reason the bill can’t pass, as we all know by now, is that the filibuster rule can only be overcome with 60 votes, which honestly might as well be a million in today’s fractured Senate, and that the Republican Party leadership values this restrictive parliamentary procedure more than protecting American elections.
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To the average voter, this sounds like the Senate saying, “Sorry, we can’t do anything, but we came up with this rule that says we can’t do anything, so our hands are tied.”
However, one must ask: Isn’t the point of the filibuster precisely to force senators to compromise, to produce a bill that is both popular and solid enough to get the necessary sixty votes?
This is where Fetterman’s clean voter ID legislation comes into the picture.
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Even without the provisions regarding citizenship and voting by mail, a law requiring a valid ID to vote in federal elections would be a major victory for Republicans, and possibly a first step toward larger election reforms.
Politically, such a voter ID bill would put Democrats in a much tougher position than they currently are, losing all their somewhat plausible-sounding objections to the SAVE America Act.
As silly and downright condescending as the Democrats’ arguments are that married women and poor people are too stupid or stupid to obtain proof of citizenship, we’ve all stood in line at the DMV or the passport office and can glimpse the grain of truth therein.
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But a voter ID bill that accepts military and a variety of other forms of identification removes all of those concerns. It would force Democrats to admit that they don’t want even the slightest control over who votes.
To put it bluntly, if Senate Democrats can’t say yes to basic voter ID, which actually has the support of 80% of Americans, then it’s fair to conclude that it’s because they want to cheat in elections.
The American people are frustrated. They poke the Senate with a stick and say, “Do something,” but instead they are treated to name-calling and pointless rhetoric.
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The only thing that gives Senate Democrats and their friends in the media any attention to the voter ID issue is the scope and breadth of the SAVE America Act. If Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., lacks the will to break the filibuster, he can at least expose the truth.
Senate leadership can, with a single swipe, take away whatever excuses Democrats have for opposing the same ID requirements to vote for us to buy a pack of smokes.
Politics, they say, is the art of the possible, not the perfect. But it is also the art of reason, both in the sense of a disappointment and of a bill.
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Fetterman has become a big old sweatshirt-wearing lighthouse in the Senate, a beacon of sanity and sanity, and his plan for a clean voter pass appears to be the only path forward the GOP leadership has left.
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If nothing happens, if the SAVE America Act fails and nothing takes its place, the voter response will almost certainly be pox for both parties, but with a little extra vitriol for whoever is at least nominally in charge.
The American people do not need or desire a week of meaningless speeches about a bill that cannot pass. Instead, let the Senate do the real work and at least pass a simple, popular, and effective voter ID bill.
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