Over the next several days, perhaps even stretching into next week, the United States Senate, that grave and august deliberative body, will performatively waste time with impassioned speeches over the SAVE America Act, which they all know will never pass.
There may, however, be an off ramp to this Mobius loop of legislative futility: A proposal from Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., would have the upper body vote on a clean, simple, voter ID bill, without provisions regarding mail-in ballots or citizenship.
Make no mistake, President Donald Trump is correct that all the provisions of the SAVE America Act, including one banning men from women’s sports have broad popular support, and are of vital importance. But if the bill cannot pass, then so what?
The reason the act can’t pass, as we all know by now, is that the filibuster rule can only be overcome with 60 votes, which frankly might as well be a million in today’s fractured Senate, and GOP leadership values this restrictive parliamentary procedure more than protecting American elections.
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To the average voter this sounds like the Senate is saying, “Sorry we can’t do anything, but, you see, we made up this rule that says we can’t do anything, so our hands are tied.”
One must ask though, isn’t the whole point of the filibuster to push senators toward compromise, toward a bill both popular and sound enough to carry the 60 votes needed?
This is where Fetterman’s clean voter ID legislation comes in.
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Even without the provisions regarding citizenship and mail-in voting, a law requiring a valid ID to vote in federal elections would be a major victory for Republicans, and potentially a first step toward greater election reform.
Politically speaking, such a clean voter ID bill would put Democrats in a much tougher bind than they are in today, because they lose every one of their somewhat plausible-sounding objections to the SAVE America Act.
As silly, and frankly condescending, as Democrats’ arguments that married women and poor people are too dumb or frazzled to obtain proof of citizenship are, we have all stood in line at the DMV or passport office and can glimpse the grain of truth in it.
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But a clean voter ID bill that accepts military and a variety of other forms of identification takes all of these objections off the table. It would force Democrats to admit they do not want even the slightest scrutiny over who votes.
To put it bluntly, if Democrats in the Senate cannot say yes to basic voter ID, which truly does have the support of 80% of Americans, then it is reasonable to conclude that it is because they want to cheat in elections.
The American people are frustrated. They are poking the Senate with a stick and saying, “Do something,” but instead, they are treated to name-calling and meaningless oratory.
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The only thing that is giving Democrats in the Senate and their friends in the media any cover on the voter ID issue is the breadth and scope 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 all of the excuses that Democrats have for opposing the same ID requirements to vote that we have 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 the passable, both in the sense of a milquetoast disappointment and a bill signed into law.
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Fetterman has become like a big old sweatshirt-wearing lighthouse in the Senate, a beacon of sanity and common sense, and his plan for a clean voter ID bill seems like the only path forward that GOP leadership has left.
If nothing happens, if the SAVE America Act fails and nothing is passed in its stead, the reaction from voters will almost certainly be a pox on both your parties, but with a little extra venom for the one at least nominally in charge.
The American people neither need nor desire a week of pointless speeches about a bill that can’t pass. Instead, let the Senate do some actual work, and at the very least pass a simple, popular and effective voter ID bill.
