{"id":204504,"date":"2026-03-18T05:36:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T05:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/most-americans-support-requiring-photo-id-to-vote-democrats-in-congress-reject-it-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T05:36:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T05:36:01","slug":"most-americans-support-requiring-photo-id-to-vote-democrats-in-congress-reject-it-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/most-americans-support-requiring-photo-id-to-vote-democrats-in-congress-reject-it-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Most Americans support requiring photo ID to vote. Democrats in Congress reject it. – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WASHINGTON \u2014 Republicans are aggressively touting a popular provision in their sweeping SAVE America Act<\/a> to overhaul elections nationwide<\/a>: requiring photo identification to vote.
It\u2019s a policy long opposed by Democrats in Congress, who liken it \u2014 along with the bill’s proof-of-citizenship requirement to register to vote \u2014 to nefarious Jim Crow-era laws aimed at preventing African Americans from voting.
But that message is increasingly falling flat with the American public, including Black voters, as photo IDs are increasingly required for common activities, like flying.
A Pew Research Center poll<\/a> in August tested a variety of election rules and found that 83% of U.S. adults support \u201crequiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote,\u201d while 16% oppose it. That\u2019s up from 77% support in a 2012 Pew poll.
Support now includes 71% of self-identified Democrats, 83% of independents and 76% of Black voters.
\u201cIt kind of feels like the only Americans not to support voter ID requirements are Democrats here in Congress,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said on the floor.
NBC News asked more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers whether they would accept some kind of photo ID rule to vote. Just one voiced openness to it: Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.
\u201cIf they really want to have a real conversation, and if they align it that 83% of Americans support showing basic ID \u2014 you know, I\u2019m not going to tell 83% of Americans that they\u2019re crazy, or they\u2019re trying to suppress votes, or they\u2019re Jim Crow,\u201d Fetterman told NBC News. \u201cI\u2019m not going to describe people like that.\u201d
But even Fetterman said he\u2019ll oppose the SAVE America Act as written, citing other provisions in the sprawling bill.
While Republicans have focused on the popularity of the voter ID provision, Democrats note that the SAVE America Act would also require proof of citizenship \u2014 a passport or birth certificate \u2014 to register, a much higher burden of proof than photo ID. President Donald Trump has also called for it to be amended to include major new restrictions on mail-in voting and provisions against trans athletes and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.
\u201cThe SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0. It could disenfranchise millions of American citizens,\u201d Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week.
Citing the Pew poll, Thune said that likening it to Jim Crow \u201cinsults the overwhelming majority of Americans \u2014 including minorities \u2014 who look at voter ID and see nothing more than common sense.\u201d
On a press call on Saturday, Schumer pivoted to other provisions in the SAVE America Act when asked about the popular photo ID proposal, namely one that would empower the Department of Homeland Security to screen states\u2019 voter rolls and flag suspected noncitizens for disqualification.
\u201cThis is not a voter ID bill,\u201d the Democratic leader said. \u201cThis is about purging the voter rolls in a massive way, so you never even get the chance to show a voter ID when you showed up to vote because you\u2019d be knocked off the rolls.\u201d
Former Senate Democratic aide Tr\u00e9 Easton said there\u2019s a viable compromise on voter ID that his party should be open to.
\u201cI think Democrats should absolutely embrace a form of voter identification. I get why it\u2019s been such a boogeyman, and the way it\u2019s implemented matters,\u201d said Easton, who is now vice president for public policy at Searchlight Institute, a think tank that aims to expand the Democratic Party\u2019s appeal.
As one possibility, he floated \u201ca national ID card\u201d tied to Social Security or another federal program, which he said could serve as \u201ca one-stop shop for all your business with the government.\u201d
He added, \u201cStates would obviously handle individual voter registration, but having a national ID card is not unheard of.\u201d
Still, for most Democratic lawmakers and the outside experts they trust, the GOP push is a solution in search of a problem. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal and extremely rare<\/a>, according to an analysis by the liberal Brennan Center of a database produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
\u201cThere\u2019s no one ID that I think is being advanced at this point that is universally possessed by enough Americans to make that a mandatory requirement in each state,\u201d said Janai Nelson, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, suggesting alternate ways to verify voters, like signature verification.
Brookings Institution senior fellow Norm Eisen added on the same Schumer-led call, \u201cThere\u2019s no need for this bill. It would hugely burden voters, election officials, and everybody else. It is not a voter ID bill, and there is no voter ID problem.\u201d
Sen. Angus King, a centrist independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, responded with a flat \u201cno\u201d when asked if any kind of nationwide photo ID mandate for voting would be acceptable to him.
\u201cWe don\u2019t have it in Maine. Here\u2019s what we have in Maine:\u2029We have Election Day registration, no voter ID, unlimited absentee voting by mail and drop boxes,\u201d King said, citing studies that show voter fraud is statistically negligible. \u201cThe old saying in Maine is: If it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d
Other Democrats said they take issue not with the concept of voter ID, but rather the way Republicans are trying to do it.
\u201cYou should have to prove that you are who you say you are when you vote. I\u2019ve never opposed that,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga. “But they use voter identification as a pretext for determining the electorate that they think will keep them in power. That\u2019s why, for example, a student ID is not good enough, but a military ID is. So, I can tell you, as someone who ran in Georgia and saw what they tried to do with my runoff, that there\u2019s some people that they don\u2019t want to vote.\u201d
Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., chair of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, stopped short of backing any nationwide photo ID requirements to vote. He said that \u201cwhat the Republicans are trying to do is not what they\u2019re saying they\u2019re trying to do.\u201d
The SAVE America Act would \u201cby intention and design, seek to disenfranchise, in many cases, the 80% of women when they get married change their name, and 5% of men get married change their name,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cFolks who, for whatever reason, might change their name, change their gender identity.\u201d
Opponents of the bill note that a person’s birth certificate or passport may not match their married last name, and it can be costly and time-consuming to get those documents updated.
\u201cIt\u2019s targeting people to make it harder to vote,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cIn addition, that bill required every state to turn over the voter rolls to the federal government.\u201d
Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, said he witnessed Texas Republicans in the state Legislature trying to craft ID rules to rig the electorate \u2014 for instance, by allowing handgun licenses but not state-issued ID from the University of Texas to register to vote.
\u201cWe don\u2019t want for Republicans to try to game the system by looking for ways to exclude people,\u201d Veasey said. \u201cBecause of the legacy of Jim Crow and segregation, there are many places where I live in Texas, and in other parts of the South where, you know, someone\u2019s birth may have been recorded inside of a family Bible, or they may have been born by midwife. They may not been able to have been born inside of the county hospital.\u201d
\u201cMost people are just going to give up,\u201d he said. “They\u2019re not going to go through those steps. They\u2019re just going to say: \u2018Forget it, I just can\u2019t vote because I was born during the time of segregation and there was no person there to record my birth.\u2019\u201d
Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeWASHINGTON \u2014 Republicans are aggressively touting a popular provision in their sweeping SAVE America Act to overhaul elections nationwide: requiring photo identification to vote.It\u2019s a policy long opposed by Democrats in Congress, who liken it \u2014 along with the bill’s proof-of-citizenship requirement to register to vote \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-204504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}