The SAVE Act has been dominating headlines since last week, as the bill has passed the House and now awaits Senate approval.
It will be hard to get enough votes in the Senate to pass the bill, even though Americans overwhelmingly support some form of voter ID law.
Trump just announced that if Congress can’t get it done, he will take matters into his own hands with an executive order.
Many in the GOP wanted to use the recent funding bill that passed as leverage to pass the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
Trump, however, figured that there was no way the Democrats would ever agree to that, so he told the GOP to back off for the time being.
At the time, he stated, "We need to get the Government open, and I hope all Republicans and Democrats will join me in supporting this Bill, and send it to my desk WITHOUT DELAY. There can be NO CHANGES at this time."
This did not necessarily go over well with everyone in the party, as they thought this took the only leverage the party had in terms of being able to get this through Congress.
It was a fight in the House, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) did manage to get the SAVE Act passed.
It was approved with a 218-213 vote, with only one Democrat voting in favor of the bill, even though four Democrats had previously stated they would support the bill in the House.
That meant the bill was headed to the Senate, but this was also going to be a huge battle, as not every Republican was on board, let alone the handful of Democrats that would be needed for the legislation to pass.
This has once again raised the question of whether the GOP should break the filibuster, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) still not ready to give in to Trump’s demands to break it.
On Friday, Trump let Democrats and Republican defectors know that if they did not support the legislation, he would issue an executive order to make sure voter ID was in place before citizens headed to the polls.
Trump posted, “The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple — They want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired. I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future.”
His post continued, “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not! Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
There are two possible problems that I see here. First, Democrats will likely litigate this as soon as the order is issued, which leads to the second problem. By the time this works its way through the courts, even if it goes before the Supreme Court, it will likely be too close to the election for any major changes to be implemented. Unfortunately, and sadly, I don’t think we will see voter ID for the midterm races, but we could very well have it in place for the 2028 cycle.
