Trump fans flames of election access as GOP supports voter ID mandate

President Donald Trump steps up his fight against voter ID requirements after last week’s ruling promise of executive order He needs to implement such a mandate before the midterm elections in November.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Wednesday briefing He said Trump was “discussing and exploring legal options for a possible executive order on voter ID,” days after Trump said he would find a way to require voters across the U.S. to show identification “whether approved by Congress or not.”

Leavitt’s comments came after Trump on Tuesday night Real Social post of an article about a local elected official calling on the Georgia state government to take over voting in Fulton County, the target of a recent FBI raid that Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020. Trump plans to travel to a different part of Georgia on Thursday to talk about the economy.

Trump’s recent obsession with the election and the willingness of congressional Republicans to largely fall in line are causing alarm for Democrats and voting rights groups, who see the latest moves as a potentially existential threat to American elections and an extension of Trump’s past election denialism.

The issue seems to be on the president’s agenda. One a series of rebroadcasts After his first post on Wednesday, Trump shared the following on Truth Social: false allegations About irregularities in the 2020 election.

“[Democrats] “I don’t want voter ID because they want to rig the election,” Trump told reporters. On Air Force One on Monday. “If you had a voter ID, if you had a certificate of citizenship, they would never win the election. And they know that. And they’re fighting them to the end.”

“When [Republicans] “But when they lose elections, Donald Trump likes to say it was based on fraud,” Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., said in an interview this week.

Stanton is president of the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund, a political action committee working to get moderate Democrats elected to the U.S. House. He called Trump’s threat to unilaterally impose voter ID requirements “total bluster.”

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-Y), the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, similarly said, “The Constitution is pretty clear.”

“The time, place and manner of the elections will depend on the states… Congress may also get involved at its discretion. But the president has no role,” Morelle said in an interview Wednesday. he said.

SAVE America Act moves to Senate

Meanwhile, support is growing among the Senate GOP for a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and presentation of identification to vote.

The SAVE America Act targets non-citizen voting, which is already illegal and extremely rare, and requires voter ID. It passed the House last week by a vote of 218 to 213, with only one Democrat, Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, voting in favor.

Both main components of the bill are generally popular public voting. But opponents say the law could disenfranchise millions and create barriers to voting for minorities, college students and married women who change their surnames.

While some Republicans in Congress have been willing to oppose Trump in recent months on issues like tariffs and Affordable Care Act subsidies, most have followed his lead in the election.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is the only Republican in the Senate. openly oppose the billNearly all of his GOP colleagues signed on.

Still, the measure faces an uphill climb in the Senate; rules require 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, meaning more than a handful of Democrats would have to vote with their Republican counterparts to advance the legislation.

The main sponsor is Sen. GOP proponents of the bill, including Mike Lee, R-Utah, have called for changing the filibuster rule to allow a simple majority to prevail. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.) has promised to vote for the SAVE America Act, which he supports, but has been cool to the idea of ​​changing the filibuster.

Meanwhile, a second and broader election reform proposal emerged in the Parliament.

In addition to requiring voter ID and citizenship documents, Make Elections Great Again Act, Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis. Introduced in January by , the legislation would invalidate mail-in ballots received after polls close on Election Day, require states to use auditable paper ballots, and ban ballot harvesting, ranked-choice voting and universal mail-in voting.

A spokesman for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declined to comment when asked whether the speaker planned to introduce the MEGA Act; instead he referred to the speaker’s past comments regarding the passage of the SAVE America Act. The House Administration Committee, which Steil chairs, held a hearing on the MEGA Act last week.

During a recent event Appearing on Fox Business After the Save America Act was passed in the House, Steil said Republicans “need to build on this work.”

“I think we need to clean up our voter rolls. I think we need to make sure ballots arrive by the end of Election Day. We need proper, auditable ballots. The list goes on,” Steil said.