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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., criticized four fellow Republicans who joined Democrats to block an effort to add the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to the Senate’s reconciliation package, saying “you can’t explain it to me why you wouldn’t vote for voter ID.”
During Thursday’s vote-a-rama, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., voted with Democrats to defeat an amendment that would have attached the election-integrity measure to the GOP’s budget package.
“I guess it’s frustration,” Hawley told Fox News Digital. “Listen, we’ve been doing this in Missouri for years. I mean voters in my state put it in our constitution.”
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“Voter ID is the most popular thing out there,” he continued. “There’s a reason for that. People want their elections to be safe, they want them to be fair. And to me, you can’t explain it to me, why you wouldn’t vote for voter ID. I just don’t understand it.”
Republicans, yet again, failed to pass the legislation Thursday night through the Senate, despite months debating the importance of attaching it to the roughly $70 billion budget reconciliation package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.
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Many senators who voted to block the SAVE act argued that a bill dedicated to voter ID laws and protecting election integrity should be determined at state-level, and should not have federal jurisdiction.
Hawley rejected arguments that election rules should be left solely to the states, arguing Congress has long played a role in regulating federal elections.
“We make federal rules all the time for elections, you know,” Hawley said. “I mean all the time we do. And there’s nothing more basic than protecting the integrity of the ballot and that’s what this is about.”
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Congress has enacted numerous election-related laws over the years, including the bipartisan Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, which revised procedures for certifying presidential election results.
The SAVE Act would require applicants to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and would require voters to present photo identification when casting a ballot in federal elections.
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“37 states have voter ID already including several blue states,” Hawley said in response to the idea that election rules should be left to the state. “So I think this idea that this is like ‘this is weird, this is exotic, this is out there,’ no it’s not. Like most of our states do it.”
“Sooner or later this is going to happen because I think the American people are going to demand it.”
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