I love The SAVE Act – the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act – and hope it becomes law…someday. But that day is not today and will not be before the November elections. Not because I had anything to do with it. If I were that powerful, it would already be law. But because there aren’t enough votes, nor is there enough time to implement it before the November elections. People don’t want to tell President Donald Trump these truths if he doesn’t want to hear them, but reality is not dependent upon anyone’s comfort level with it.
That doesn’t mean there is nothing Republicans could do, or try to do, before November to ensure the integrity of voting. A stand-alone bill that is maybe three sentences that requires a photo ID to vote in federal elections would be easy and, at a minimum, put enormous pressure on Democrats to vote for it.
Voter ID is wildly popular, so voting against it would be a bad look for Dems, meaning only the safest, most gerrymandered districts would have anyone voting against it. Common sense is funny that way.
I’m not sure it would stand up to court challenges that would immediately be filed, or at least be fully adjudicated before November, so I’d expect an injunction to “pause” it before it would matter this year. But honestly, that would happen even if Congress somehow managed to pass the SAVE Act as it is currently written.
The only difference is that the SAVE Act has a lot of provisions that would be fodder for challenge by leftists, giving them many more bites at the apple to prevent its implementation this cycle (and in future cycles). A simple voter ID-only bill would have fewer challenges, as it weaves into only one real Constitutional issue: the size of the role of the federal government’s say in elections.
It’s not as sexy, but it is important and, probably more importantly, easy to understand.
Voter ID has 85-90 percent support in every poll. Considering other issues and things in the news, Republicans should be running toward issues this popular they already support. President Trump is, sort of. He announced this week that he wasn’t going to sign a bipartisan bill to make housing easier to build and more affordable unless and until Congress passed the SAVE Act.
This is a bad strategy for a couple of reasons.
First, people care deeply about affordability. Vote integrity is important, but it doesn’t matter much to people who can’t afford to have a place to live. Once you get the basics squared away, then people can focus on other things.
Second, nothing in the bill that the President is refusing to sign would impact housing prices immediately, but he would be seen as doing something. Now he’s seen as blocking something related to affordability. That’s not a good look.
Finally, if Congress stays in session for 10 days (not counting Sundays), and the President doesn’t sign the bill, it becomes law automatically without his signature. A pocket veto is when a bill sits on the President’s desk for 10 days while Congress is out of session, and it kills the bill for that term without actually being vetoed. The opposite of that is if Congress is in session and it sits for 10 days, no signature is required. So Trump’s threat is very short-term and pointless. Unless he’s willing to veto a piece of legislation, he should sign and claim credit for it.
Self-inflicted wounds cut the deepest, so I hope the President doesn’t make any this time.
Republicans have a choice: paint themselves into a corner, or paint Democrats there. I support the idea of putting the left in the position of having to defend the indefensible, not the other way around. The way to do that is to do everything possible to address affordability and pass the parts of the SAVE Act that Democrats could easily campaign against if they didn’t support. At least get them all on the record and hammer them, whether it passes or not. But don’t waste your time and political capital on a losing proposition, especially when a winning one is just sitting there for the taking.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.