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Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is continuing his streak of breaking with his party — this time on voter ID legislation gaining momentum in the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats have near-unanimously rejected the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, election integrity legislation that made its way through the House earlier this week.
Schumer has dubbed the legislation “Jim Crow 2.0,” arguing it would suppress voters rather than encourage more secure elections.
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But Fetterman, who has repeatedly rejected his party’s messaging and positions, pushed back on Schumer’s framing of the bill.
“I would never refer to the SAVE Act as like Jim Crow 2.0 or some kind of mass conspiracy,” Fetterman told Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany on “Saturday in America.”
“But that’s part of the debate that we were having here in the Senate right now,” he continued. “And I don’t call people names or imply that it’s something gross about the terrible history of Jim Crow.”
The bill would require voters to present photo identification before casting ballots, require proof of citizenship in person when registering to vote and mandate states remove non-citizens from voter rolls.
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Momentum is building among Republicans. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, became the 50th member of the conference to back the legislation. But Senate Democrats have all but guaranteed its demise in the upper chamber, via the filibuster.
Fetterman would not say whether he supports the bill outright. However, he noted that “84% of Americans have no problem with presenting IDs to vote.”
“So it’s not like a radical idea,” Fetterman said. “It’s not something — and there already are many states that show basic IDs. So that’s where we are in the Senate.”
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Even if Fetterman were to support the bill on the floor, it is unlikely to pass without more significant procedural changes.
There are currently not enough votes to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Fetterman is also not keen on eliminating the filibuster — a position shared by most Senate Republicans.
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He noted that Senate Democrats once favored scrapping the filibuster but now want to preserve it while in the minority in a Republican-controlled government.
“I campaigned on it, too,” Fetterman said. “I mean we were very wrong about that to nuke the filibuster. And we should really humble ourselves and remind people that we wanted to eliminate it — and now we love it.”
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