House GOP aims to pass voter ID laws under second Trump term

With their looming control of the presidency, House and Sente, the House GOP see an opportunity to advance election integrity with voter ID laws to advance election integrity. This comes on the heels of the election, where Republicans focused on election integrity with regards to citizenship status.  

Republicans have long argued that voter ID laws will inspire more faith in elections while Democrats say the GOP has undermined elections by bringing up the 2020 election results. With the control of Congress and the White House going to the GOP, President-elect Donald Trump will likely press on lawmakers for greater election integrity measures, per the Associated Press.

GOP lawmakers intend to push the additional measures with the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act as well as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, according to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), who is the chairman of the Committee on House Administration.

"As we look to the new year with a unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not only out of committee, but across the House floor and into law,” Steil told reporters. “We need to improve Americans’ confidence in elections.” Steil was also the driving force behind the proliferation of the Election Observer Program that aimed to ensure that ballot boxes were filled, not stuffed.

When Trump begins his second term as president, he appears to have more unity behind his policy agenda in the GOP than in his first, but the majorities in both chambers remain tight. Steil said he anticipates “some reforms and tweaks” to legislation regarding election integrity reform.

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), who is the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said that there might be some room for Democratic support on certain points but that he believes ACT and SAVE are excessive and contrary to his party’s message that voting should be easier -- even if that means more prone to abuse and cheating.

"Our view and the Republicans’ view is very different on this point,” Morelle commented. “They have spent most of the time in the last two years and beyond really restricting the rights of people to get to ballots – and that’s at the state level and the federal level. And the SAVE Act and the ACE Act both do that – make it harder for people to vote.”

Morelle said he thinks Republicans and Democrats will be able to come to consensus about some election reforms such as limiting foreign donations as well as imposing a possible voter ID requirement.

Morelle claimed that Republican concerns about noncitizens voting in the 2024 elections were not a large issue and said, “You haven’t heard a word about this since Election Day." He added, “It’s an Election Day miracle that suddenly the thing that they had spent an inordinate amount of time describing as a rampant problem, epidemic problem, didn’t exist at all.”

The SAVE Act passed the House in July but did not pass through the Senate. The act would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register.