Ronald Brownstein: Forget the SAVE Act. There's a better way to fix US voting laws

Legislation to reshape the rules for voting nationwide is the issue that’s prompted the greatest pressure from President Donald Trump on Senate Republicans to end the filibuster. That’s also the issue that triggered the greatest pressure on Senate Democrats to end the filibuster under President Joe Biden. The parallel is no coincidence.

And just as a minority of Senate Republicans have refused to revoke the filibuster to pass the GOP’s “SAVE America Act” on a party-line basis, a tiny handful of Senate Democrats refused to do so to pass the party’s “Freedom to Vote Act” under Biden.

In their policy aims, the Biden-era Democratic and 2026 Republican voting bills are inimical. The Democratic legislation offered an interlocked series of reforms to make it easier to vote. It would have required every state to offer at least two weeks of early voting and “no excuse” absentee mail ballots; provide online, same-day and automatic voter registration; and restore voting rights to felons upon release from incarceration.

The current GOP bill, in the name of enhancing security, would make it significantly more difficult to vote. It would order every state to require photo identification and limit the acceptable forms of identification to a more restrictive list than any state except Ohio now allows. The bill would also mandate that every state require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Some versions of the bill would block the eight states that automatically provide mail ballots to all eligible voters.

Critically, each of these bills would have the greatest impact on states that mostly vote for the other party. The Democratic bill would have required the biggest changes in red states because Republicans control almost all the states that don’t already offer automatic voter registration, no-excuse absentee ballots, online voter registration, at least two weeks of early voting, as well as those that don’t automatically restore voting rights for felons.

Conversely, Democrats fully control none of the seven states that now require proof of citizenship to register to vote, as well as none of the 10 states that the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures identifies as imposing the most restrictive photo identification requirements and just two of the 14 with less restrictive photo ID laws. With each bill requiring the greatest changes in states within the other party’s sphere of influence, it’s not that surprising neither attracted any support from senators on the other side.

The parallel impasses on these party-line voting bills leave the Congress, and the country, with only three possible options.

One is to accept the federal stalemate and allow the states to drift further apart in their voting rules — just as they are separating on so many other issues. That may be the path of least resistance, but it means tolerating a widening divergence that has left voting systematically more difficult in red than blue states.

The second is to end the filibuster, or at least establish a carve-out from it, to pass voting reform on a party-line basis. Many commentators (myself included) thought voting rights were important enough to justify an exemption from the filibuster under Biden (which he belatedly endorsed before resistance from then-Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema doomed the effort).

But Trump’s push for the SAVE Act underscores the limitations of such a strategy. If Democrats had jettisoned the filibuster to pass their voting reform bill under Biden, Republicans would use a simple majority vote to repeal the Democratic bill and impose their own nationwide voting rules now. Democrats would surely do the same the next time they obtain unified control of Congress and the White House. That’s a recipe for whiplash and instability.

The final option is one Congress hardly considers anymore: Pursue a durable, bipartisan agreement that marries the priorities of both parties.

Requiring proof of citizenship for voting is such an egregious idea — the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School has calculated that at least 25 million citizens lack the documents it would require, with minorities and women especially at risk — that no Democrats are likely to ever accept it. (Plus that requirement is a solution in search of a problem: Notwithstanding the New Jersey noncitizen registration glitch disclosed Tuesday, multiple studies from groups across the political spectrum and from states themselves have found that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare.)

But requiring photo identification to vote has preponderant public support, and, with a reasonable list of acceptable documents, is unlikely to be a deal-breaker for Democrats. In return, Democrats probably couldn’t ask Republicans to require no-excuse mail balloting in every state (given how Trump’s obsessive hostility to it has permeated the party). But with voter ID as the sweetener, there might be some Republicans willing to accept other widely popular 2021 ideas such as nationwide automatic and same-day registration, guaranteed early voting and rights restoration for the formerly incarcerated.

None of this is possible while Trump is president and pursuing his unrelenting campaign to seize unprecedented federal control of election administration. And it may be that even imposing voter ID on blue states will never convince enough congressional Republicans to accept the voting reforms Democrats want in red states.

The next president, from either party, ultimately may face the same choice that stymied Biden and Trump and their Senate allies: End the filibuster or abandon voting legislation. But as Trump’s SAVE Act deservedly stalls, the road not taken remains an agreement that sets a nationwide standard on some of the election rules that matter most to each party.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Ronald Brownstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He is a CNN analyst and the author or editor of seven books.