WASHINGTON — U.S. senators debated Wednesday whether the federal government should change how Americans register to vote and cast a ballot, with Republicans maintaining alterations are necessary to safeguard elections and Democrats arguing a new law would add unnecessary obstacles.

Tensions over the issue were on full display when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said GOP lawmakers describing the bill as a simple voter identification requirement is “bullshit,” shortly before Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee contended it would be “a suicidal move” for his party’s leaders not to find a way forward. 

The legislation, dubbed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, is unlikely to become law without bipartisan backing from at least 60 senators, who would be needed to move past a procedural vote. 

Democrats are not expected to help Republicans with that, especially after Schumer called the legislation “Jim Crow 2.0” and “evil” during a morning press conference with voting rights advocates. 

Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock said during that event GOP lawmakers are acting out of concern they will lose control of Congress following the November midterm elections, due to President Donald Trump’s actions during his second term.  

“The American people have had it with him and with his policies,” Warnock said. “He ran as someone who was going to lower costs, who was going to stay out of endless wars in the Middle East and he is failing. But instead of changing his policies, he’s trying to change the shape of the electorate.”

Problems with lack of birth certificate

New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján said if the bill becomes law, it would create difficulties for anyone who doesn’t have access to their birth certificate or a passport, to prove U.S. citizenship when they try to register to vote. 

“What about my Native American brothers and sisters?” he said. “All my brothers and sisters from the First Nations that I’m proud to represent across New Mexico, who may have been born in their home generationally with other family members. They didn’t have a birth certificate.”

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said GOP lawmakers trying to change the voting process during an election year creates a pattern when combined with several Republican state legislatures redrawing U.S. House maps to benefit their candidates. 

“We see this being about having politicians choose the voters instead of voters choosing the politicians,” he said. 

Several Democratic state legislatures have responded to GOP redistricting efforts by redrawing their maps as well. 

Schumer, D-N.Y., said it’s unacceptable that Republicans want every state in the country to submit a list of registered voters to the Department of Homeland Security to run through a database, which he believes is flawed. 

“They’re trying to dupe America. They say, ‘Oh, this is just a voter ID law.’ Bullshit. It is not a voter ID law,” Schumer said. “It is a law that will kick millions of Americans off the voting rolls.”

‘Debate this as long as it takes to get it done’

Utah’s Lee said Republican leaders shouldn’t schedule the procedural vote that requires at least 60 senators to end debate on the bill until they have found some way to move past that step.  

“I think it would be a suicidal move for us as Senate Republicans, for Republicans in general, if we don’t put everything we’ve got into this,” he said. “I think we need to debate this as long as it takes to get it done. And if we’re not there yet, we need to continue debating.”

Lee contended that prolonged debate on the bill would give Republicans time to sway holdouts to their side. 

“This is going to become popular enough that a lot of our colleagues who currently oppose it, I believe, will start to get on board,” he said. 

Every Senate Democrat, along with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, voted against formally beginning debate on Tuesday. North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote.

Trump wants national limits on voting by mail

Senate debate on the bill dragging out in the days or possibly weeks ahead won’t be confined to what’s currently in the legislation, which the House passed last month.

Trump has asked senators to make three alterations, which they will attempt to incorporate through amendments. 

Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said he plans to call for a vote to add nationwide restrictions on mail-in voting instead of leaving the issue to state governments. 

“If you have a hardship because of a disability, or an illness, or because of travel, or you’re a caregiver, or some other hardship the state can identify, you can vote by absentee,” he said. “You have to request it. Then you can vote by absentee.”

Schmitt said the carve-out would also include members of the military. 

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said she plans to call up an amendment that could create a nationwide prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, she said, would push for an amendment to block transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

President Trump's statements that Republicans should take over and run elections in many states, the domestic deployment of armed agents who are shooting people in nearby cities, along with Wisconsin's long struggle over fair voting rules, makes for a tense election season. But voters still have the power to defend their rights. | Photo of an anti-gerrymandering sign in the Wisconsin State Capitol by the Wisconsin Examiner

Wisconsin was almost certainly on President Donald Trump’s mind when he said this week, “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Our swing state was Ground Zero for the fake electors plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election after Trump narrowly lost here. Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office was involved in the effort to pass off fraudulent Electoral College ballots cast by state Republicans for Trump. Our state Legislature hosted countless hearings spotlighting election deniers and wasted $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars on a fruitless “investigation” of the 2020 presidential results, led by disgraced former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who threatened to arrest the mayors of Madison and Green Bay.

So how worried should we be about Trump’s election takeover threats?

“I wouldn’t be overly concerned that the president could get anything done that’s directly contrary to the Constitution,” says John Vaudreuil, a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin and a member of the nonpartisan group Keep Our Republic, which works to promote trust in elections.

Not only does Article I of the U.S. Constitution expressly delegate elections administration to the states, Wisconsin has one of the most decentralized elections systems in the country, with about 1,800 local clerks running elections in counties, municipalities and townships throughout the state. “And they are Republicans, they are Democrats, they are independent,” Vaudreuil says. “Most fundamentally, they’re our neighbors, they’re our friends.” 

Trump’s threats of a federal takeover would be both legally and practically hard to pull off in Wisconsin.

But there is still reason to worry. Sowing distrust in elections takes a toll on clerks and poll workers, who have become less willing to put up with the threats and hostility generated by Trump’s attacks. Vaudreuil urges people to support their local elections officials and poll workers and spread the word that the work they do is important and that elections are secure.

Then there’s the danger that Trump could use his own false claims about election fraud to send federal immigration agents to the polls on the pretext that it’s necessary to address the nonexistent problem of noncitizen voting.

Doug Poland, director of litigation at the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, has been involved in election-related litigation in Wisconsin for years, including a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from forcing the state to turn over sensitive voter information. 

Poland sees Trump’s threats to “nationalize” elections as part of a pivot from Republican efforts to make in-person voting harder — on the dubious theory that there’s a huge problem with voter impersonation at the polls — to a new focus on stopping absentee voting after many people began using mail-in ballots during the pandemic. But really, it’s all about trying to make sure fewer people vote.

Under former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin passed a strict voter ID law, which one Republican former staffer testified made Republican legislators “giddy” as they discussed how it would make it more difficult for students and people of color to vote. 

Like Vaudreuil, Poland sees the current threat from the Trump administration not as an actual takeover of election administration by the federal government, but as an escalation of intimidation tactics.

“Noncitizens generally don’t vote. So it’s a lie,” Poland says. “But it’s, of course, the lie that they’re going to use as a premise to send, whether it’s ICE or whomever it may be, to polling places, probably in locations with Black and brown populations, and that is purely for the purpose of intimidation. And at the same time, they’re pushing back very hard on absentee voting by mail.”

If the Trump administration is preparing to send armed federal agents to the polls to intimidate voters, absentee voting will be more important than ever in the upcoming elections.

Yet, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson recently told constituents that while he doesn’t think the federal government should take over elections administration, “I think we need to tighten up the requirements for absentee voting. I’m opposed to mail in register or mail in balloting.”

And as Erik Gunn reports, Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil’s Make Elections Great Again Act would restrict absentee voting, along with adding new layers of citizen verification steps while threatening to defund elections administrators who fail to comply with the bill’s onerous requirements.

“They’re going to do everything they can to try to make it harder to vote absentee by mail, to make it harder to vote absentee in person,” Poland says, adding, “They’re going to try to do it so they can put ICE agents around polling places and just try to intimidate people, to keep them away.”

So what can be done?

Voter intimidation is a crime, and specific instances can be addressed through lawsuits, Poland says. Still, he acknowledges (and Law Forward has argued in court) that once someone is deprived of the right to cast a ballot, there’s no remedy that can adequately compensate for that loss. That’s why it was so appalling when the city of Madison asserted that absentee voting is a “privilege” in response to a lawsuit brought by Poland’s organization over 200 lost ballots in the 2024 election.

Of course, in addition to worries about possible violations of individuals’ right to vote, there’s the fear that Trump could manage to subvert elections through heavy-handed tactics like the recent FBI raid to seize 2020 ballots from Fulton County. Both Vaudreuil and Poland think judges would step in to prevent such a seizure in the middle of an election, before the ballots were counted.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, absentee voting remains legal and many municipalities are using secure ballot drop boxes. We need to keep on making use of our right (not our privilege) to vote, using all the tools we have in place.

As for the intimidating effect of armed ICE agents at polling places, local officials and perhaps local law enforcement could have a role in protecting the polls and reassuring voters it’s safe to cast their ballots. Neighbors who have been organizing to warn people of ICE raids, bring food to immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes, and form a protective shield around schools could become self-appointed polling place protectors.

If we are going to defend the core tenets of our democracy against an administration that has demonstrated over and over again its contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, it’s going to take massive public resistance and a flat refusal to give up our rights.

“What is it that will make them stand down from what they’re doing to break the law?” asks Poland. “I think the people of Minnesota have answered that for us better than anybody else can, which is that you have to stand up, you have to exercise your rights, First Amendment rights, the right to vote.”

Exercising our rights is the only way to make sure they are not taken away. Courage and collective action are the best protection we’ve got.