Schiff: Voter ID Another Way to ‘Try to Suppress the Vote’

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said requiring voter ID was “another way to simply try to suppress the vote.”

Host Jon Karl asked, “What about the idea of voter ID, of photo ID being required to vote? Are you in favor of that? Can there be a compromise where Democrats and Republicans put forward photo ID as a requirement for voting?

Schiff said, “So, you know, Jonathan, what you’ve just asked is essentially, Republicans have created distrust of the elections by making claims of non-existent fraud in the elections. And shouldn’t we use the distrust they’ve created in order to enact a voter suppression law, which is the SAVE Act, which would require people to have a birth certificate or passport documents that millions of Americans don’t have? Almost half the country doesn’t have a passport.”

Karl asked, “But in one recent Pew poll, 83% of adults support requiring photo I.D. to vote. 71% of Democrats favor requiring photo ID. Is that something that you can support? And if not, why not?”

Schiff said, “It’s still going to be something that disenfranchizes people that don’t have the proper real ID, driver’s license ID, that don’t have the ID necessary to vote, even though they are citizens. This is another way to simply try to suppress the vote. And the last thing I think we want to do is discourage more people, more citizens, from voting while they’re attacking those same elections, while they’re trying to do away with absentee ballot voting, while they’re trying to do away with being able to register to vote through the DMV or by the mail. So it’s part of the broader disenfranchisement effort. And no, I don’t think that’s the right direction.”

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