Husted push for federal voter ID fails; Brown calls it ‘unnecessary’

Under his proposal, any registered voter who did not supply the requisite documents would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot, with a three-day window for voters to prove their identity.

On the Senate floor last week, Husted said Ohio’s voter ID law is one of the things that makes it “hard to cheat” in Ohio, and said he hoped his measure was one of common ground between Republicans and Democrats.

His motion to unanimously approve the measure ultimately failed, to the disappointment of Ohio GOP Chairman Alex Triantifilou.

“Photo identification is standard for nearly every aspect of our lives,” Triantifilou told the Dayton Daily News this week. “I think it’s an important thing to firm up the integrity of our process and to make millions of Americans feel safer about the integrity of their vote.”

Credit: Bryant Billing

Credit: Bryant Billing

Sherrod Brown, a former U.S. senator hoping to win the Democratic primary in May and run against Husted this November, sent this outlet a statement suggesting that Republicans’ focus on clamping down on election fraud sends the wrong message about America’s election security.

“For years, Ohio has had safe and secure elections that have been administered in a bipartisan fashion. It’s wrong that people are trying to sow distrust in our election systems,” Brown said. “Our leaders should be trying to make it easier to vote, not creating unnecessary barriers that threaten the ability of hardworking Ohioans to vote early, mail in their ballots, or vote on Election Day.”

The SAVE Act

Husted’s failed attempt is the latest motion in a drawn-out deadlock on the SAVE Act, or the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would federally require proof of citizenship before voters are allowed onto state voter rolls and in cases where a voter is updating their registration.

Sufficient proof of citizenship, the act says, would include:

Any applicant that did not supply the requisite documentation would be barred from the state voter rolls.

The SAVE Act is championed by President Trump and congressional Republicans as a necessary measure to further guard against non-citizens voting in American federal elections.

Democrats have largely opposed the measure because, they say, such a law could keep thousands of U.S. citizens off the voter rolls.

While Democratic opposition wasn’t enough to block the bill in the U.S. House, Senate Democrats have additional leverage due to the chamber’s 60-vote passage threshold and the fact that Republicans only control 53 seats.

It is already a federal crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. States and municipalities have the authority to allow non-citizens to vote in their elections, but no state allows it, and only a few municipalities across the country allow non-citizens to vote, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a ban on non-citizen voters in local elections in 2022.

Still, Husted, who served for eight years as the Ohio secretary of state, said non-citizen election fraud does indeed occur. “It was rare, but it was real,” he said on the Senate floor last week.

“It was out there. And you may say, ‘Well, what’s the big deal? It’s a few hundred here, a few hundred there,’” he said. “We had 200 elections during my tenure ... that were decided by one vote or tied ... Every vote counts, every vote matters.”

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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.