Sen. Adam Schiff went on ABC and made the case against requiring photo ID to vote — a position shared by roughly 17% of the American public. The California Democrat was pressed by interviewer Jonathan Karl, who cited a Pew Research poll showing 83% of adults favor the requirement. Schiff held the line anyway.

Even among Democrats, 71% support showing photo ID at the ballot box, Fox News reported. Schiff isn't bucking a slim majority. He's standing against a national consensus that crosses every partisan boundary.

The Interview

Karl didn't ambush Schiff with an obscure gotcha. He cited one of the most mainstream polling outfits in the country and asked a straightforward question: Could Schiff support requiring photo ID to vote?

Schiff's answer was no — dressed up in the language of disenfranchisement. He argued that the SAVE Act, the Republican-backed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would require documents like a birth certificate or passport that millions of Americans supposedly don't possess. He claimed photo ID requirements would "disenfranchise" Americans who lack a Real ID or driver's license and characterized the entire effort as vote suppression.

Think about that framing for a moment. You need a photo ID to board an airplane, buy a beer, pick up a prescription, open a bank account, or enter a federal building. Democrats have never called any of that "suppression." But the moment the same standard applies to the ballot box — the single most consequential civic act in a democracy — it suddenly becomes an instrument of oppression.

Schiff also claimed that "almost half the country doesn't have a passport," which, even if true, is a spectacular misdirection. The SAVE Act accepts a birth certificate or a passport. The vast majority of American citizens have at least one. Stacking the two requirements as though both are needed simultaneously is the kind of rhetorical sleight of hand that works only if no one reads the bill.

Schumer Raises the Stakes

Schiff wasn't the only Senate Democrat working this angle. Sen. Chuck Schumer appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and called the SAVE Act "Jim Crow 2.0." He argued the bill would discriminate against women who changed their names after marriage and people who can't locate their birth certificates.

Schumer didn't stop at rhetoric. He delivered what amounted to a kill shot on the legislation's Senate prospects:

"It will not pass the Senate. You will not get a single Democratic vote in the Senate."

That's not a prediction. That's a promise — a unified Democratic blockade against a measure supported by 71% of their own voters. The party that lectures endlessly about "defending democracy" just declared it will ignore a supermajority of the electorate, including its own base, to prevent election integrity measures from becoming law.

The Jim Crow Card

The "Jim Crow 2.0" label deserves its own scrutiny, because it reveals something important about how the modern Democrat Party operates when the polling turns hostile.

Jim Crow was a system of state-enforced racial apartheid — poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses — designed explicitly to prevent Black Americans from exercising constitutional rights. Comparing that regime to a law requiring the same ID you already need to function in modern American life isn't an argument. It's a distraction grenade. It substitutes moral seriousness with moral inflation, cheapening the actual history of disenfranchisement to win a news cycle.

And notice the irony. Democrats insist that election integrity concerns are baseless — that the system is secure, that fraud is negligible, that questioning outcomes is a threat to democracy. But when 83% of Americans say they'd like one simple safeguard added to the process, the Democratic response isn't engagement. It's historical hyperbole and a promise of total obstruction.

Who exactly is disenfranchised?

Schiff's argument rests on the idea that a meaningful number of Americans have neither a birth certificate nor a passport, and also cannot obtain any form of photo identification. States across the country already offer free voter ID cards. Many of the same Democrats opposing federal ID requirements govern states that require identification for dozens of routine transactions. The constituency they claim to be protecting is never clearly defined, because defining it precisely would reveal how small it actually is.

Meanwhile, 95% of Republicans support voter ID. The Pew poll, conducted in August 2025, found this isn't a fringe conservative hobby horse. It's one of the few issues where Americans across the political spectrum agree overwhelmingly.

The Real Question

The SAVE Act may or may not survive the Senate. Schumer has made his caucus's position clear. But the deeper story here isn't legislative procedure — it's the widening gap between the Democrat leadership class and everyone else, including the Democrat base.

When 71% of your own party supports a policy, and your response is to call it Jim Crow, you're not representing your voters. You're overruling them. You're betting that the activist class matters more than the actual electorate — that the loudest voices in the room are the only ones that count.

Schiff was given every opportunity to find the middle ground. Karl practically handed him the off-ramp. All the senator had to do was acknowledge what 83% of the country already believes: that proving you are who you say you are before casting a vote is not oppression. It's common sense.

He couldn't do it. That tells you everything about where the party's incentives actually lie.