(USA Features) A new survey has found that overwhelming percentages of Democrats and Republicans support requiring voters to present valid identification proving who they are before casting ballots.
“A poll released this week from the Honest Elections Project found 81 percent of voters surveyed support requiring every voter to show a photo ID to cast a ballot,” The Hill reported Wednesday.
“The poll found support for voter ID laws rose by 4 percentage points from March to July, and it increased by 13 percentage points among Black voters surveyed,” the outlet added.
Some congressional and state-level Democrats have said voter ID requirements are racist and bigoted and serve to disenfranchise mostly minority voters.
Still, nearly three-quarters (74%) of Democrats surveyed for the poll said they support voter ID and ensuring that voters have access to a free identification if they need one rather than do away with the requirement altogether.
“The poll was conducted by the Honest Elections Project, a nonpartisan group led by Jason Snead, who previously worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation. It surveyed 1,200 registered voters nationwide from July 8-17, and it has a margin of error of 3 percentage points,” The Hill noted.
The findings of the survey were released just ahead of congressional Democrats on Tuesday introducing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which party leaders have touted as a legislative priority though it’s path forward through Congress is less clear.
Mostly, the bill seeks to reinstate federal oversight authority of the Voting Rights Act, which has been reduced by Supreme Court rulings in recent years.
Initially, the Voting Rights Act imposed restrictions on mostly Southern states where voting rights were historically restricted for minorities.
But subsequent federal court rulings have found that such restrictions have long since disappeared and there is no widespread systemic voting impediments in many of those states.
“The bill named after the civil rights icon follows efforts from Democrats to pass the ‘For The People Act,’ a massive elections package that has run into opposition in the Senate,” The Hill added.
Republicans have roundly rejected the For The People Act as a federal takeover of elections, which states have been constitutionally empowered to handle primarily.
Also, Democrats are attempting to pass federal legislation they believe would override recently passed state laws shoring up voter ID requirements and other ballot measures following court- and state-ordered changes to voting rules ahead of the 2020 election.
Those changes were made at the behest of state courts or Democratic secretaries of state to accommodate for the COVID-19 pandemic, but not by state legislatures.
The U.S. Constitution primarily empowers state legislatures to make voting rules and laws.