Schumer on Voter ID: “They Don’t Want Poor People To Vote, They Don’t Want People Of Color To Vote” | Video

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN this morning that Senate Democrats will fight “tooth and nail” to block a Republican bill that would mandate states enforce voter ID laws:

JAKE TAPPER, CNN: You talked about barring ICE agents from polling locations.

I want to play something that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said this week about what she sees as DHS’s role in overseeing elections in the U.S.

KRISTI NOEM, U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: It may be one of the most important things that we need to make sure we trust is reliable and that, when it gets to Election Day, that we’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.

TAPPER: What’s your response?

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: That’s a lot of bull.

They show no evidence of voter fraud. They show there’s so little in the country. And to have ICE agents, these thugs, be by the polling places, that just flies in the face of how democracy works, of how we’ve had elections for hundreds of years very successfully. It makes no sense at all. And we will — in our legislation, we say

that ICE agents should not be anywhere near polling places. But, again, I think most Americans agree. You talk to people at polling places who operate the polling places, they don’t want these ICE agents near them and intimidating them.

TAPPER: About 83 percent of the American people, including a majority of Democrats, support voter I.D. laws.

SCHUMER: Well, yes, the voter I.D. laws that — first, each state can have its own voter I.D. laws, and some do and some don’t.

But, secondly, what they are proposing in this so-called SAVE Act is like Jim Crow 2.0. They make it so hard to get any kind of voter I.D. that more than 20 million legitimate people, mainly poorer people and people of color, will not be able to vote under this law. We will not let it pass in the Senate. We are fighting it tooth and nail.

It’s an outrageous proposal that is — that shows the sort of political bias of the MAGA right. They don’t want poor people to vote. They don’t want people of color to vote, because they often don’t vote for them.