Democrats have a voter ID problem, and it's this: The American people overwhelmingly disagree with them. Polls have consistently shown a bipartisan majority of American support this commonsense election integrity measure, even as Democrats in Washington oppose it like their power depends on it.
Spoiler alert: It does.
So what's a Democrat senator to do when confronted with that inconvenient fact on national television? If you're Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), you just make something up and hope nobody notices. Unfortunately for Warner, somebody noticed. And that somebody was the guy interviewing him.
Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, appeared on ABC's This Week on Sunday to push back on President Trump's Thursday night address, in which Trump said American elections have been compromised by foreign influence that the Deep State has kept hidden. Host Jon Karl steered the conversation to the SAVE America Act and its photo ID requirement, and that's when things went sideways for the senator.
"Now, I understand that you and probably every Democrat oppose this so-called SAVE America Act, and there are a lot of reasons that you put forth. But, let me ask you – very narrowly – on the issue of photo ID. Requiring photo ID to register to vote, is this something Democrats should get behind?" Karl asked. "I mean, 80-something percent of Americans, 71 percent of Democrats, say they favor this."
Warner obviously couldn't defend his party's position on the merits, so he reached for a talking point instead.
"You know what? In Virginia, we have voter ID and photo ID. I gotta show my –" Warner said, before Karl cut him off.
"That's actually not the case," Karl said. "I mean, I'm a Virginia voter. You don't need to show a photo ID in Virginia. There are a wide range of things you can show for ID, and if you don't show on of those, you can sign an affidavit."
That's right. A sitting U.S. senator from Virginia got fact-checked on Virginia's own election law by his interviewer, live on air. Warner has represented the commonwealth in the Senate since 2009 and served as its governor before that, and Karl still knows the state's voting rules better than he does.
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A normal person caught flat-out lying might pause, maybe even admit the error. A Democrat, though? Not a chance. Warner plowed ahead instead. "You sign an affidavit and those become ballots that if you want to contest later can be contested," Warner said.
Seriously? That's the recovery? Karl had just explained that Virginia voters without ID can sign a piece of paper and cast a regular ballot, and Warner responded by suggesting that signing an affidavit is the same as a photo ID requirement.
It isn't.
In fact, the Virginia Department of Elections says so right on its website: Voters who forget their ID can sign a statement affirming their identity and still receive a regular ballot, or they can skip the statement entirely and vote provisionally. Warner's claim wasn't a slip of the tongue. It was false when he said it, and it stayed false when he repeated it in fancier packaging.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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