Top Democrat Doesn’t Know His Own State’s Voter ID Policy

Mark Warner has represented Virginia in the Senate since 2009. He was governor of the state before that. So when he went on ABC and fumbled a description of his own state's voter ID law, badly enough that Jonathan Karl, no conservative firebrand, had to stop and correct him on the air, that's not a gotcha clip. That's a guy who has spent two decades in Virginia politics not knowing a basic fact about how Virginia runs its elections.

The irony is thick here. Warner was on the show to explain why Democrats oppose the SAVE America Act and to warn about Trump's "election security agenda," as if he's the guy with a firm grip on how election integrity actually works. Virginia already has a voter ID law on the books, has for years, and it hasn't produced the disenfranchisement apocalypse Democrats keep promising whenever the topic comes up nationally. Warner not being able to accurately describe his own state's rules while lecturing the country about the dangers of tightening them elsewhere says something.

This is the pattern with a lot of the opposition to voter ID nationally. It's treated less as a policy with actual mechanics and more as a talking point to be recited, without much curiosity about how it functions in states that already have it. Virginia is a working example sitting right in front of him. He just didn't know it.

Nobody expects senators to have every statute memorized. But when the subject is the one you built your entire talking point around, get the basics right before you go on national television to warn everyone else about theirs.