Top Georgia Democrats flip on voter ID amid push from Manchin for identification rules

Georgia Democratic rockstars Stacey Abrams and Sen. Raphael Warnock have both made major reversals on their feelings about voter identification, flips that could signal shifting Democratic priorities about voter ID as the Senate considers a sweeping voting bill that could include identification measures.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin this week proposed several additions to the controversial For the People Act, a bill that, if passed, would allow Congress to exert significant control over most U.S. elections. 

Among the measures Manchin has suggested are voter ID rules, which would require identification at the polls but would allow voters to use a variety of documents to prove their identity. 

Prominent Democratic activist Stacey Abrams this week came out in support of the measures, a sharp reversal from earlier hardline opposition to voting ID laws. 

Abrams suggested that widespread Democratic opposition to voting ID laws has been “one of the fallacies of Republican talking points that have been deeply disturbing.” 

“No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote,” she said. “It's been part of our nation's history since the inception of voting.”

In April of this year, Abrams claimed she was opposed to Georgia’s recently passed election reform bill due in part to the fact that it “requires that a voter has a photo identification or some other form of identification that they are willing to surrender in order to participate in an absentee ballot process.”

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, meanwhile, has also voiced support for Machin’s proposal, falsely claiming that he has “never been opposed to voter ID” and that he “[doesn’t] know anybody who is.”

In the past Warnock has claimed that voter ID laws are “not about voter verification” but about “voter suppression.”

Polling has regularly shown that Americans are broadly in favor of voter ID laws.