Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-North Dakota, is proposing legislation that would require states that require vaccine passports, or cards that show evidence of immunization, to also mandate voter identification.
The proposed legislation comes after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio revealed on Tuesday that the city would require visitors and city residents to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination status to access indoor restaurants, gyms, and entertainment venues, becoming the first city in the United States to do so.
“If states that take federal money for elections feel the need to make residents verify a piece of information as private as their vaccination status just to return to normalcy, then they should have no problem requiring people to prove they are who they say they are when they go to vote,” Cramer said in a Tuesday statement.
He went on to say that the proposed measure “would ensure that those states are consistent in their identification requirements and shine a light on those who hypocritically oppose voter ID laws but support vaccine passports.”
There have been no statewide vaccination proof requirements imposed by governors, and 20 states, including North Dakota, has explicitly prohibited such a need. The Biden administration has said repeatedly that no federal vaccination passport requirement would be imposed.
Democrats and Republicans have clashed over vaccination passports and voting identification requirements.
The former, according to many Republicans and the American Civil Freedoms Union, is a breach of civil liberties and an abuse of government power. In reaction to a slew of GOP-led voting laws introduced or passed in states like Texas and Georgia that limit things like early voting and mail-in ballots and require proof of identity at the polls, Democrats argue that the latter may make it more difficult for some people to vote, with some calling the practice “racist.”
These states get millions of dollars in federal funds each year under the Assist America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 to help finance election administration expenses, according to Cramer’s office.
The post Senator Cramer introduces measure forcing states that need vaccination passports to also require voter identification first appeared on Fox News.
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