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Connecticut Democrats recently rushed through an emergency anti-fraud law requiring bottle redemption centers to collect a copy of a person’s driver’s license when they cash in more than 1,000 cans or bottles in a day — a document demand that Republicans say undercuts the party’s attacks on voter-ID rules.
Earlier this month, an emergency certification bill, SB 299, was introduced by top Democratic leaders in the state’s legislature. It was later passed in both chambers in late February and was signed by Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, on March 3.
It requires people wishing to recycle cans for money to present a copy of their driver’s license, put in place because the state has had issues with non-residents crossing its border to take advantage of its higher return rate of 10 cents a can instead of five cents. The issue was reportedly causing the state to lose significant revenue.
Meanwhile, the state still does not require its residents to present a driver’s license or some other form of formal identification when voting. Instead, residents wishing to vote simply have to attest, under penalty of the law, that they are a citizen of the United States.
Both of Connecticut’s senators, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., recently voted against advancing the SAVE Act earlier this week, which Republicans introduced to pass stricter photo-ID requirements for voting in federal elections, including a national proof-of-citizenship requirement for anyone wishing to register to vote.
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“In Connecticut, it seems that they are committed to securing recycling, but not to securing elections,” said Anna Pingel, America First Policy Institute’s Campaign Director for Secure Elections. “Requiring photo ID to collect cash from recycling but opposing photo ID to cast a vote tells you everything you need to know about the hypocrisy of politicians fighting against commonsense legislation like the SAVE Act. What is more important to safeguard—bottles or ballots?”
Fox News Digital reached out to Blumenthal, Murphy and Lamont for comment but only heard back from Blumenthal.
“Let’s be very clear: the SAVE America Act requires a birth certificate or passport to register to vote, which Republicans know 21 million Americans do not have,” Blumenthal told Fox News Digital. “This is not a voter identification bill. It is a voter purge bill.”
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Earlier this week, the Senate voted 51-48 to begin a debate on the House-passed SAVE Act vehicle, S. 1383. Blumenthal and Murphy both voted ‘Nay.’ The House had already passed the bill 218-213 on Feb. 11, but the measure still faces the Senate’s 60-vote hurdle to advance toward passage — a threshold Democrats have said they intend to block.
In speeches on the Senate floor trying to downplay the seriousness and scope of illegal citizen voting, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., tacitly acknowledged the existence of a problem they’ve argued is immaterial: that illegal immigrants may be able to unlawfully participate in federal elections.
“The evidence is that almost no illegal aliens vote,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor. Warnock similarly acknowledged the issue while listing statistics about voting records in his home state. “8.2 million people are registered to vote in Georgia. The Republican Secretary of State found 20 instances of non-citizens who were registered, and only nine had ever attempted to vote,” Warnock said.
Democrats have fiercely opposed the Republican-led bill, citing concerns that its voter integrity measures are overly heavy-handed and could inadvertently burden communities that may struggle to provide documented proof of citizenship.
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Republicans, who argue that lax identity requirements may have already allowed an unknown number of non-citizens onto voter rolls, have launched a marathon standoff over the bill on the Senate floor.
The Senate will be holding weekend sessions as the deadlock continues.
Fox News Digital’s Leo Briceno contributed to this report.
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