The View has spent years calling itself the smartest table in daytime television.
On Tuesday, Whoopi Goldberg sat down to argue against Trump's voter ID push – and got corrected mid-sentence by the people sitting next to her.
But she still didn't stop running her mouth about voter ID laws.
She Voted There for Decades and Never Knew the Rules
Goldberg was firing away at the SAVE America Act, the Trump-backed bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast a ballot.
She decided to dismiss the whole thing as unnecessary.
"I'm sorry, you have to present your ID when you go to vote," she said. "I always have to give them my driver's license so they can make sure it's me."
Co-host Sunny Hostin cut in immediately.
"You don't have to do that in New York."
Co-host Sara Haines backed her up. "I didn't have to do it."
Joy Behar – Behar – asked out loud, "You don't?"
This is the moment that tells you everything.
https://twitter.com/NickFondacaro/status/2036490675881951345?s=20
Goldberg has been opining about voter ID laws on national television for years. She lives and votes in New York. She didn't know that New York doesn't require ID to vote.
She kept going anyway.
"They have all this information in the – in the voter registration," she said, as if the correction hadn't happened.
She Got the Whole Thing Wrong
New York is one of 14 states that do not require voters to show identification at the polls on Election Day.
Thirty-six states do require some form of ID – either by law or by request.
New York isn't one of them.
Poll workers in New York verify identity through signature matching and voter rolls. Goldberg walks in, signs her name, and votes.
The driver's license she claims to present every time is either accepted as a courtesy or she has been handing it over voluntarily without understanding it wasn't required.
The Bill She Was Attacking
The SAVE America Act cleared the House on February 11, 2026, by a vote of 218 to 213. The Senate began debate on March 17.
The legislation requires proof of U.S. citizenship – a passport, birth certificate, or equivalent document – to register to vote in federal elections.
https://twitter.com/TVNewsNow/status/2036889583053324520?s=20
It also requires photo ID at the polls nationwide.
President Trump called it one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in the history of Congress.
Senate Democrats have vowed to filibuster it. Chuck Schumer compared the bill to Jim Crow in February, calling it "a poison pill."
This is the legislation Goldberg wanted to explain to viewers while not knowing the voter ID rules of the state where she has lived and voted for decades.
Hostin at least shifted to a real argument – claiming Trump was suing states for voter registration data and calling it a privacy threat.
That's a legitimate dispute. But it got buried under Goldberg's confident wrongness.
This Is What She Does
In 2020, she told viewers she hoped Jill Biden would become surgeon general because she's "a hell of a doctor" – apparently unaware that Jill Biden's doctorate is in education, not medicine. Her co-hosts corrected her then too.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1706685023699538332?s=20
In 2024, she told the audience Republicans "want to bring slavery back."
Not a party with bad border policy.
Not a party with the wrong approach to elections. Slavery. Back.
The View has a corrections policy. It apparently does not have a consequences policy.
What Democrats Cannot Say Out Loud
Voter ID is popular. Majorities of Americans across party lines support requiring some form of ID to vote – including large numbers of Democrats.
The party's opposition to the SAVE America Act isn't driven by concern for elderly voters who lost their birth certificates. If it were, they would offer an alternative.
They don't offer alternatives. They call the bill Jim Crow and move on.
The real calculation is simpler.
A party that depends on high-volume, low-verification voter registration has a structural interest in keeping verification requirements as low as possible.
Goldberg's mistake Tuesday actually proved the pro-ID argument.
She didn't know what the rules were. She assumed she had to show ID. She was fine with it. It didn't stop her from voting.
The people Democrats say will be disenfranchised by these requirements are exactly the people a citizenship verification requirement is designed to catch.
Goldberg handed that argument to Republicans live on ABC.
She was immediately corrected by her own co-hosts.
She is still wrong.
Sources:
- Hanna Panreck, "Whoopi Goldberg rebuked by co-hosts when she says she needs to show her driver's license to vote," Fox News, March 25, 2026.
- Ballotpedia News, "Senate takes up SAVE America Act to require voter ID, proof of citizenship for federal elections," March 24, 2026.
- The White House, "The SAVE America Act," whitehouse.gov, March 2026.
- World Population Review, "Voter ID Laws by State 2026," worldpopulationreview.com, 2026.
