The US House of Representatives passed legislation combining a ban on lawmakers trading individual stocks with a federal voter ID requirement, a pairing that split House Democrats when the measure came to a vote on Wednesday. While the stock trading restriction has attracted bipartisan support in principle, tying it to voter identification rules proved contentious, prompting dozens of Democrats to vote against the combined bill despite backing the stock ban element on its own.

The vote highlighted deep divisions among Democrats over whether to accept Republican-favoured election integrity measures as the price for advancing ethics reform aimed at Congress. Voter ID requirements remain a politically charged issue, with Republicans generally supporting them as a safeguard against fraud and many Democrats opposing them over concerns about access to voting, meaning the bundled bill forced lawmakers to choose between two priorities they could not easily reconcile.