Order for Adjournment

Text in the Record

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that following the remarks of my Republican colleagues, the Senate proceed to legislative session and that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Tennessee.

SAVE America Act

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, several of my colleagues and I are going to talk tonight about the importance of passing the SAVE America Act, and this is an issue the Senate should willingly take up. Having voter ID is something the vast majority of Americans support. Whether they are Democrats or Republicans or Independents or Libertarians, everyone thinks you should have to show an ID when you go to vote. It is incredible that we are on the floor having to make the case for this legislation. The bill's provisions are really common sense, and, as I said, this is something the American people have said: We want this. We want to preserve one person, one vote, and preserve the integrity of the electoral system. Now, the legislation that is before us would really accomplish three major objectives in securing our elections. It would require voters to present an ID to cast a ballot. Now, as I said, this is overwhelmingly popular. You have got 83 percent of all Americans. Now, for my colleagues across the aisle, 71 percent of the Democrats support this. They want people to have to prove that they are indeed who they claim to be. Also, our legislation would require people to be a U.S. citizen in order to vote in our elections, and it would require the States to remove noncitizens who have somehow ended up on their voter rolls. These are all common sense, every one of them--common sense. There is nothing objectionable about these measures. It is common sense. And these are sensible, easily understood, and easily implemented ways to make certain that we are protecting our electoral system. Many Republican States already enforce these safeguards. Tennessee, my home State, leads the Nation in election integrity. Now, if every State was like Tennessee, there would be no need for the SAVE America Act. But for years, we have seen blue States practically invite fraud into their elections. Fourteen States--including California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Minnesota--do not require any form of ID to vote. Many more States accept ID that is nonphoto. Now, think about that. In 14 States, if you live in one of those States, you do not have to prove anything in order to go vote in their elections. It is open season. So my question would be: How does that type of system--no ID required, just come on and vote. Everybody welcome. The polls are open. It doesn't matter if you are a citizen or a noncitizen. Come cast your ballot. So you have got these States that require no ID, and you have got other States that will have nonphoto ID that they will accept. Now, at the same time, two dozen States--and, again, they are overwhelmingly blue--that is, 24 States refuse to work with DHS to compare their voter rolls with the Federal SAVE database, which verifies the immigration status of registered voters. Now, that is a system--that is a database--at the Department of Homeland Security, and this SAVE system has that listing of noncitizens who were in our country--people that are on student visas, people that are on work visas, people that are permanent legal residents, people that are in the country illegally. But do you know what? Not a single one of those individuals is entitled to vote. So, free of charge, any State can log into this system--President Trump has made it easy for the States--and then they can take their voter roll, and they can check it against the SAVE system. States that do this have found thousands of individuals. Maybe they have got a driver's license, and maybe, during that process, they registered to vote. But they are not entitled to vote. So those are the individuals that need to be removed from this system. I will point out that there is no other--no other--developed nation that leaves their elections so vulnerable to fraud and manipulation. So to defend themselves, Democrats claim that voter fraud is very rare. Well, President Trump's Thursday night address on election integrity showed just how much voter fraud we have. According to a DHS review of State voter rolls, there are approximately 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in our elections. The last three Presidential elections were decided by fewer than 270,000 votes. The President noted that this figure is likely an undercount because Democrat States refused to share their voter files with the administration. Democrats do not care. They are perfectly content with voter fraud. Indeed, as we have said many times: Let's make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. And the Democrats continue to fight us on this. Their leader Chuck Schumer claimed that the legislation, the SAVE America Act, was dead on arrival here in the Senate, meaning not a single one of them--not a one of them--agrees with 71 percent of the Democrats, 83 percent of the American public. They just don't agree with them when the people are saying: We want the SAVE America Act. So I just have to ask: What are they afraid of? What are they really fearful of? Are they afraid, if it is only citizens voting, that they are not going to win? Do they think they have to have people that are not citizens registered to vote in order to win an election? Now, when we talk about the SAVE America Act and talk about it in total, we have said: Look, whatever it takes to get this passed--if we have to pass it one piece at a time, that is what we will do. And our friends on the other side of the aisle need to explain to the American public why they are so opposed. Now, Senator Husted's bill, for example, would enact only the voter ID provision of the SAVE America Act. That is a good thing. That is a great first step. Just prove that you are who you say you are. When you go to the poll to vote, prove that you are who you say you are when you request a mail-in or absentee ballot. We also have the Election Security Partnership Act, which I led along with Senator Lindsey Graham, and this is something that would incentivize States to submit their voter rolls through that SAVE system at DHS. This is basically: We are going to pay you to do the right thing. We are going to actually incentivize and give you more money on your grants if you will do the right thing and obey the law. Now, we have many more bills that we can do to secure our elections. Every Member of Congress should support these measures, and Republicans are going to do everything possible to get them across the finish line as we are celebrating our Nation's 250th anniversary. It is imperative--imperative--that we pass these bills in order to preserve the integrity of our electoral system. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.

SAVE America Act

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, imagine your shock if, while on your way to the theater, let's say--I don't know--maybe you are going to the opera. You are planning to pick up your tickets at will call. You arrive at will call at the appointed moment and say: Yes, I am Senator Pete Ricketts. I am here to pick up my opera tickets. They gave them to somebody else. If you found out that the theater was handing out tickets at will call without any form of ID, you would probably be a little disappointed--you or any

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other American, any other human in that circumstance--realizing that it is important to find out whether you are who you claim to be before you are given something, something where your identity matters. The same could be said of a whole bunch of other human transactions, ordinary human interactions involving day-to-day transactions that any of us could be expected to engage in multiple times every single week. One day, maybe it is theater or opera tickets. Maybe the next day, it is withdrawing money from a bank. You show up, and money is gone from your account because your bank stopped requiring people to show ID. They can come along and claim to be someone they are not and take someone's money that is not theirs. The mere fact that we have a lot of people that are allowed to vote doesn't diminish the seriousness of not requiring people to prove that they are, in fact, who they claim to be when they show up to exercise that important right. Some people, when denying that there is any need for us to act here, will throw up things and say: Well, that is fine for the bank or for theater tickets or for the pharmacy. But this is an important constitutional right. It is a fundamental right. My response to that is: Yes, exactly--and that is exactly why we need it. The fact that it involves a protected, fundamental constitutional right is a reason why we need to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. That is exactly what the SAVE America Act does. It is exactly what it would do. When I set out, about 3 years ago, to write this bill, along with my partner in the House, Congressman Chip Roy from Texas, that was our mantra: Let's make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Never, at the time, could we have predicted how much attention this would get, and never, at the time, could we have predicted the absurdity of the arguments that would be raised against this because, if you are careful--if you listen carefully--what you will find is that there is not a legitimate argument against the Senate passing the SAVE America Act--no, not even one. The arguments that you will hear against it, over and over and over again, are based entirely on contrivance, on pretext, on false statements and false assumptions. Look, at the end of the day, the SAVE America Act is about reestablishing, restoring trust in U.S. elections. That trust needs to be restored, especially in light of the facts that we have discovered just over the last few days. As of just Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that there are 278,000--that is over a quarter of a million--noncitizens registered to vote in U.S. elections in just four States alone. This doesn't count all of them. This is 278,000 noncitizen votes, just in the States of California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada Now, that is a problem. When you add to that the other States that have refused to cooperate, that have made it very difficult for us to ascertain how many noncitizen votes they might have registered in their States--they are not cooperating. That is one of many problems that we face here. Fortunately, this is a problem that Congress can solve. It is a problem that it can solve and, therefore, must solve. Among those who make an argument against this, sometimes, you will hear the argument--one that I find especially galling and especially disingenuous--that, ``oh, this somehow tramples on the authority of the States,'' which some mistakenly refer to as States' rights. I don't call them States' rights. States don't have rights. They have authority. A right is a privilege against the exercise of authority. It is the inverse polar opposite of a right; therefore, I don't call it States' rights. It is State authority.

This, Mr. President, emphatically does not trample on State authority. How do we know that? Well, because the Constitution delineates the relative responsibilities of the States and the Federal Government. And in one particularly poignant and relevant provision-- article I, section 4--the elections clause of that provision states that Congress may, at any time, by law, make or alter what we will loosely describe as laws establishing the time, place, and manner in which Federal elections will take place, except as to places of choosing Senators. So we have the authority to do this under the Constitution, not as to State races but as to Federal races, principally U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate races. We have that authority; article I, section 4 gives that to us. Moreover, if those who mistakenly argue that this somehow tramples on State sovereign authority, if there were any doubt about that, which there is not because article I, section 4 puts that issue to bed quite nicely. But if there were, then the entire predicate of existing law, making the SAVE America Act necessary in the first place, would also be invalid. Every time I hear this argument made, I wish, like anything, that those same people making this argument would acknowledge that if the SAVE America Act is somehow unconstitutional, so, too, is the National Voter Registration Act. The National Voter Registration Act enacted by Congress in 1993 created a system whereby people can vote at a DMV in their home State. Now, when somebody goes into a DMV to register to vote in that State, all they have to do is check a box saying: Yes, I am applying for a driver's license, but I would like, simultaneously, to register to vote with this application. After all, you have got some of the same features there. You have got to prove your identity. You have got to establish your residency, what your address is. And so it made a certain amount of sense to provide this option for American voters to go and register at a DMV. The problem is that that is all you have to do, is check a box saying: I would like to register to vote. And then at the end of it, you sign your name in a conclusory statement to the effect that I am entitled to vote; I am a U.S. citizen, and I am not prohibited, for one reason or another, from voting, and so I am allowed to do it. But that is all the verification that is allowed. And in a move that, I believe, is incompatible with the text and original understanding of the statutory language, the Supreme Court-- about 20 years after the NVRA was passed, the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted the NVRA, mistakenly but nonetheless conclusively, as prohibiting the States from doing anything to verify the citizenship of someone registering to vote at a DMV using an NVRA- supplied form. Now, the Supreme Court was wrong. Justice Alito explained in his dissent in that case--Inter Tribal Counsel v. Arizona why that was wrong. Nonetheless, it remains the conclusive interpretation of the NVRA, and it is why the SAVE America Act is necessary because what we have got now, Mr. President, we have got an estimated 30 million-plus noncitizens residing in the United States. We have got a system of laws under the NVRA that makes it really easy to go into a DMV and fill out some forms, check a box and sign your name and say I want to register to vote. That is how we got 278,000 registered voters who are noncitizens just in those four States alone: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada, to say nothing of the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of others in other States who may have done the same thing. It is phenomenally easy to cheat. It is stunningly easy to register to vote as a noncitizen, in some cases, without really realizing what you are doing, much less that you are committing a very serious felony offense by doing that. So that is the whole reason why the SAVE America Act is necessary, is because of the NVRA and, specifically, the Supreme Court's butchered interpretation of it prohibiting the States, even where they have actual doubts, from asking someone to verify their citizenship at the time they register to vote. So, if the SAVE America Act is unconstitutional, then so, too, is the NVRA, in which case, we don't need it--at least not nearly to the same degree as we do. But, of course, neither the NVRA nor the SAVE America Act is unconstitutional; they are both squarely within the authority provided to the U.S. Congress under article I, section 4 of the Constitution. So, as a result of all this, it is clear that Congress can fix this problem. We have the authority to do it. So what is the holdup? Well, it certainly isn't the

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American voter because the American voter, by a margin of like 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 5, depending which poll you look at, believes that it is important that people who show up to vote ought to have to prove who they are. And they ought to, at the time they register to vote, have to establish their citizenship and, thus, their eligibility to vote in the first place. We are talking about 75 to 80--some as high as 85 percent, depending on which poll that you look at. Those are Democrat voters and Republican voters alike, all agreeing that this is a problem, and it is a problem that Congress can and should fix. So what is the holdup? Well, it is hard to say what the holdup is? But I can summarize it this way: It is Senate Democrats. The SAVE America Act is popular literally everywhere in the United States of America, except in this Chamber and except among Democrats in this Chamber. Everywhere else it is a no-brainer. Everywhere else it is popular. It is only here that they don't want to pass it. Why? Why don't they want to pass it? Well, one could argue that if you benefit from the status quo, you don't want any change to that status quo, especially if you benefit from it in a way that is likely to go away if you change the status quo. These are all fancy ways, Mr. President--nice ways--of saying: Perhaps some of those who are opposed to it might be afraid of what happens if they are not allowed to rely on noncitizen votes, even though Federal law flatly prohibits noncitizen voting in U.S. elections. That is not a good reason to oppose this. It may be a reason, but it is not a good reason. It is not a valid reason. It is not a legal, moral, ethical, or constitutional reason. It is just a reason, but that is about where the reason stops because every other of their arguments cannot withstand scrutiny. For example, a number of them will say things like the following: If we pass the SAVE America Act into law, there will be anarchy, there will be lawlessness, dogs and cats living together in the streets, Book of Revelations stuff, apocalyptic nightmares unfolding everywhere. And they back this up by arguing, quite absurdly, that women and minorities will be unable to vote--oh, and also rural Americans and also young Americans and also older Americans because, at any given moment, these same people who are opposing the SAVE America Act--the 47 people in this Chamber, more or less--those are the same people who may stand to benefit if we don't pass it because the status quo benefits them. And they should not be able to benefit from this by not passing something.

The effect is that if this were to pass, this wouldn't disenfranchise anyone. Why? Well, because the kind of proof that we require--proof of citizenship and proof of identity--it is based on the same sort of document that every American has to provide routinely in the most mundane, routine encounters. Let's break them up into two pieces. Remember, there are two pieces of the SAVE America Act. Part 1 deals with establishing citizenship. Part 2 deals with voter ID. Let's deal first with the proof of citizenship. When you show up to register to vote, if this were to pass into law today--which it should pass today. It is that popular with the American people, and it is that lacking in any legitimate argument against it. If it were to pass into law today, then your existing voter registration would remain valid indefinitely. Nothing about that would change. It would only be that the next time you have to register to vote-- because you have moved or something like that--then you would have to show up, and you would have to provide some type of proof as to U.S. citizenship. The law would allow you to do this using the same exact documentation that every single American has to supply every single time he or she starts a new job as a new employee with a new employer. You fill out an I-9 form, as every man, woman, and child in America has to do every time they start a new job as a new employee. You have

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