Save America Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, the hour is late and many people have spoken tonight on this proposal by my colleague from Utah and others. But I just want to add my voice to the many who are very concerned about this legislation.

I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say about the fact that this was somehow necessary, that somehow things were trending in the wrong direction, and that he did want to make it easy to vote.

I think the fact that he wants to make it easy to vote is the essence of what this debate is about because the U.S. citizen is given a constitutional right to vote in our elections and the States to control the running of our elections. It is hard to imagine how the passing of the SAVE Act would help you on those constitutional rights.

I am here tonight to add my voice. Happy Saint Patrick's Day for those who are here wearing the green, and I am pretty sure you wish you were out of here by now and at some Irish festivities celebrating the day.

But trust me, the Irish in the United States of America appreciate voting rights and appreciate the right to vote, and so do many other segments of American society who have had challenges in the past to get their votes counted.

So I do want to say to my colleagues in the Senate that the Federal law does prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting. That is a cornerstone to our law.

Now, my colleague thinks that we don't do anything to prove or to require that these people have to say who they are, which is not true. When you basically are part of a registration process, you have to fill out or comply with an attestation and identification of who you are. That is how the system works.

It worked when you were a registrant and knocking on someone's door. It works that way on motor voter. It works that way everywhere, and you have to say who you are.

Your signature becomes the identifiable piece of information that has been used for a long time now, decades and decades and decades, as the proof of who you say you are. Why? Because your signature can be traced.

I always find it very interesting in our State because it is not that fraud hasn't been committed; the question is whether you are going to catch fraud. In an incident in our State where we had a very close election and it got down to several votes, people started admitting that they had voted for somebody who was dead or deceased. Why? Because they knew we were going to catch them because it was based on your signature.

So a man who votes for his wife after she has died to say she was really enthusiastic about that Governor's candidate and really would have wanted to vote for him but died before the election and didn't cast her own ballot, yes, that does not count. And we have caught voter fraud.

The point is, is that States already verify that identity. They do it, as I said, when you register or are a registrant, it says right on the registrant card: If you are not a U.S. citizen, stop right now. Stop right now.

It also, at the motor voter place where it is checking your identification, also you have to say that you are a U.S. citizen. Now, you can say many things about what kind of identification is used, but I like this best because we are a vote-by-mail State, as my colleague from Utah is. And we have very high turnouts, as does Utah.

And what does it take to make sure that you are a U.S. citizen in the State of Washington? So every ballot just like mine that is from a few years ago says: Read the declaration.

It says right here, I can hardly miss this. This is the outside envelope: Read the declaration, sign and date below.

So I have to sign this again, which is matched with my signature at the voters' office. It is on a computer with voters' basically witnesses, looking at my signature; and in my State, they are trained by the State patrol to make sure that signature matches the original signature that you signed up with.

Now, what I like most about this is right above where I have to sign is this little attestation with these words on it. I know you can't hardly read them, so I am going to make it a little larger for you to understand the whole thing.

It says:

I do solemnly swear under penalty of perjury, I am a United States citizen.

It says it right there. Every time you vote in the State of Washington, you are attesting to that. But the bottom part is what I think is most amazing, ``punishable by a maximum imprisonment of five years or $10,000 in fine.'' And somehow people on this side of the aisle think that immigrants who won't even go to the healthcare system, won't even go to the grocery store, are afraid to take their kids to school, and somehow you think they are signing up for a felony or $10,000 or imprisonment of 5 years? No. They are not doing that. Because this system is checked. It is validated. It is verified. You have to attest to it. And so we have very, very, very, very, very little fraud, and when we do, we catch it.

The point is: Why are we doing this today? Why are we changing a system that has been in place for decades and replacing it because my colleagues say the trend is going in the wrong direction? Which is simply not true.

When you look at this, the SAVE Act, instead of basically protecting our system for decades could disenfranchise over 21 million people. That is why you have seen this out here, because it has been estimated by many people. Think about this, when this goes to the President's desk, it is implemented immediately this year.

It means that you have to start producing additional paperwork. What my colleagues failed to tell you is that the system is based on all the verification up front when you are registered and when you give your signature and identification; and election day is about having the ease of going to vote based on the fact you have already been identified.

But my colleagues would like to throw a big wrench in that and make you find all sorts of documentation in the most unworkable chaos I have ever seen in a system put in a bill.

It is simply not true that this is about ease of voting by them. It is about disenfranchising millions of people and making it very hard for them to vote.

Why do they want to do that? I don't know. Frankly, I don't really--I don't really know why they think that is a good idea. I will tell you what my former Republican secretary of state, who served more than a decade, said to me in a statement.

Neither the President nor Congress should be in the business of micromanaging elections. As a longtime Republican election administrator official, I adamantly support our nation's constitutional framers' decision that the election process be decentralized to states.

Following he says:

I oppose the SAVE [America] Act. It gives the federal government new powers of discretionary regulation. It empowers ideologues to sue election administrators. It forces states to turn over voter rolls to federal overseers. It abolishes vote-by-mail--the preferred system in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, Hawaii, Nevada, and Vermont.

In my experience, vote-by-mail best fits the modern lifestyles. More importantly, it provides the opportunity for voters to become better informed before casting [their] ballots.

He continues by saying:

I subscribe to my party's fundamental and historic commitment to local control. It is a time-honored Republican principle that ``government closest to the people is best.''

This, importantly, includes the conduct of elections.

Now maybe that is why the senior Senator from Kentucky is voting with us on this side of the issue, because he understands what States' rights are about. States' rights are about running elections so a demagogue or somebody in the level of government cannot force the Federal Government to say who is eligible to vote and who is not eligible to vote.

The notion that we would turn this over to DHS is preposterous. And the notion that I had a constituent who basically got denied a Social Security check because someone said he was dead, even though he went to the Federal building, to the Social Security Administration and said: I am not dead.

They had already ripped the check out of his, basically, bank account. He basically then proceeded for 3 weeks to continue to tell them he was not dead. He showed up in other places in person. He was on national TV. And did they give him his check back? No. It took him months.

Now, let's say that the Federal Government says the same thing about you and the voter rolls on election day. What are you going to do then? What are you going to do on election day? Not have a vote. What are you going to do, say: No, it is me. I am right here.

But they are going to say: No, you are dead. You are not on my rolls. You can't vote. I don't care how long you have lived at that address. I don't care. You are gone.

I am not turning that over to the Federal Government, and our constitutional Founders did not want that turned over to the Federal Government. They saw mischief then, and believe me, the SAVE Act is mischief now.

The League of Women Voters, the ultimate organization for finding and pursuing policy to get people in America to vote basically said this about the SAVE Act:

[This] is a coordinated effort to make voting harder for eligible Americans.

Now, if you can't trust the League of Women Voters here, I don't know who you can trust because they are the ones who have had an organization that is about nothing but getting people to participate in elections.

They are not Democrat; they are not Republican. They basically are a great organization that holds all of us accountable, and they basically do not like the SAVE Act.

This is why part of this effort is about protecting States and protecting our rights.

I am not turning personal information over to people who just have other things to pursue. Or maybe it is going to be like DOGE, and they are going to sell it to other organizations and make money off of our personal information.

But now, if basically a secretary of state or an auditor basically doesn't agree with Homeland Security, what are they going to do? This bill also has a private right of action to say that you can sue them on a private right of action. So now, we are going to create all of this chaos and mischief at a level when somehow Homeland Security, which they have gotten it wrong before on the vote, on information about who and what information--the Federal Government has got it wrong before-- now all of a sudden, you are going to get it wrong again and what are you going to do?

So as I mentioned, Sam Reed, he is not the only Republican I have talked to. We had a Republican on a press conference today who was an auditor. There are Republicans standing up.

I don't see any Democrats agreeing with you on the SAVE Act, but I see lots of Republicans across America agreeing with us that it is a bad bill.

But as Sam Reed said, former Republican secretary of state:

Neither the President nor Congress should be in the business of micromanaging elections.

Why? Why? It has never been given to us.

But let's talk about this. My colleague seems to think that there is a trend going in some direction. OK. What is the trend? Because the Heritage Foundation, a group I am pretty sure you believe in, pretty sure you quote them a lot, basically said in my State since 1982--since 1982 till now--there have been 15 cases of voter fraud.

OK. In our State, in the State of Washington, 15 cases. OK. So hardly--hardly, a big trend moving in the other direction. Hardly a big trend.

Similarly, the Heritage Foundation found that in the United States of America, that noncitizen voter fraud is basically .00007, so that turns out to be seven-millionths of a percent. It is not 1 percent. It is not .1 percent. It is basically .00007. So seven-millionths of 1 percent voter fraud in the United States of America based on the system that we have today.

And you want to propose a system that would disenfranchise millions of Americans by making it more complicated. And, yes, I don't know why you don't want to stand up for vote-by-mail, but trust me, I am standing up for vote-by-mail. Your last election had 84 percent turnout in the State of Utah. You had 90 percent in 2020. I think that is a prideful thing for a State.

I am prideful that our State has one of the highest turnouts too. It is not probably 83 percent in a Presidential election. I don't remember exactly what it was in the year 2000, but that is what we strive for in the United States of America, a voting system where everybody participates so when the outcome is something that other people don't like, you can at least say the American people decided.

But if all of a sudden you start sowing doubt into the system, then you have a problem; and that is where President Trump is. He is saying he wants to eliminate mail-in voting, but one in three voters in this country use it.

He is the one who is inspiring my colleagues to write this legislation. He is the one who is inspiring the details. He would go much further, I agree, than what the SAVE Act is.

But let's hear what third parties are saying around the United States of America.

Let's hear what editorial boards who read the same judgment, the same discussions that we have had here, and what have they said?

In my home State, where we have had one of the closest elections in a congressional district, they basically said the SAVE Act is a threat to our democracy.

What did the Seattle Times say? It said, ``Congress should reject SAVE Act as unconstitutional voter suppression.''

That is not Democrats saying that; that is a newspaper saying that.

What did they say in the Maine Herald?

Maine Voters do not wish to be ``saved'' by the SAVE Act.

So now we know that third-party validators--who are pretty expert in voting. Women Voters don't want this. Newspapers that basically have looked at this issue are also calling this for what it is: suppression. And I ask my colleagues to turn this down.

Now, if my colleague wants to continue to debate, I will stand here as long as he wants to stand here to debate this issue. I will stand here and get more facts and figures to show him that this voting system today has empowered Americans, it has increased opportunities for Americans to have their votes cast, and it has gotten rid of generations of suppression that existed before. But if he wants me to talk about all of the voter suppression that has existed in the United States, starting with laws that basically disenfranchise various segments of our population, I am happy to talk about them because every generation should be about fighting to get the voters to cast a vote, have a robust democracy, and distinguish the United States of America from other countries as a beacon of democracy where free and fair elections stand and where we are confident about the results.

We don't need the SAVE Act. It will cause chaos. What we need to do is to continue to fight for democracy and continue the path forward for a vote-by-mail system.

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