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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are talking again about the SAVE Act.

This is a simple piece of legislation that focuses on two key ideas: that if you are an American citizen, which is required by law, you just show it. I call that the ``trust and verify'' portion of the bill.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act begins with the statement ``all citizens.'' It is already required under Federal law that you have to be a citizen of the United States to vote. We have all agreed on that. There is no one disputing that--Republican, Democrat, Independent. We all agree American citizens are the ones who should decide the future of America.

What we disagree on is, Should we check or should we just trust that it actually is true?

I have shared in this body before, that, in Oklahoma, we passed a statute, several years ago, saying: If you go to jury duty and you tell a judge, ``I am not eligible to be able to serve on a jury because I am not a citizen of the United States,'' in Oklahoma, we then check to see if you are registered to vote. We have found quite a few folks who have told a judge, ``I am not a citizen,'' but have told the election board, ``I want to vote anyway.'' Well, that is not legal.

In Oklahoma, we purge the voter rolls when that happens in order to make sure those individuals who have already given sworn testimony that they are not citizens are not also registered to vote. That is not true everywhere across the country. Lots of folks just say: We just trust, but we never verify. We actually don't clean up the voter rolls at all.

There are some States--and it is really fascinating to me--like Arizona--Arizona has a State law in place right now that says: Every person who registers to vote must also prove their citizenship.

This already exists right now.

New Hampshire has a law that says: Every person who registers to vote has to show they are a citizen.

This is not crazy policy. This is already happening in some of our States right now, that they have to be able to show they are a citizen.

In Arizona, though, it is a very interesting thing. In Arizona, you can register to vote for a State election or a county election, and you have got to be a citizen. But if you want to vote in a Federal election, you don't have to show that you are a citizen.

If you want to talk backward, this was a case that broke out there, in a court case for them, where they established: Oh, no, you have got to show that you are an American citizen to vote for the Governor of Arizona, but you don't have to show that you are an American citizen to vote for the President of the United States.

If we can figure out how to do registration to be able to protect the rights of the individuals in Arizona to be able to vote for their Governor if they are an American citizen, surely, we can do this all over the country.

The SAVE America Act is simple. It just says: It is already the law that you have to be an American citizen to vote. Let's just verify.

The State of New Hampshire is not trying to limit the number of people voting. They are just following Federal law.

Then there is the second part, which is pretty simple: You have to show ID to vote.

There are 36 States that already have this requirement. Let me just run through what this means. There are already 36 States that say you have to show an ID. Now, some of them are very narrow. They say you have got to have a specific type of photo ID on that. That is Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin. They all have in their State laws that you have got to have a certain type of photo ID to actually qualify you to be able to show up and be able to vote.

Multiple other States have some other limitation where a photo ID is, maybe, preferred, but they can also bring other IDs. That is Arizona, North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Washington State, West Virginia, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

This doesn't seem very controversial to me. If you are keeping count on fingers and toes, you ran out a while ago. There are 36 States that already have some kind of requirement for ID to be able to vote. This has got to be the most noncontroversial proposal sitting out there to say: How can we disagree when 36 States already do this?

But, for some reason, in this body, it is controversial for us as a nation to do what 36 States already do. So we bring this to the body, yet again, as we have now for days and days and days.

The American people are just not offended with pulling out an ID at an airport to be able to get on a plane. They are just not offended by showing an ID when they walk into a Federal building. They are just not offended by pulling out an ID in some places where they are going to write a check--for those who still know how to write a check in America. It is just not that offensive to have to pull out some sort of identification.

State after State after State has shown that this doesn't limit the number of people who can show up to vote. It just limits the amount of fraud that can happen in that State when people vote.

You just can't walk up to a polling place and say, ``My name is,'' and pick a name. You have got to show something with your name on it to vote. It is pretty straightforward, and 36 States already agree and have already put this into practice.

So all we are trying to say is, Can we continue this as Federal law? I think we can--and not just saying it is Federal law but actually verifying that it is actually applied. I am a big fan of the phrase ``trust and verify.'' That is all that this does.

I would hope, at some point, we would have a breakthrough here, but, in the meantime, I am going to continue coming back and saying: Why can't we all agree to what most Americans nod their heads and say, ``That is a pretty good idea,'' and just get it done?

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