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Floor Speech
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Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I could not help but respond in realtime to my very able colleague from the great State of Oklahoma. I really wish things were as simple as my Republican friends would have us believe.
They want us to believe that this is simply a basic voter ID bill. Let me say the same thing I said several days ago. I believe that you should have to prove that you are who you say you are before you vote. But this is not a voter ID bill; this is a voter suppression bill. They really ought to call it what it actually is. They ought to rename this bill: ``Your Driver's License is Not Enough to Register Bill.''
Not only is your driver's license not good enough in most States, except those States where your citizenship is a part of your driver identification--and that is literally a handful of States--you will not be able to register to vote using your driver's license. You will not be able to register to vote using your student ID. You will not be able to register to vote using your military ID.
Let's be very clear: The Republicans know that their policies are failing; that they have kicked 15 million Americans off of their healthcare; that they have doubled healthcare premiums for some 22 million Americans. They have dragged us or they have enabled this President to drag us into a war--and he can't even explain why we are there--and they want to make it difficult for everyday Americans to hold them accountable. This will not stand. It will not succeed.
This bill especially disenfranchises women. There are many people right now who are listening to me at home who are registered to vote right now, and you say: Well, I have never had to prove my citizenship in order to vote. If this bill is passed, you will. If you move, you will have to reregister. If you change your name if you get married, you will have to register to vote as we do, and all of a sudden your driver's license will not be good enough. Even though you have been voting for years--decades--that will not be good enough.
Imagine being a woman and your birth certificate does not match your current name, so you have got to go drag out documents you haven't seen for years in order to certify that you are a citizen.
And the question you ought to ask is, Why would they go through all of this? Why is this necessary when there is no evidence at all that we have some major problem of voter fraud through voter identification.
It is already illegal to vote if you are not a citizen. It is illegal. They will deport you. You will be prosecuted under law if you register to vote, and you are not a citizen. If you try to vote, and you are not a citizen, it is a crime. You can be deported.
And they are trying to convince us that there are droves of people in this country who are willing to risk deportation, risk being arrested, risk the abuse that we are seeing visited upon American citizens by ICE agents in realtime--that they are willing to risk all of that in droves in order to change the outcome of an election. It defies credulity, and it is simply not true.
Donald Trump wants to meddle with the outcome of the midterm elections because he knows that he is losing. And citizens who are watching this right now, not only ought you to reject this, as we are doing on your behalf, you ought to register in droves and put this nonsense to an end.
Democracy is the very house we live in. It is the place in which we get to fight for the things we say matter. And little by little, they are chipping away at the democracy itself.
Let the people speak. Let people cast their votes without having to jump over all kinds of unnecessary barriers. Why would you disenfranchise hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans, while chasing a problem that does not exist? Why are you so afraid of the voices of the people, I ask my friends on the other side of the aisle.
The most powerful words in a democracy are ``the people have spoken.'' And we must ensure that no voter suppression bill prevents them from speaking.
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