-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, today, Senate Republicans are once again wasting time on voter suppression instead of paying TSA.
Republicans have an amendment on the Senate floor dressed up as what they call commonsense voter ID, but let's be very clear what this amendment is: It is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and it is a giant coverup to cover up what their bill really does, which is dramatic voter suppression, kicking 20 million or more people off the rolls without their knowledge or consent.
The point here is not at all about voter ID. In fact, 99 percent of the SAVE Act doesn't talk about voter ID. Most of their bill is kicking people off the voter rolls and making reregistering, once you are kicked off, a bureaucratic nightmare, an almost impossibility for many people.
And, once again, the public saw the SAVE Act for what it really is--a voter suppression bill. And once that happened, Republicans had to do something. So they cobbled together this amendment as a coverup. It was never in the original bill, and now they pretend it is reasonable policy on voter ID.
But let's get to the facts. The amendment Republicans are pushing today would impose the single strictest voter ID law in America-- stricter than Texas, stricter than Florida, stricter than any State in the country.
Republicans are calling this amendment common sense. But if it is so common sense, why is it stricter than what every single red State already offers?
Many States already have rules in place for voter ID, and every State has some method to verify the identity of voters.
Republicans pretend like States don't have backup verification systems, backups to those backups, and redundancies in place to ensure that our elections are safe and secure, but we do. And it is why voter fraud--this whole bill is hidden, covered up because they say they need to stop voter fraud. There isn't any to mention at all. That is how absurd this is.
The Heritage Foundation, a rightwing conservative organization, studied voter fraud and found only 77 cases of noncitizen voting in 24 years. And we are going to upend our whole system of how people register to vote for that because of those 77 cases in 24 years?
Just 0.04 percent of voter verification cases are returned as noncitizens. Now you see what the Republicans are doing. It is what Trump said. They want to determine who should vote. Trump wants people--Noem said this as well that the only people who should vote are people who agree with them. It is disgraceful, disgusting. This radical amendment would toss out every single voter ID requirement in all 50 States for Federal elections and put in an overly restrictive, one- size-fits-all approach except only a handful of IDs.
Let's talk about vote-by-mail. Under this ridiculous amendment--this amendment--voters who choose to vote by mail, which is about one in three Americans, guess what they would have to do? They would have to add a photocopy of their ID with their ballot.
So the election officials would open up the envelope and could see how you voted. The sacred secrecy of our ballots would be undone by this amendment. It is ridiculous.
Again, anyone who voted by mail would have to put a voter ID inside the envelope, and the board of elections would have to open it up and see how you voted. It is incredible.
It would also leave people susceptible to identity theft. It would violate basic privacy. So let's be clear. Most people wouldn't like the idea of having to stick a copy of their photo ID with their ballot in the mail. This requirement is another Trojan horse for trying to weaken and kill vote-by-mail altogether.
Democrats are supportive of commonsense voter ID standards. Just look at the Freedom to Vote Act, which had the full support of the Democratic caucus. It set flexible, comprehensive standards based on West Virginia's then-law for voter ID requirements.
Their amendment--this amendment--is not about security; it is about exclusion. It is not about security; it is about exclusion. The SAVE Act is not about protecting our elections; it is about suppressing the vote.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source