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Floor Speech

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Mr. HUSTED. 4732 and the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 311, H.R. 7147.

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Mr. HUSTED. Mr. President, before I became a U.S. Senator, I spent two terms as the Ohio secretary of state and oversaw Presidential elections, gubernatorial elections, and senate elections, and I know what it takes to run an election where it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.

I listened carefully to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They said that they don't object to photo ID--only the other provisions of the SAVE America Act. I listened. That is what they said.

To quote minority leader Chuck Schumer:

You know what our objection is--our objection, as Democrats, is not to a photo ID. You'd have to define it clearly and properly and easily, but not to a photo ID when you show up to vote.

So that is exactly what I am doing today. We are going to take them at their word and offer an opportunity to turn those words into action. In just a few minutes, the Senate will take a rollcall vote on a clean, simple, straightforward amendment of mine to require a photo ID to vote in American elections--nothing more. Straightforward. That is it. You can use a driver's license, State ID, passport, military-veteran ID, or a Tribal ID--something that everyone has access to. No additional restrictions. No tricks. No games. No prohibition on absentee voting.

The SAVE America Act restrictions you have been opposed to are not in there, and don't say that they are. They are not in there. It is simply, straightforward, photo ID.

Thirty-six States already have some form of voter ID law in place. This proposal isn't theoretical. This photo ID legislation has proven the test of elections across the Nation. It works. States across our country have shown that you can simultaneously make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Georgia, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, along with my home State of Ohio, have photo ID requirements, just to name a few.

That standard is in this amendment. That is the standard this amendment achieves to adopt.

So the question before this body is very simple: Should you have to show who you are when you vote?

The American people have answered that question as ``yes'' by an overwhelming margin. Roughly 80-20 Americans support requiring a photo ID to vote.

Americans are required to show a photo ID when they rent a car, when they start a job, when they board a plane. This is something that people do every single day. It is common sense, and it is a commonsense requirement for Americans to show a photo ID when they vote.

This is a clean vote. If you oppose this amendment, then let's be honest--it is not the other provisions in the SAVE America Act that you oppose; you object to photo ID itself, because that is what this vote is: simply, straightforward, photo ID.

Americans deserve confidence in elections, supported by integrity measures like photo ID. It is time to set a nationwide standard for election integrity, and a ``yes'' vote on this amendment will do that.

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Mr. HUSTED. Mr. President, I would like to suggest that I go through this again about what is actually in this amendment because it was just misrepresented.

This isn't the SAVE America Act. This is, frankly, me listening to the minority leader, what he said, and how he supports--he doesn't object to photo ID. So all that is in this amendment is five forms of photo ID that people can list to vote, which people have.

I ask the American people: Do you have a driver's license? Do you have a State ID? Do you have a passport? Do you have a military or veterans ID? Do you have a Tribal ID? Because every American has one of those things or has access to it. In Ohio, we will pay for you to have a free State ID. That is all this asks. Show one of those five forms of identification.

And then the misrepresentation about what this does on mail-in ballots, clearly some people don't know how it works. I can explain to you how it works.

When you have a mail-in ballot process, you have the ballot. You have the mail-in envelope. You have two envelopes. You have the mail-in envelope. Then you have a security envelope inside, in which your ballot is contained.

You put the information, whether that is a photo of your passport or the last four digits of your Social Security, on the outside of that envelope where no one can see your ballot. It validates that the ballot inside is legit, that it is from a qualified registered voter.

They remove that information and put the ballots on the other side in the presence of both a Democrat and a Republican, and then the ballots are counted. That is how it works, not that misrepresentation.

The problem is this is too simple. It is simple photo ID. You either believe that we need to know who is voting or you don't. And this simple amendment accomplishes that. The misrepresentation of how it works needed to be corrected.

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