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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let's see if we all agree on something. People should not be allowed to vote in elections illegally. Is that a radical idea? I think it is a basic idea. It ought to be against the law for somebody who is not legal to try to vote in America. It is. It is a felony. Well, how often does this happen that people who are ineligible to vote--like immigrants--try to actually vote? Well, let's think of this possibility.

In a 20-year period of time, we did a survey of all the people who were caught trying to vote illegally in the United States. Now, keep in mind that in each election cycle, 25 to 50 million Americans registered to vote. So in a 20-year period of time, think about all of the possibilities of people who are registering to vote and how many were actually illegal when trying to register to vote. How many do you think? Seven million, right? No. Seven hundred thousand? No. Seventy thousand? No. Seven hundred? No.

In a 20-year period of time, 77 people in America who are ineligible tried to vote--77 out of millions who are being registered every election cycle. So the Republicans said that is enough--77 is enough. Let's make everybody in America reregister--everybody. We will catch those 77 or anybody who looks like one.

You think to yourself: Why are you doing this to me? I have been legally voting in America for decades and nobody has questioned it, nor should they. Why do I have to go through a registration? Well, that's because we shouldn't have anybody illegal voting. I agree we shouldn't. But with 77 out of millions, OK, you want to reregister to vote? The bill before us says there is a simple process you need to follow. You have to show identification.

Well, that is easy. I just got on a flight the other day, and I had to show my ID. Everybody shows their ID. But what ID did you show? Your driver's license, right? That is what I use. I have got one of those upgraded driver's licenses we are all supposed to have that proves my identity. They accept it, put me on an airplane. Nobody says: He is really a terrorist. He showed me his driver's license.

But their bill doesn't include a driver's license. If you want to prove your identity, you have to show a passport. That is one way to do it. Well, how many people in America have a passport? About half. About half do. And if you don't have a passport and you want to get one just in time for the election, get busy.

The first thing you need to do is be prepared to write a check for $165 for your passport and then you go through the process. It may only be 4 weeks, but it may be longer depending on how much you want to pay. That is one way that you can prove your identity.

The other way is pretty simple--produce your birth certificate. Got one handy? What name does it show on there? For a lot of ladies, it shows their birth name--what their family name was when they were born. They have since gotten married. They may have a hyphenated last name. The names don't match up, so birth certificates don't work out that well.

Why are we going through this hassle? Seventy-seven people tried to vote who shouldn't have in 20 years. That isn't what it is really about. I used to work for a fellow in politics who used to say: For every political issue, there is a good reason and a real reason. A good reason is to stop fraud in voting. The real reason: turn this election upside down in November. And why do they want to turn it upside down? Because this President thinks he is going to lose.

Why would he think he is going to lose? He might have been listening to the ``Hungarian Rhapsody'' over the weekend; and if he was, the people of Hungary threw out Viktor Orban and put in the person who is on the left. Despite the campaigning of Vice President Vance and the support of President Trump, the rightwing candidate lost-- overwhelmingly lost in Hungary. The fear is the President's party is going to lose in November. The voters have the ultimate decision.

The point I am getting to is there are so many things we could be working on now, but to have Americans reregister to vote with questionable identification services accepted, with people writing out a $165 check so that they have a passport so that they can vote in November, this is all unnecessary and overdone. What we are telling you today is, there are more important things for us to worry about in America.

First and foremost, let's get these gasoline prices down. Filled your tank recently? Mr. President, $4 a gallon, $5 a gallon? In Illinois, you run into both. It means that families are going to put a lot more money into the tank than they did before because of this President's undeclared war--that is what we are facing.

If this Chamber continues to debate this misguided SAVE America Act, we also must reconcile with the President's recently signed Executive order--listen to this--an unlawful, unprecedented attempt to meddle in elections under the banner of integrity. Why? Because it is a blatant attempt by President Trump to exceed his constitutional authority by directing the administration to determine the eligibility of American citizens to vote. This is a reckless solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Mr. President, 77 voters over 20 years.

This Executive order shouldn't come as a surprise. As I mentioned, the President has long sought to sow distrust in the integrity of our elections. Last month--listen to this--the President wrote, and I am quoting him now:

Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.

Hmm. Interesting. Public records recently revealed the President himself voted by mail--What? I thought it meant cheating--in a recent special election for a State house district that includes Mar-a-Lago. So according to President Trump, vote-by-mail is cheating when the nurse who is working strict work hours or the elderly person with mobility issues uses it, but it is totally fine when he himself personally uses it to vote. The hypocrisy of this White House knows no bounds.

There are serious concerns that the processes and systems that Federal Agencies would employ to enforce the President's Executive order are filled with errors and produce unintended consequences.

Under this order the Department of Homeland Security--this is the President's Executive order--the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration would be responsible for determining a voter's citizenship status, empowering them at the Federal level to create a list of approved voters who may receive mail-in ballots; however, nearly a quarter of the Social Security Administration records lack any citizenship information.

They haven't thought this through. The same bad data already used by DHS's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements--or SAVE Program-- which has repeatedly misidentified American citizens as noncitizens. They make mistakes; they question whether you can vote. And people who are doing this legally and accurately shouldn't have to put up with it.

So they basically tested the President's SAVE Program to see how many people were actually not voting properly. They went to Boone County, MO. More than half of the voters that were flagged as ineligible turned out to be American citizens. The system doesn't work.

The President's Executive order also requires the Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to the administration's approved list of voters. So if you want to use a mail-in ballot--and more than half the people in Illinois do--you have got to pass muster and approval by the President first; your name has to clear the list. As a result, when eligible voters are misidentified as noncitizens, they will not receive a ballot to vote by mail and will be purged from the voter rolls essentially blocking access to the ballot.

The point I am getting to is this: This right to vote that we have in the United States is a key to our democracy. People died to give us this chance to be American citizens who have the right to vote and make up our minds about who would be sitting in this chair or that chair or the other chair. That is your decision, nobody else's. This President should not be able to take it away from you or complicate your life to the point where you have to start dreaming up identification services to go and reregister to vote. That is just wrong.

We are only a few months away from this election. We can't let this happen. The reason we are debating this issue on the floor today is to make sure that they don't hurry and pass this provision without thinking it through. Millions of people's opportunity to vote is at stake.

I come to the floor today to say: If you can't protect the right of Americans to vote however they want to vote in their conscience, then you have forgotten the very basics of our democracy.

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