A bill to require voters to provide photo identification as a condition of casting a ballot, and for other purposes.

Mr. President, I appreciate the passion that my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from the State of Nevada puts into her job, into scrutinizing legislation. I appreciate the concerns she has expressed.

Now, if I believed all of the things that she said, well, just about any of the things that she said, I would be concerned too. Fortunately, for all of us, the things that she is saying about this bill are either, in some instances, incomplete, leaving out material information to complete the picture, resulting in a much different impact than has been suggested or, in other cases, they are completely wrong.

Go back to a few first principles about what the bill actually does. There are two basic precepts in the bill, and the fundamental purpose of them is to make it easy to vote and harder to cheat.

We do that through two principled mechanisms in the bill: One requires proof of citizenship upon voter registration, and the other requires voter ID at the time and place of voting.

Now, as to the citizenship component, contrary to what was being suggested briefly for a moment, you know, I would almost like to believe from some of her remarks that this would require Americans en masse to go and immediately reregister.

Perhaps I misunderstood her on that part, if I did, my apologies, but just so that there is no ambiguity at all, so that we are very clear on what it is that it does and what it is that it does not do, it doesn't require mass reregistration. If you have already registered to vote, there is nothing about that that is going to invalidate your voter registration.

If you move to another State or otherwise have to register to vote as you would if you have to move, for example, from one State to another, then you will have to register at that point. But there is nothing about your existing registration that is going to be nullified just because this bill becomes law.

And on the point of the proof of citizenship, there has been a lot of misunderstanding, some of it in good faith. Although the bill itself has just been characterized by my friend and colleague from Nevada as ``beyond bad faith'' and ``vile,'' those are pretty sweeping accusations, and I don't ever make those lightly on any piece of legislation. If I do, I am prepared to back them up. Those can't be backed up here.

There is nothing about this that is in bad faith. There is nothing about this that is vile. This is dealing with a very commonsense problem, a problem that has been many decades in the making--decades in the making ever since, in some ways, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, NVRA, in 1993, the motor voter law.

At the time, it was understood that we could allow participating States--which nearly all States participate--to set up a process whereby voters could, while applying for a driver's license at the local DMV, also register to vote. After all, it involves some of the same information to establish who you are, whether you apply for a driver's license and also when you register to vote.

There are some things that have happened since then that have changed the landscape.

One of them has been that 20 years after the enactment of the NVRA, the Supreme Court, in a case called Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, concluded that the NVRA preempts out the States ability to even request any type of documentation or other proof of citizenship. Even if they are aware of circumstances suggesting that some would-be voters are, in fact, not citizens, they are prohibited from doing so.

Remember, all you have to do under the NVRA form is sign your name after checking a box, saying: Yes, I would like simultaneously to register to vote. So, if the States are then prohibited from even inquiring into citizenship--attempting to document it, to prove it, or otherwise--then there is no way to make this happen. As a result of that, it leaves open this open, gaping wound. We now have an estimated 30 million-plus noncitizens residing in this country.

That leads to another development that is relevant to this.

Over the years, there were differences of opinion between the States as to whether, to what extent, and in what circumstances to offer driver's licenses to noncitizens. In some cases, they would issue them to noncitizens as long as they were lawfully here. In other cases, they wouldn't issue them to any. Over the years, it has evolved to the point where, in nearly every State, you can get a driver's license as a noncitizen; and in 19 States, plus the District of Columbia, you can get a driver's license even if you are in the United States unlawfully.

So, in light of that fact and in light of the Supreme Court ruling in 2013 saying that the States, even if they have reason to believe some voters are not eligible because they are not citizens--and they can't look into it further because the NVRA, supposedly, preempted them out. As wrong as I think that ruling was as a matter of statutory interpretation, it is conclusive, and it stands to this day. Then you add to that the fact that we had an estimated 10 to 15 million people enter the country unlawfully between 2021 and 2025.

When you add all that up together--and it becomes even more startling--you realize that, in several States, they made a decision to allow noncitizens to vote in some local elections. In those cases, there is still voter registration that goes into that, and those States, along with the most blue States in America, have refused to enter into any kind of memorandum of understanding or otherwise cooperate or enter into a cooperative agreement with Federal Agencies to ascertain whether, to what extent, and under what circumstances there might be noncitizens registered to vote in their States, nor have they been willing to cooperate with the Federal authorities who manage the so-called SAVE database within the Department of Homeland Security. They haven't been willing to show them any methodology or any techniques that they use in those particular States that allow some noncitizen voting to occur in local elections. They have done nothing to show how it is that they separate out those voter registration files from the voter registration files of those who are eligible to vote in Federal elections. This creates a genuine vulnerability, one that we couldn't, in good faith, just overlook and pretend doesn't exist.

Let me just say that, insofar as people find concerns with the methods that we have allowed you to use when establishing your citizenship at the time of voter registration, if we have left out some form of documentation that should have been included to make this easier, let us know. I would love to consider that. But the truth is, we were very inclusive with it.

One important thing to keep in mind is that this is not the only circumstance in which Americans are routinely required to establish their citizenship. Perhaps the most familiar one on the books currently exists in the context of labor and employment.

Every time any American starts a new job with a new employer inside the United States, he or she is required to fill out a form called the I-9. When you fill out the I-9, if you are an American, then you have to prove that you are a citizen. It is a pretty rigid, fairly inflexible standard. One technique involves showing a U.S. passport establishing citizenship. Another involves a combination of a birth certificate, a photo ID, a Social Security card, et cetera, but that is about it. That is about as far as the options go.

There are additional options that we have worked into the SAVE America Act, including, for example, that subset of Real ID driver's licenses. Not all Real ID driver's licenses establish citizenship. Some of them do; some of them don't. If you happen to have one of those that establishes that, you can accept that. Certain Tribal membership cards are also eligible because they establish citizenship. Not all of them do. We try to identify those that do.

But most importantly--and this is the part that often goes overlooked--when we hear comments from the other side of the aisle in this Chamber, it is that there is a catchall provision dealing with all of these circumstances and any deficit that we may have left out.

It also deals with the problem of those who maybe can't find some other documentation. Let's say, if you are

someone who has gotten married and you have changed your name after getting married and you have got the rest of your documents but you can't find your marriage certificate, we have got you taken care of.

The same provision in the same part of the bill also deals with individuals who may have lost all of their documentation either because it was eaten by their dog or maybe their house burned down yesterday and all of their documents are missing or because they never had them to begin with or their crazy Aunt Madge, for no reason at all, scooped up all the documents, took them to the landfill, disposed of them, and nobody can find them--or maybe you just never had them to begin with for whatever reason. These things happen.

This bill doesn't cast any judgment about these people. This bill doesn't desire, in any way, shape, or form, to disenfranchise those people or to make them ineligible to register to vote. In fact, it makes it incredibly easy.

The provision to which I am referring to often goes overlooked. More or less, universally, it goes overlooked from across the aisle. It starts on page 12 of the House-passed SAVE America Act, which we are debating right now. The bill on the table, at page 12, line 22, and following through the text going on to the next page, makes clear that, even if you are missing some of your documentation or even all of it-- regardless of the reason--and you want to register to vote, you can still do so by writing out an affidavit. It establishes a process whereby a stock affidavit structure could be recommended by a committee that has long existed to help facilitate some of these election issues. Each State would then fine-tune the process that they would utilize in their State whereby the would-be voter writes out a sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, outlining the circumstances that give them citizenship--meaning, if they were born in the United States or are otherwise natural born citizens of the United States--perhaps if they were born outside but to U.S. citizen parents residing abroad at the moment--and were at the moment of their birth, by virtue of the circumstances of their birth, entitled to birthright citizenship as of the moment of their birth, then they are natural born citizens. They can establish those basic facts.

Then the burden falls upon the State to confirm or refute the truthfulness of those things. States have access to databases by which they can compare and contrast what the voter says in the affidavit, saying: Yes, I don't have my documents, but I am a citizen, and here is why and here are the relevant dates or date ranges to consider. It becomes the State's burden. No American citizen need shell out a single dollar.

This is one of the other arguments that I frequently hear raised: that not every American has a passport.

Well, yes, that is true.

They also go on to say: Well, a passport costs money--about 200 bucks.

That is also true.

Nobody should have to go out and get a passport just to vote. If they have got one, great--it makes it easy to establish citizenship--but you don't need to have one. You don't have to shell out a single dime to register to vote under this bill, nor do you have to go out and get duplicate documents or be left out in the cold because you can't find your documents or they never existed or you never had them or your house burned down. Whatever the case, this is taken care of; but this, too, was ignored by my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Nevada.

This question is startling because we hear over and over again how people are going to be left out in the cold. Yet every American who has ever had a job as an employee with an American company in the United States of America has had to establish their citizenship under standards using documents that are far less forgiving, far more rigid, far less flexible than what we allow here.

Now, look, it is theoretically possible--not likely but theoretically possible--that there are other ways of establishing citizenship not yet contemplated in this bill that would still do the job. If so, bring those ideas forward. Help us improve the bill. We would be happy to do it. I think we have made it as easy as we possibly could have. I would love to hear those ideas, but that is not what we are hearing. They are, instead, wanting to engage in scaremongering tactics in order to make people fear that they are suddenly going to be disenfranchised; that they are suddenly going to face what some are really disingenuously calling a poll tax and dishonestly suggesting that this will cost anyone money. There is not a reason for anyone to shell out a single dime, a single nickel, a single penny--or fraction thereof--in order to register to vote.

So, when we look at the proof of citizenship, it is simply not fair to point to any one of these documents in isolation and explain the reasons that some people might not have them, might never have had them, might have lost them, and why it is such a travesty that people will be disenfranchised without them unless they either spend money or spend days or weeks hunting down all the relevant documentation because there are other, easier ways to establish that. If you have got ways of making it even easier, while satisfying this demand that we make sure that only those who are citizens are voting, let's bring them forward.

It is curious, moreover, in getting back to the States--not just the States in which they currently allow lawful votes to be cast in some local elections by known admitted noncitizens. But beyond that, there is a wide range of States, mostly with Democrat Governors and/or Democrat legislatures, that are refusing to cooperate at all with Federal authorities to share anything about their voter registration files, to share the information to make sure that those voting in Federal elections are, in fact, U.S. citizens.

Now, look, this is part of the cooperative federalism model that is built into the Constitution itself. There are certain responsibilities that belong to the U.S. Government, and it is as equally important to respect those powers that are distinctively, unavoidably, necessarily, and by the text and structure of the Constitution, Federal. It is important to keep those in Federal hands just as it is important to reserve to the States the powers that are reserved to the States, not under Federal and not prohibited to the States by the Constitution. Both are equally important to federalism, and bad things happen when we disrespect either.

Under article I of the Constitution, we have the power--it is our authority, and I believe it is our duty--to set basic terms and conditions relevant specifically to these Federal elections--elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and elections to the U.S. Senate. Those are, after all, Federal races.

And which government is it--the State or local level?--that ascertains and has records sufficient to establish, confirm, or refute citizenship?

Well, it is this government.

In fact, one of the very first provisions of article I, section 8 of the Constitution--outlining Federal power by outlining the powers granted to Congress--involves laws dealing with, you know, immigration, naturalization, and citizenship. It is this government that is the only Government of the United States--no one State has the capacity to do that--to establish or refute the existence of citizenship.

So why are so many States that happen to be run by the Democratic Party refusing entirely to cooperate--to enter into memoranda of understanding or otherwise cooperate--with Federal Agencies whose job it is to go through and figure out who is and who is not a citizen for the purpose of voting in Federal elections?

That, too, is another reason we need the SAVE America Act. It is because this is chaos if we don't do that. If we don't do that, then our laws are dead letter. Our law is saying that only U.S. citizens may vote, and if a non-U.S. citizen votes in a Federal election, he or she has committed a serious felony offense.

People often will point to the dearth, the paucity, the rarity of instances in which voter fraud--particularly voter fraud based on noncitizen voting--has been detected, charged, fully prosecuted, and resulted in a conviction. Yes, these are few. These are very, very few overall that have happened, and there are reasons it is very few. When you have a system of laws in place, it makes it very easy to register to vote even for those who might not be citizens, and it makes it impossible for a

State to even inquire, even where actual doubts exist, as to someone's citizenship. You make it almost impossible to detect and very, very difficult to prosecute.

Voting is, moreover, something that happens in a finite time and place. Most of the time, by the time it all happens, the matter is moot, and so it can be difficult to move on.

This is why sometimes I will compare this to when people say that we don't need to put these procedures in place because it is already against the law for noncitizens to vote and therefore they don't vote and that is why it is so rare.

That is a little bit like saying we don't need laws that require liquor stores to make people show ID before they buy alcohol because we already have laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages to children. If we didn't have ID laws or record keeping requirements in place for such things, that, too, would be very, very difficult--close to impossible--to detect and enforce and prosecute and result in convictions.

So, look, this debate will continue. I look forward to hearing any contributions, any suggestions as to how we could make it better, more inclusive. But the status quo in which we simply pretend that this does not happen is untenable.

We already know, based on the handful of States that have started their own investigations, that there are thousands just in the last year or two alone. We learned of thousands of voter registration files that have existed that have involved noncitizens.

With as many noncitizens as have entered this country recently and the development of our laws, it would be folly, it would be morally irresponsible for us to assume this does not happen.

But let's keep our debate focused on truth, on facts, on what the bill actually says and not on what it doesn't say.

Mr. President, I appreciate the passion and the remarks provided by my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from Delaware.

I do feel the need to respond to a couple of things, and a couple of things that were said previous to that by the Senator from Michigan.

With regard to the Senator from Delaware, there are a number of claims made that are very serious; and because they are very serious, they need to be responded to immediately.

She used terms like ``poll tax,'' ``Jim Crow 2.0,'' talking about adding costs as if we are charging someone to be able to have ballot access to be able to vote, which would be a poll tax. We ended that some 60 years ago by a constitutional amendment. This is not that.

Not only are we not charging someone to vote, but we are not charging someone to register to vote; nor are the documentary requirements in place anything that would cost any individual any money at all. It would not cost them a single penny because even if you don't have every document that you need in order to establish citizenship, something that is already required by a whole host of other laws--familiar to most Americans would be in the labor and employment context, where every time you start a new job as an American citizen, in the United States as an employee, you have to fill out an I-9 form, and you have to provide a very specific set of documents to establish citizenship. You may do so with a U.S. passport establishing citizenship. If you don't have a U.S. passport, you may do so with a birth certificate, together with a photo ID. A Social Security card can also come into play, but it is a fairly limited set.

What we have established in this bill is far more flexible than that. We have added a bunch of other documents. We tried to be as expansive and as inclusive as humanly possible in order to do

that. And then we provided a failsafe--a failsafe that I have yet to hear any of my colleagues across the aisle refer to when making these very aggressive accusations that this is a poll tax, that this is Jim Crow 2.0, or that this is going to disenfranchise women or people of particular racial minorities. It is just not true.

They are ignoring the existence of the provision that begins on line 22, page 12, of the bill and continues onto the next page, which says that if for any reason or no reason at all you don't have the necessary documents--any of them or all of them; you have none of them--you can still handle this by an affidavit that you can write out, thus putting the burden on the State to confirm or refute the underlying facts establishing your citizenship, whether citizenship through natural born citizen status, by virtue of the circumstances at your birth, at the time of your birth, making you a citizen or the circumstances that led to your naturalization; you were a naturalized citizen. That does not cost anyone a single dollar, and it puts the burden on the State to track down the necessary background so that the State can certify you.

So these arguments are not only missing the point; they become aggressively wrong to the point of just being flatout false, demonstrably false.

So we can hear this over and over and over again, but it doesn't change the fact that, in the bill, nobody is charged a thing to vote-- not one person. And so when we hear about this being costly, that just isn't true.

Likewise, another comment was made by my colleague from Delaware referring to a vote-by-mail provision, referring to some more sweeping changes that are made in a separate amendment that are not part of this bill right now. This bill has two principal provisions. One deals with establishing proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration. The other deals with photo ID at the time of voting.

This one doesn't do that. Yes, one or more amendments have been filed that would expand that to include some significant restrictions on mail-in balloting. That is not what is being debated on the floor right now. I have no objection to anybody wanting to raise those now, given that the amendments have been filed and there has been some talk of this. But just to be clear, the bill on the floor doesn't contain those.

I also need to respond to a couple of the more egregious points that were made by the preceding Senator, the Senator from Michigan. Among other things, she repeated some of the same false accusations that this would somehow disenfranchise married women. It absolutely, emphatically, would not. In addition to making it very easy for someone who has all the other documentation but maybe doesn't have a marriage certificate backing up the name change or maybe they are missing all of them, again, you go back to page 12, line 22. Any person, whether they have changed their name or are missing some of their documentation or all of it, may establish it by affidavit, putting the burden back on the State elections official.

The Senator from Michigan also made some curious claims with regard to the Constitution, with regard to federalism and the relationship between States and the Federal Government. Among other things, she insisted that the Founding Fathers--those who wrote the Constitution, those who ratified it--were emphatic about the fact that they did not want, as she put it, the Federal Government running elections. Well, there is some truth to that, but her ultimate conclusion is 180 degrees opposite of what the Constitution says and what they did and what the words say, though it is very important for us to do this to make sure that we are talking about the same things.

So if you go to the Constitution--go to article I, section 4, clause 1. It doesn't talk about them because it doesn't need to talk about them, the States conducting their own elections for State offices. That goes without saying that the States are in charge of that. But it does talk--in article I, section 4, clause 1--about the fact that the State governments will be in charge of setting up rules and regulations governing the conduct of elections for Federal officials. And it also says, right after that, in the very same sentence, ``but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations,'' and that is what we are doing here.

Because these involve Federal offices, we have the authority to set important terms and conditions specifically for Federal offices. It is not that we are encroaching on any constitutional power; this is our power. It may lay dormant insofar as we choose not to exercise it. But it is not currently dormant. In fact, we legislated on a number of occasions; and there are at least four or five, maybe six major pieces of existing Federal law that deal specifically with the States' conduct of Federal elections, separate and apart from another very serious Federal criminal penalty that makes it a felony for a noncitizen to vote in a U.S. election.

So in all these respects, the Congress can, it may, it is expressly authorized to legislate, and it has indeed legislated. Among other things, it legislated with the NVRA, passed in 1993.

It is the NVRA specifically and the manner in which it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court and implemented that necessitates these provisions--specifically, the citizenship provisions--of the SAVE America Act because but for the Supreme Court's ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona in 2013, a case decided some 20 years after the NVRA was enacted by Congress in 1993, the Court in that case said the States may not even inquire into someone's citizenship, may not require proof of it even where they suspect that some voters might be noncitizens.

Now, that interpretation was wrong. It was contrary to the text, to the structure, to the original public meaning of that statute. It was wrong, but it is nonetheless conclusive. It is a majority opinion of the Supreme Court. It hasn't been overturned. And that is why this is necessary.

So to call this a federalism problem, to call this an overreach by the U.S. Government into the exclusive domain of the States, is literally not true. Why? Well, because in the first place, the Constitution itself makes it Federal, and it is necessarily Federal. I would add to that that that is even more important here because this bleeds into another one of the Federal Government's exclusive powers and exclusive abilities; namely, the ability to identify and ascertain the citizenship of any American citizen.

That is not the role of the States, nor do the States have the comprehensive databases that the Federal Government does have. The Federal Government has the ability, conclusively, to determine whether or not somebody is a citizen. The States do not, and that is yet another important reason for us to make that determination.

It is also relevant that this is where we get into trouble with a number of these blue States--the Democrat Governors and Democrat legislature States--that are refusing even to talk to the Federal authorities who run the SAVE database within the Department of Homeland Security.

Remember, it is against the law for a noncitizen to vote in a Federal election, and that is why we have these laws and these systems and this database, the SAVE database, already set up. Yet a number of these blue States--a whole lot of them--are refusing even to talk to Federal authorities, even to share with them what, if anything, that they are doing to make sure that noncitizens are not voting in U.S. elections. This has become a problem of especially great concern in recent years given that, in some States--a handful of at least four or five States and the District of Columbia--now have in place systems where, in some local elections within their State's jurisdiction, noncitizens are openly, by State law, allowed to vote in those elections.

Therefore, when they register to vote, they have a voter registration file. Basic questions have been asked of them: How do you differentiate those who are noncitizens who have registered to vote in your State, and how do you make sure that they don't get ballots to vote in a Federal election; for example, for a U.S. House of Representatives race or a U.S. Senate race?

They have refused to answer the question. They have refused to cooperate. They have hidden these details. These are important details, details that we have constitutional authority,

a moral obligation, and a legal obligation to look into to make sure that our laws are faithfully executed, and they refuse utterly to cooperate. If that is not chilling, I don't know what is.

My friend and colleague from Michigan also implied that there is a--I don't know--some sort of de minimus, marginal concern, in her State and every other State, about noncitizens registering to vote.

Oh, it happens every once in a while. Somebody gets in there. We remove them.

But let's remember--I looked up some articles on this. I have one right here from a publication called the Michigan Bridge. One of the ways that they found a handful of noncitizens registered to vote was in a sort of haphazard way. They found 15 just by doing something very simple. They compared a list of people who had gone into court after being summoned for jury duty. Jury duty, remember, typically turns on what they call the wheel, a random selection from among registered voters in the jurisdiction. You are called up if you are a registered voter, randomly, to serve on jury duty.

Periodically, in Michigan and in many other States, people will show up for jury duty. There are all kinds of tricks that people use to try to avoid jury duty if they don't want to. This one may or may not be a trick in some circumstances, and in many circumstances it wasn't. People were truthfully saying: I am not a citizen; therefore, I may not, must not, cannot, will not serve as a juror.

So somebody came up with the idea: Let's compare a list of--I don't know--250 or so who happened to have made that argument; then they compared them against Michigan's voter registration database. And they found that at least 15 of those individuals were noncitizens who had registered to vote. That is a far cry from saying that there are only 15 noncitizens registered to vote in the State of Michigan, when you consider the haphazard, random way in which they found this out. It would suggest not only that there could be more but that there likely are a lot more because most people aren't getting called in for jury duty, and most who are aren't necessarily invoking this defense of: I can't serve; I won't serve; I may not serve because I am not a U.S. citizen.

Finally, with regard to the federalism point, I find it very curious that this argument continues to surface, and it surfaces, in particular, from our Democratic colleagues. And the reason I say that is that, all of a sudden, they are very concerned about federalism, about maintaining the sanctity of the distinction between that which is State authority and that which is Federal.

That is important to me. I focus on a few things more than that. I think the core structural provisions of the Constitution--the vertical protection that we call federalism and the horizontal protection that we call separation of powers--are as important as any other feature in the Constitution. And when we deviate from those, we cause all kinds of ripples downstream. So I am very sensitive to these issues. I want to avoid any semblance of trampling on States' sovereign authority. This, sir, is not that--and especially when we hear this from those who, just a few years ago, during the Congress that ranged between January 3, 2021, and January 3, 2023, in which both Chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats and we had a Democratic President, President Biden.

During that time, they supported legislation known as H.R. 1. Now, if you want to see a Federal takeover of elections, H.R. 1 was that. It was vast. It was sweeping. It covered all sorts of things that the Federal Government has no business taking over in elections. Among other things, it would have designated every single voting jurisdiction in the entire United States of America, regardless of what part of the country they were in, regardless of what, if any, history they may have had with past de facto or de jure discrimination or segregation of their State, subjected them all to preclearance; meaning, anytime they passed any law affecting the way votes were cast, precincts were drawn or otherwise, they would have to go to a Democratic political appointee inside the Department of Justice to seek a ``Mother, may I,'' an advance blessing from the Federal sovereign, before they could make those changes.

That is a violation of federalism, and that is something that, last I checked, every Democrat who now serves in the Senate who was here at the time supported. So I am sorry. I am surprised that they would make a federalism argument now in reference to a bill that focuses solely, exclusively on powers that the Federal Government does, in fact, have.

And in fact, the only reason this bill is necessary is because of existing Federal law--the way it has been interpreted and the way that it is being implemented. That is the only reason we need any of this. That is not a federalism problem; that is inappropriate exercise of Federal power.

We do just as much violence to federalism when we deny to the Federal sovereign the ability to exercise Federal power as we do when we do the same to the States.

Madam President, I want to thank my friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from Ohio, for his observations, for his insights on this. This is one of many true talents we have in the Senate. He is particularly well qualified in this area, given his experience in the State of Ohio with mastering the election laws of that State and the Federal election laws that overlap with State election laws.

I am not sure there is anyone in the Senate, currently or who has ever served here, who has a greater knowledge of these laws and the ways that they intersect.

For the same reasons articulated by the Senator from Ohio, I think this is an exceptionally good idea. It is not every bill where it makes sense to separate out a provision, try to pass that provision on its own, separate from the rest of the text of the bill, but this is one of those instances where it makes sense.

Don't get me wrong. Neither I nor the Senator from Ohio are suggesting that we still don't need the rest of the SAVE America Act. That is not our point.

The point is that these are separately divisible such that they could be enacted separately, and insofar as there is a greater degree of consensus with regard to the voter ID component of the SAVE America Act than there are with regard to the citizenship components, it makes sense for us to get this done now.

Let's pass it. Let's pass it right now. Let's pass it unanimous consent. Let's make this law, and then we can proceed back to deal with the rest of the issues within the SAVE America Act.

This is what progress looks like. This is what consensus building looks like.

And I thank my friend from Ohio for raising this.

Look, no matter how you feel about the rest of the provisions of the bill, it is not too much to ask somebody to show who they are when they show up on voting day. That provision is very simple.

Let's get this passed. Let's get it done right now.

Will the gentleman yield for a question?

--inaccuracy on the bill.

No. No. It is not one. It is many. I am going to focus on--

If you read the text at the beginning on page 12, line 22, which makes clear--

I am asking a question, sir. Are you not willing--

You yielded.

Thank you, Madam President.

May I be recognized after Senator Merkley, Madam President?

Madam President, I thank the Presiding Officer for the recognition.

I spent last weekend in Grand Junction. I am happy to be here tonight on the floor with my colleague from Colorado John Hickenlooper. I spent last weekend in Grand Junction, in our State, on Colorado's Western Slope. And my conversations with young parents and with families just starting out, I think--I would hope--would be familiar to many colleagues that are here. We discussed the price of housing, which has surged over 80 percent over the last 10 years in Colorado; the price of healthcare, which is ratcheting higher and becoming impossible for families to afford, not just in Colorado but all across our country; the cost of childcare, which is making it harder for families to live any semblance of a middle-class life--families that are working two jobs just to pay the mortgage can't even afford childcare when they are working with those two salaries--and our inability as a nation, as a State, to prepare our kids for the dynamic and potentially hugely unforgiving economy they are about to enter. This is a tough economy that we are in today, and tariffs and now gas prices haven't helped.

Last week, colleagues, I met with a food bank from El Paso County, who told me that they stay open late--listen to this, U.S. Senate. This food bank in El Paso County said that they stay open late 1 day a week to have teachers' night so the teachers that have worked all week teaching children have the opportunity to come to that food bank in the evening to get food to feed their own children at home.

I doubt very much that there is a living American who can remember a decade in this country when we took it for granted that teachers would have to go to a food bank to feed their own children.

Can you imagine, in the 1950s, in this Chamber, if it were known that people teaching in America--in inner-city America or in the suburbs of our great cities--that the pay wasn't satisfactory, so they had to go to a food bank after work?

And that is happening to working people all over our country, people that are in what we think of as traditional middle-class lives, because of how savage this economy has been, because of the affordability crisis that, I will say, has been with us for decades in this country but the current administration, the Trump administration, has made far worse and now is making it even worse with what they are doing to energy prices because of their unauthorized war in the Middle East.

I wish we were working on that affordability crisis today. I wish we were working on building an economy that worked for everybody, not just the people at the very top.

This is a choice that is being made by President Trump and the majority in this Senate, the Republicans, who have spent the entire week fighting for a bill that will make it harder for family members and for aging parents and for their cousins to vote or to register to vote. That is what they have chosen to use the floor of the U.S. Senate to do. It is shameful. It is shameful both because it is ignoring the affordability crisis that our families are facing, but it is shameful because there is no excuse for taking away the right to vote from people all over the United States of America.

These are people who are supposed to believe in States' rights, believe in the ability of States to be able to run their own affairs. And Donald Trump--President Trump--and the Republican's SAVE America Act rewrites the way we run elections in America completely. It rips up the processes all over the United States of America at the local level that county clerks and election officials understand. It requires the Federal Government to have access to the voter rolls, a shocking thing from the party that is supposed to be about States' rights.

And it creates yet another unfunded mandate for States and for local communities. There is no money in here to fund the stuff that is in this bill.

Most troublingly, it imposes new document requirements for voter registration that many Americans do not have or do not have access to. Madam President, 146 million Americans don't have a passport. Almost 70 million women do not have a birth certificate that matches their real name. That should be self-evident to anybody in this Chamber, but it is ignored completely by the people who wrote this legislation.

Over 8 million Americans have moved to a different State within the last year, and an average of over 17 million will have moved counties. Many of them--probably most--do not have the paperwork that this bill requires. That doesn't make any sense. These people aren't trying to evade the law. These people are availing themselves of their right as an American citizen to move from place to place in this Nation.

This radical legislation actually requires people to register in- person, banning common methods, as we heard from the Senator from Alaska who is standing up for her State as she always does.

We should be supporting her. We should be supporting Alaska's way of running their elections rather than imposing Donald Trump's corrupt way of running his elections.

This radical legislation actually requires people to register in- person, banning common methods of registration--online registration, through the mail, or automatically at the DMV.

That is how 94 percent of Americans register to vote. Many of them are seniors. Many of them live in rural communities. I would like to see the majority party in this Chamber come to western Colorado and try to take--rather than having this fake filibuster--try to actually take mail-in ballots from the people of western Colorado.

I would like to see that. They would avail themselves of any means necessary to prevent that from happening.

The SAVE America Act would set our voter registration process back decades. If you are one of the more than 60 million Americans who live in rural areas, you might now need to drive hundreds of miles to stand in line at a local election agency.

If you live overseas, you will have to fly back. If you don't have a passport, you better have your birth certificate. If you don't have your birth certificate or you changed your name like tens of millions of married women across this country living in the 21st century, you will have to provide additional documents and sign affidavits.

All of this will--

I will not yield. I will not yield. I have waited an hour--

You will have your time.

Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, I will yield for the one inaccuracy you think that I have--

Well, then you will have to wait. Then you will have to wait. Then you will have to wait.

Madam President, I haven't yielded the floor.

I didn't. I said I would yield for one inaccuracy. That is all I said.

I am not willing to hear it. I am not willing to hear it. I will hear it after--

I don't believe I did yield.

If I did yield--

I will exercise my right to withdraw.

Madam President, all of this will have to be done in-person. Kansas tried to implement its own State-level version of President Trump's SAVE America Act in 2013 with disastrous results.

This law, which included citizenship documentation requirements, ended up blocking the voter registration of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who are otherwise eligible to vote. That represented about 12 percent of all Kansas voter registrations during that period.

Even Kansas Republican secretary of state who championed the bill when he was a State legislator has warned against the bill now before us. He has warned against the bill now before us saying: It didn't work out so well.

And Kansas law was blocked by a Federal court, as it should have been.

If we pass this bill, we will have now two different election--Madam President, can I have the floor without the interruption of my colleague from Utah?

If you guys are done, I would like to--Madam President, I would like--

Madam President, if we pass this bill, we will now have two different election regimes in this country--one for Federal elections and one for local elections. That is insane in and of itself and begs the question: Why does Donald Trump want to pass this bill?

He wants to run roughshod over our election system because he claims there is an epidemic of voter fraud caused by undocumented people voting. That is at the heart of his claim, and that has been the heart of his claim throughout two Presidential elections and this Presidency.

The problem is that he is blowing up our elections, and there is no evidence to support his claim of fraud. The fact is that even his own Department of Homeland Security used by many States to verify voter citizenship returned .04 percent of voter participants as noncitizens.

A bipartisan policy center analysis of the Heritage Foundation's debate of noncitizen voting found only 77 cases in 25 years of nearly 2 billion votes cast.

And individual States tell us the same. We heard it earlier tonight. Last year, Utah performed a citizen review of its entire voter registration list. There was no noncompliance. After an assessment of more than 2 million registered voters, Utah identified only 1 confirmed instance of noncitizen registration and no instances of noncitizen voting.

We definitely have a crisis in our democracy and in our economy and they are related. Over the decades, we have suffered through an economy that has reduced economic mobility and hollowed out America's middle class.

At the same time, we have built a tax system that disproportionately benefits those who own assets and perpetuates the inequalities that accumulated with generational wealth, a tax system that allows Donald Trump and Elon Musk to pass their stock portfolios onto their heirs without paying a dollar on the gains that they have accrued.

That is a crisis. The lack of economic mobility is a crisis, and I am sorry to say that that tax regime, that has been done in a bipartisan manner. Republicans definitely more than Democrats have pursued trickle-down economics, but Democrats and Republicans both played a role creating an unfair system that reinforces our desperate lack of economic mobility and concretizes our deep and growing economic inequality.

At the same time, this body has failed to make important investment in our infrastructure while saddling future generations with ever- greater amounts of debt, debt whose service costs will now predictably take up $1 trillion of our annual budget in interest--more than we spend on Medicare or defense, a higher share of the economy than at any point in American history.

We are in a dangerous moment at home and abroad. There is no doubt about that. And at the same time as Coloradans and Americans across the country are struggling to get by, as teachers are going to those food banks to feed their own children, when confidence in our institutions and in our politics is at record lows, and we have a campaign finance system that gives inordinate power to the wealthiest.

Tonight is not the night to go through how wrongly decided Citizens United was, how wrongly decided, how ignorant that decision was of the way politics actually works in this country.

But let me just point out to you that in 2008, before Citizens United was decided, the top 100 individual donors contributed a combined $80 million--$80 million in 2008. That is what the 100 donors contributed.

In 2024, the top 10 donors--the top 10 donors--contributed over $1.2 billion. Spending by outside groups has exploded from a total of $574 million in 2008 to almost $4.5 billion in that last election, an increase of 8 times--8 times.

No one could possibly believe that the amount of money--that that amount of money is helping our democracy. Let me tell you something: Does the SAVE Act do anything about that corrosiveness in our politics? Of course not. Of course not.

And let me tell you something that was a fatal flaw in the Supreme Court's decision while I am here. Maybe the pages, when they are Senators, will be able to fix this problem because we sure aren't going fix it.

At the end of that--at the end of their decision, they said: By the way, if the Congress ever passes a constitutional regulation of--in their words--constitutional regulation of the outside spending in our political system, we will, of course, have to give that the proper analysis, the proper--excuse me--the required constitutional analysis.

Of course, nobody will ever pass that around here because the billionaires that are writing checks to these elections just have to rattle the pennies in their pockets and the change in their pockets and threaten to run a primary against anybody in this place, and the bill won't be brought.

And then there is a profound corruption of inaction that sets in as a result to our legislative branch both here and in the House of Representatives.

Does the SAVE America Act address any of this? Of course not. Instead, Donald Trump and the Republicans have brought to the floor a bill to make it harder for ordinary American citizens to register and to vote.

Fundamentally, the SAVE America Act is an astonishing Federal overreach in search of a scandal that doesn't exist and would have the effect of undermining fraud-free elections like we have in Colorado.

Colorado was the first State in America to complete a risk-limiting audit, the gold standard for verifying the integrity of election results.

It entails counting and comparing a representative sample of ballots to the reported result. To prevent hacking, none of our voting machines are connected to the internet. We require county clerks to use two- factor authentication to access voter databases.

Once a vote is cast, a bipartisan team of election judges in each county

checks every signature against the copy in the database for any discrepancies. All election officials and judges with access to the tabulation process must first pass a Colorado Bureau of Investigation background check. And Colorado has spent years--years--implementing top-tier cyber security measures and audits to prevent hackers from interfering in our electoral process.

We should be modeling our Federal system off the gold standard framework we have in Colorado, a national leader in terms of voter access, election security, and might I say, voter turnout.

Instead, the SAVE America Act would eliminate--eliminate, outlaw-- many of the practices that Colorado has adopted to keep our elections safe and increase voter confidence.

How dare you?

It would end Colorado's mail-in and online voter registration system. It would force Colorado to increase the security risks of our voter data and routinely purge voter rolls. It would push experienced county clerks and election workers out of the field. It would remove the possibility of using a number of State IDs when going to vote. It would create two tiers of voting for Federal and State elections and possibly upend our mail-in ballot system itself by requiring that every Coloradan proactively request a ballot and resubmit proof of ID alongside their ballot request in every election.

Colorado already has ID requirements when casting a ballot. We already have among the cleanest voter rolls in this country. We don't need Donald Trump to corrupt our process. Even the Heritage Foundation ranked us as second in the Nation in 2020 for clean lists--the Heritage Foundation.

We have one of the most secure election systems of any State in our country, and because Coloradans have trust in our elections, we have some of the highest voter turnouts in the country.

But the SAVE America Act--the so-called SAVE America Act--does not bring our system anywhere close to what we enjoy in Colorado. Instead it turns into a dark but familiar pattern in American history.

And I am sorry to say, but this bill before us is just another in a long line of legislative efforts to limit the franchise in this country, to add new restrictions and additional obstacles.

Nobody wants voter fraud. I do not want voter fraud. I come from a State where there is no voter fraud. We set the gold standard, in part because of the work my colleague John Hickenlooper did when he was Governor of Colorado.

This is a pretext. This is a pretext to invade our elections.

I know my colleague from Texas wants to speak. So I am trying to skip ahead here.

We have had a fight over many, many, many years in this Nation to broaden the franchise, from the very beginning, and that fight was won by men and women who marched to demand that their vote count equally in this country, no matter what color they were, no matter where they lived in our Nation, no matter what education or religion their parents had or whether their parents were immigrants to this country.

In this modern era, when one of the real fundamental risks to our democracy is the American people's loss of confidence in our institutions, including our voting process and elections themselves, we now have a group of people who are trying to create political advantage for themselves by restricting the vote in the name of addressing a mythical voter fraud that does not exist.

The American people will not be fooled by this. They will be angry about this, as they should. The American people have come to rely on vote-by-mail, and registration by mail, and early voting. They believe our system is fraud free, and where it is not, the State should address it.

Our citizens have come to rely on having the franchise extended through modern technology and modern practices. Nobody I know in Colorado has said they doubt the validity or veracity of our voting system--no matter what party they are in or whether they live in rural Colorado or urban Colorado--or the importance of the ability to register online, or for students and others to have the benefit of same-day registration.

I wish everybody in this country had the benefit of that. Those are ways of encouraging participation in our democracy. None of us want fraud.

None of us want fraud. And there is no fraud. The good news is there is certainly no evidence in Colorado or across the country that that fraud exists.

And this is the most sweeping effort, make no mistake, by Donald Trump, by the Republicans here in the Senate, to ``nationalize our elections,'' to undermine voter confidence, and inject new chaos into a system he is terrified will turn against him; to make life harder for Americans that he thinks voted against him, and probably will make it harder for the people who voted for him.

Since the President's return to office, he has focused relentlessly on false narratives of voter fraud. He has issued Executive orders that are unenforceable. He has sued States that have refused to comply and threatened to take control of the electoral process in States he views as political enemies.

He has sent Federal agents from the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence to seize ballots in Georgia, election records in Arizona, and voting machines in Puerto Rico.

His Justice Department has sued 30 States, including Colorado, demanding sensitive, unredacted voter data to create a national voter database. And President Trump has pursued a longstanding and inexplicable grievance against mail-in voting, which he falsely claims can be used to commit mass amounts of fraud. It is simply not true. It is simply not true.

He sees it, in his own words--the SAVE America Act--as a method to ``guarantee the midterms'' this November. He sees, in his own words, the SAVE America Act as a method to ``guarantee the midterms'' this November. And that is why they put this on this floor now? I hope not. I really hope not.

This is an election bill that distorts our shared understanding of what free and fair elections should look like, and Coloradans want no part of it.

This legislation, by the way, is wildly unpopular in America. We have received thousands of calls and letters in opposition to the SAVE America Act. We received over 7,000 last month alone.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that these constituent letters be printed in the Record.

The Founders understood the gravity of the debate before them about who could and who could not claim the franchise. The authors of Federalist No. 52 explain that ``the definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government.''

They wrestled with this question. They wrestled with this question. They debated it. And, ultimately, they excluded the great number of subjects who were newly made Americans, but, nevertheless, were denied, as those at Seneca Falls wrote, ``the first right of citizen.''

This was the founding generation's great mistake--this and the enslavement of Americans. And we have spent centuries working to rectify it--centuries working to rectify it.

Should the SAVE America Act pass, we will fall further away from realizing this country's promise and retread the familiar errors of the past. We should reject that vision of our democracy. We should reject that return to a history that we have fought so hard to free ourselves from. Coloradans and all Americans deserve better than this.

I yield the floor and look forward to hearing my colleague from Texas.

Mr. President, I rise to join my Democratic colleagues today in opposition to the SAVE America Act, which is really just President Trump's and Republican leadership's shameful and disingenuous attempt to interfere with our elections and make it harder for American citizens to vote.

Republican leadership has given two reasons why they want to pass this bill. I have been listening to the floor debates. I have been talking to some of my colleagues, and I want to address some of the arguments on the other side that I have heard because they are just not true.

The first is that illegal immigrants are voting in our elections, and that is why we need the SAVE America Act. The second is that it is just common sense that this is just a voter ID bill, and that is all we need. Now, I am going to break down these two things.

I want to make it very clear from the outset, this bill is not just a voter ID bill. This is not a voter ID bill. This is voter suppression at its worst. I want people to keep that in mind.

Let me jump to the first argument.

I want to make something very clear: The United States of America has the most safe and secure elections in the world. It has been proven over and over again, including in my State in Nevada.

I know. I served as Nevada's attorney general for two terms. That is 8 years. And I helped prosecute voter fraud. In fact, I was part of an election fraud task force in my State, with the secretary of state and our Federal law enforcement, the FBI, every election season.

In those 8 years, I can count on two hands how many cases of voter fraud we found, and they were all prosecuted.

Now, Democrats don't oppose this bill because it would stop noncitizens from voting. In fact, we completely agree that noncitizens should not be voting. That is why it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote and why every State has a process to ensure people who register to vote are citizens.

The bill that we are talking about today is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist. As you have heard my colleagues say, the conservative Heritage Foundation has a database of noncitizens voting that shows there have only been 77 cases between the years 1999 and 2023--77 cases in 25 years of noncitizens voting.

And why do we know that? Because they were caught and prosecuted. And for each one of those individuals, they were held accountable by the authorities.

In Nevada--in Nevada--a local news investigation found that out of the more than 7 million votes cast in our elections in Nevada since 2008, the number of votes cast by noncitizens was exactly 2--not 2,000, not 200, 2.

So if you want more proof that this is a massively overblown problem, last year President Trump's own Justice Department opened an investigation over alleged voter fraud in Nevada during the 2020 Presidential election. President Trump lost the State of Nevada in that election by more than 33,000 votes that year. But what did President Trump's Department of Justice find?

Well, the investigation closed this January without a single charge of voter fraud. Now, I personally find it curious that there was no investigation in my State into fraud during the 2024 Presidential election, where President Trump won--only the election that he lost-- but so be it.

I am here to tell you we have the most safe and secure elections in the world, and noncitizens are not voting wholesale in them and out there running rampant. We know the data. And not only do we know the data, but we have it because they have been successfully investigated and prosecuted when, in the extremely rare cases, they are caught.

So that is the first argument that my colleagues are saying: There are so many noncitizens voting, and we need to solve it.

That is not true.

Here is the second argument. Republican leadership is saying that we need to pass the SAVE America Act because it is just a voter ID bill. It is just a voter ID bill, and everybody shows ID no matter what they do. You have to show ID to drive. This is the same thing.

Well, let me just tell you, this could not be further from the truth. The reason this bill is so outrageous is because it goes far beyond showing just a driver's license or voter ID when you vote. It is about voter suppression.

Here is how the SAVE America Act hurts our elections. One, it mandates that the Department of Homeland Security, a Federal Department, collect voters' personal information and store it in a Federal database that has a history of deleting eligible voters from the voter rolls for no reason. Two, this legislation makes U.S. citizens jump through unnecessary, burdensome, and sometimes impossible hoops when registering to vote. And three, it effectively ends widely popular methods of registering to vote to discourage Americans from making their voices heard in our elections, which is a constitutional right.

So let me break those down for you. First, the SAVE America Act would force States to turn over all their voter data to the Department of Homeland Security SAVE Program. This is a notoriously unreliable program designed to identify problem voters and then kick them off the voter rolls.

This program is not accurate. It is not effective, and it has already disenfranchised hundreds of perfectly eligible voters.

What does that mean? It means that Americans who have already been determined by their States to be citizens and who have potentially been voting in their States for years or even decades without an issue-- without an issue--could be removed by the Department of Homeland Security, flagged by the Department of Homeland Security for removal from their State's list of eligible voters. And when they show up to vote, on the day, where they have voted for so many years, at the same location where they have always gone, they will be turned away for no reason.

We are already seeing this happen. There are States that have entered into agreements with the Department of Homeland Security to give them access to their voters' private information. Nevada is not one. And we have evidence of American citizen voters being misidentified as noncitizens in those States.

If this bill goes into effect, who knows how many Americans are going to be kicked off the list of eligible voters of their State, only to show up on election day and be told they need to reregister and produce numerous documents proving they are citizens.

Let me take it one step further. The SAVE America Act mandates that States need to remove eligible voters off their list if they have not presented the documents mandated under the bill, under this legislation, to prove they are U.S. citizens.

Now, keep this in mind. I am going to walk you through this. You have been voting in your State for the last 30 years, 25 years, same location, your library, wherever you go, you are voting. All of a sudden you are being told by your State: Sorry, you were flagged by the Department of Homeland Security. You can't vote on the day of an election.

And now you say to yourself: OK. I don't understand this, but how do I reregister? What do I have to do? You now have to either have a passport or a birth certificate--a passport or a birth certificate--and you have to go in person now to reregister to vote.

Literally--literally--anybody because of the Department of Homeland Security having this data can be kicked off the voter rolls. It is a problem, and that is the first step for inhibiting and putting a barrier in front of people for their right to vote.

I am here to tell you this is the challenge of this bill and why Donald Trump and the Republicans are here. They are putting barriers in front of people to make it harder for them to vote. Why? Why?

It shouldn't be that way. This bill requires Americans registering or reregistering to vote to provide documents to prove you are a citizen, documents that thousands of Americans just don't have access to. If you are a victim of DHS's erroneous voter roll purge and need to reregister to vote or if you simply want to register to vote for the first time, this bill would require a document that confirms that you were born in the United States or that you are a naturalized citizen.

Does a driver's license alone do that? No. Neither does the REAL ID from my State and most States. That is not enough. Even presenting your birth certificate wouldn't be enough to prove citizenship. Americans would be required to present their birth certificate and a valid government-issued photo ID card, like a driver's license.

Now, a passport would be enough to prove citizenship, but half of Americans don't have a passport--half--and that is true in Nevada too. Roughly, 56 percent of Nevadans--56 percent of Nevadans--have a passport. That means nearly half of the people in my State would have to have their birth certificate or other documentary proof of citizenship on hand.

And if they wanted to get a passport, it would cost $165. That is not an amount most Nevadans can shell out, especially with prices so high these days.

I hope, if you are one of the 146 million Americans who doesn't have an up-to-date passport, that you have your birth certificate and another government-issued photo ID readily available.

But if you are among the 21 million Americans who don't, maybe because they don't drive or they simply don't have a birth certificate, then Republicans who support this bill want to tell you that you can't register to vote.

Now, let's dive into this part of the bill a little bit more. The documentary proof of citizenship required under this bill is just simply nonsensical. For example, let's say you are a Native American; you show up to an election office ready to register to vote. They have their Tribal ID in tow. That wouldn't be enough for them. That Tribal ID would have to be an enhanced version issued by the Department of Homeland Security, which most Tribal members don't have or, if their Tribal ID was issued by their Tribe, it would have to display that they were born in the United States, which many don't.

Let me give you another example. Say you are a servicemember in our military and you take your military identification card to register to vote, but under this bill, unless you have also presented your U.S. military record of service showing you were born in the United States or your birth certificate, you don't have the proper documentation. These restrictive portions of the bill would create barriers for all kinds of eligible Americans looking to follow the rules and just to register to vote so they can exercise their constitutional right.

Keep in mind, this is not just for new voters registering for the first time. If you have to update your registration and your name doesn't match the documents that you present, this bill would make you take additional steps to prove your citizenship.

For example, if you are 1 of the 69 million married women who has changed your last name, but you don't have an up-to-date passport and you are updating your registration to vote because you moved, you might have to go through this onerous process just to prove who you are. If your name doesn't match in all of the documentation you provided, you would have to provide more documents or sign an affidavit just to vote.

If you can't get all that done, sorry, you don't get to vote. That is what President Trump and Republican leadership want. Americans' right to vote is guaranteed by the Constitution. We should not be making it harder for Americans to participate in our elections. It is bad enough that this bill has an unnecessary documentary proof of citizenship requirement, what is even worse is that if you want to register to vote, you have to present that proof of citizenship in person.

That means nobody would be able to register to vote online or by mail. Think about the implications of this. Voter registration drives that encourage Americans to participate in our elections would grind to a halt. That would impact Black and Latino voters the most as well as those who didn't graduate from high school. Those groups are most likely to rely on third-party voter registration.

Many citizens in Nevada register to vote at our DMV. If you think the lines are long at the DMV now, just think of the chaos and confusion that this legislation would require.

And if you live in a rural area, like many Nevadans, and your nearest county clerk's office is hours away, you have to figure out how to get there in order to register to vote.

Nevada only has two urban counties, Clark, where Las Vegas is, and Washoe County, where Reno is. There are 15 counties in Nevada that are entirely rural, and they have about 240,000 active registered voters in them.

If you are a rural Nevadan and you have to register to vote or update your registration, Republicans who support this bill want you to spend a day off of work trying to do it. It is just cruel.

Let me give you an example. In Nye County, NV, someone who lives on or near Duckwater Reservation would have to travel roughly 270 miles round trip to show an election official at the Nye County clerk's office their proof of citizenship.

Now, that is one of the longest roundtrip journeys across the country to register to vote, and this is in one State. It is no wonder that in 2022, only 5.9 percent of Americans registered to vote in person.

Why? Because it is inconvenient. It is unnecessary when we have already proven, effective safeguards in place to ensure you are who you are, when you say you are, when you get there to register to vote.

But this bill would force all Americans to take that burden on if they want to exercise their constitutional right to vote, and it is just absurd. Not to mention, if it were to pass, this legislation, the bill, would go into effect immediately--immediately--without giving States any additional resources to implement these complex provisions.

Most bills that significantly alter our systems give plenty of time to ensure smooth transition into the new system but not this bill. President Trump and the Republican leadership want to make sure it is done in time for the upcoming midterms because they are afraid of what American voters, using their voices to speak out against them, would say and how they would vote.

We all know why Republican leadership wants to pass this bill. They want to pass it badly because they think that they will lose this election in this midterm because their current policies are extremely unpopular with Americans.

Raising costs in this country instead of lowering them, kicking millions of Americans off their healthcare, and starting an unauthorized war with no exit strategy, that is an awful record for Donald Trump's Republican Party. And through our elections, Americans have a chance to make their opposition to his policies heard at the ballot box. Trump's Republican Party is trying to prevent them from voting, trying to choke off American votes in a desperate bid to stay in power.

This bill goes beyond bad faith; it is just vile. Instead of trying to make Americans' lives better and passing legislation people actually want, instead of supporting our democracy, our Constitution, President Trump's Republican Party and followers now want to pass this bill and make it extremely difficult for millions of Americans to exercise their right to vote.

Why? Because President Trump is afraid of being held accountable by the American people.

The SAVE America Act would require States to turn over voter information to the Department of Homeland Security. It would kick millions of eligible voters off the rolls. It would make it infinitely harder for Americans to register to vote, and it would cause chaos in our States.

It wouldn't solve a single problem, especially not the ones President Trump and the Republican leaders pretend exist, just the opposite. It would create huge problems for our elections in every State across the country, resulting in voter suppression.

Nevadans and all Americans deserve better than this cowardly bill from Republicans trying to run from the issues they created for themselves.

That is why my Democratic colleagues and I will not let it pass.

Mr. President, I object, and I think--look, all of us here understand, because we travel twice a week, what TSA is going through. That is why we should immediately, today, fully fund TSA. If you care about paying TSA, let's pay TSA today.

So I object. If we want to actually pay TSA, let's do it right now. My colleague from Ohio, we both know what it is like to go back and forth to the Midwest every single week. Want to fund TSA? Want to have humanity for the people who are securing us? Let's fully fund them today.

Will the Senator yield?

It is not hard to notice that, right now, our country is going through a pretty fundamental conversation about the role of ICE and law enforcement in our city streets. We know that it is a cultural conversation in the United States of America because the previous head--the previous Secretary--of Homeland Security got fired because of the disaster that went on in Minneapolis.

I sat, as you did, in the hearing with Markwayne Mullin yesterday because we need a new Secretary of Homeland Security. Every American in the world, Democrat and Republican, understands that is because ICE so deeply contradicted American values in our American cities.

So we are having a full-on cultural conversation about the role of law enforcement in our streets.

In the meantime, you and I can agree every day of the week on the role of Border Patrol; CBP; FEMA, which we desperately need; the Coast Guard, which no one has more Coast Guard, pretty much, than Michigan. So I am ready to fund those things now, but I don't think we can ignore the fact that ICE is, right now, an unsettled issue in the United States of America.

We are not settled. People are negotiating because we are not settled. And even this week, the President of the United States sent a letter down here to talk about the reforms he acknowledges we need in some form or fashion.

Now, some of those reforms, to me, are basic and don't go far enough--like we won't deport American citizens. But even the President acknowledges we have a problem with ICE. So let's excise that one part that we are having an American conversation on and then fully fund the other stuff here and now today. That is what I am proposing.

Of course.

Will you yield?

I am proposing today just the UC on TSA, but my colleagues, one after another, have proposed funding the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, FEMA. So whichever way we want to do the package-- individually or all but ICE--I am here for it.

I will do you one better on your proposal. I 100 percent agree.

When I first came to the Congress in 2019, we were in a government shutdown, in the first Trump administration, right? President Trump had a shutdown. That is how I came to the Congress. My very first bill as a Congressperson--bipartisan, by the way; the Problem Solvers Caucus; a bunch of us did it--was that if the government isn't fully funded, then Congresspeople, A, do not get paid, and B--I will go one further--are not allowed to have government pay for their travel back home, meaning they have to sit their butts down in Washington and negotiate and get it done then and there, without taking taxpayer dollars to go back home. So whether you want to add a $500 fee, whatever it is--this body is for appropriating money, so I am here for whatever you want to propose.

But I think you have to acknowledge and even the President acknowledges at this point that the American public--Democrat, Independent, and Republican--does not like American citizens being killed in our streets. They do not like going into a human being's home without a judicial warrant. They don't like children being taken and tear-gassed and caught in the crossfire; non-well-trained officers pulling people out of cars and getting into dangerous situations; people being targeted.

You should hate this. When you are walking into Target, they had ICE officers pulling people aside because they looked like they were immigrants and checking their papers. Do you know what that does to a Jew? Do you know what that means, to just check people's papers because of how they look? You should hate that.

So for me, whether we agree or disagree--and I would hope we would agree on the use of force in America--set that aside. Fund everything else today, now, here. Penalize Members of the Senate who want to go home and ignore the problem--I am with you on that.

But you are holding all of those Agencies hostage because of ICE. You are defending them and not allowing them to get their paychecks. You are holding them back from those three paychecks, not Democrats. We are here ready to pay. You are so protective of ICE, so protective of this President that you will not fund the other parts of DHS, and that is our homeland security. I know about that. That is my entire life. You know. You care about that. I know you do, Senator.

So, please, just excise the thing we are not agreeing on, fund the rest of it, let's get on with it, and understand that the American public has made their voice clear on this issue.

I am suggesting that we get everybody in a room on the ICE issue. Lock them in a room here in the Capitol--our negotiators. I need the President to send his envoy so we can actually make some decisions. It has been hard to negotiate with Senate Republicans on this issue because they need the blessing of the White House. Get all the players in a room. We will sit down. I will do it. I will be here all day and all night and all weekend.

But I have to tell you, you can't use one group of people as a shield to not fund all the other border missions, all the other funding, FEMA. You can't do it.

Please.

I am in.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 362, S. 4127; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I rise today against the so-called SAVE America Act.

I believe that our elections are the foundation of our democracy. Most Americans do. It is how we protect our country from tyranny and dictatorship. It is how we remain the greatest country in the world. But the SAVE Act does not safeguard our elections; it does the opposite.

My Republican colleagues like to repeat over and over that this is about voter ID at the polls, that showing ID at the polls is something we have to do, and that is what this bill is about.

That already happens. Most Americans--99.999 percent of Americans do what everyone else does: They walk into the polls on election day. They bring their ID. The volunteers and the clerks check your ID, they check it to the voter rolls, and they say: Come on in and go ahead and vote. That already happens across the country and certainly in the State of Michigan.

This bill is not about voter ID, which hopefully all Americans are in agreement about; it is about making it harder to vote so that more Americans are excluded from voting.

It requires that Americans have proof of citizenship in order to vote. Just by example, I brought my Michigan license, OK? Michigan license--it is the official State version. There is no proof of citizenship. It says my address. It says my eye color. It says all these things, but it does not have my citizenship. It is just not on the license. For most Americans, it is not on the license.

So how would I prove my citizenship? Well, I can do it, I guess, in two ways. You can either bring a passport with you or you can bring an original birth certificate in the name you want to vote with.

Passports--60 percent of Michiganders have no passport. They have never applied for one. They don't need one. They are not interested in one.

If you want to get a passport, it is nearly $200. So now we are charging a fee for people to do what I hope most people believe is a God-given right as an American--to vote. If not, you have to have an original copy of your birth certificate in the name you want to vote in. Well, as you can imagine, for millions and millions of women who took their married name, took their husband's name, their birth certificate doesn't show the name they plan to vote with. So it puts an unbelievably onerous requirement on those married women.

This bill also truly constrains mail-in voting. This is going to hurt senior citizens, military, folks in nursing homes, college students who don't live at home. This is intended simply to make it harder to vote.

I want to double-tap this because Michiganders weighed in on the ballot on this very issue. In 2018, Michiganders voted in a law that said that anyone could vote absentee for any reason, and it passed with 67 percent of the vote. And I will remind you that Donald Trump has won my State twice. In the years since, voter participation has gone up. I would hope that would be seen as a good thing.

Mail-in voting is safe, it is secure, it is the law in Michigan, and undoing it is simply to satisfy President Trump's very specific goals of making sure ``only the right people vote.''

As a nation, we have made a lot of strides in the past 50 years in getting more people to vote. The SAVE Act undoes that, and it represents a significant change--it gives the Federal Government enormous power over voting. That is exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid. They specifically wrote into the Constitution that the administration of elections is to be done by the States. In the commentary on it, they said that was because we never want a President and his supporters to have overwhelming power over the organs of democracy, over the foundation of our elections. So they give that administrative power to the States.

President Trump and my colleagues across the aisle have railed against Federal involvement in our elections. They have signed amicus briefs and talked about overreach by the Federal Government in our elections--when they thought it was going to hurt them. Now they have done a complete 180.

If you want to understand where my colleagues really stand on this issue, just look at their comments and President Trump's Statement of Administration Policy when the House in 2019 passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act--literally in many ways a codification of the Voting Rights Act of the late sixties.

Many of my colleagues were happy to criticize the Federal Government telling States how to run their elections. They gave speeches about it. They went on the media about it and talked all about Democratic overreach.

But this is how you know they have lost the plot--because when it is their team that is in power, when it is their team that is in the White House, when it is their team that is giving them their orders, they are happy to federalize things.

Everybody knows that the Republican Party was always the party of smaller government and States' rights. That is like the brand.

So now here we are. Donald Trump says in the State of the Union that if his team doesn't win in November, the elections are rigged, and he only wants ``the right people voting.''

So here we have this bill that they don't have the votes for, and they are talking about what they are going to do to help ``save America.''

In Michigan, just to put the issue in perspective, because my colleagues like facts, we have about 6 million voters out of 10 million in our State. In 2024, in an election won by Donald Trump--wasn't contested by anyone on the other side of the aisle--15 individual voters were flagged as potentially being noncitizens--15 out of 6 million. Even one noncitizen voting is a bad thing, and they should be held accountable, and they were to the highest and utmost of the law in Michigan, including spending some time in jail for one guy. But 15 out of 6 million is 0.00025 percent. These 15 were flagged and even confirmed quickly as noncitizens.

This bill is like using a bazooka to go after a housefly. It is not smart. And in the process, it makes it harder for millions of Americans--particularly women--to vote in these elections. And make no mistake, that is the point.

We are only debating this bill because of one fact: Donald Trump doesn't like to lose elections, and his team wants to shield him from another embarrassing loss this coming fall. That is it.

He has shown us from the beginning how he feels about fraud. Seven months before the 2020 election, he got up in front of the United States and said: If I don't win in 2020, the election is rigged.

You know, people in this body wrote strongly worded letters. They pooh-poohed it. They said there is no way an American President will actually try to refute the results of a democratic election where clerks, Democrat and Republican, across the country are just doing their jobs.

Fast-forward to January 6, and people in this body are hightailing it off this floor, barricading themselves in their offices--as I did on the House side--looking for a weapon to protect themselves, as a mob instigated by the President crashed into this very floor. It sounds familiar to me.

In the State of the Union just a month ago, the President said:

The only way the Democrats can get elected is if they

cheat.

Is that what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe? Do you believe that the only way that I am here is because I cheated?

Donald Trump won on the top of my ballot. Did I cheat to get here? Did he win his last election or no?

Passing the SAVE Act will ``guarantee the midterms'' for Republicans--another thing he said.

We are only here because you are doing his bidding and trying to pass a bill that he says will help him guarantee the election.

He said:

We will never lose a race. . . . For 50 years [if this

passes], we won't lose a race.

Does that sound like someone who actually gives a flying fig about actual democracy or does that sound like someone who is asking his boys to rig elections for him in November?

Now, I was polite the last time the President of the United States did this. In 2020, I was one of those people who said: You know what, the President can't really mean this. Let's send letters. Let's talk about it politely on camera.

I spoke up at hearings. We asked the military what they were going to do if the President tried to steal the election.

Frankly, I and a lot of us on this floor had a failure of imagination for what this President would do, but I am not going to make that mistake again.

I will close with this: The President of the United States has laid out what he believes for everyone to see. We have to believe the words he is telling us.

That same President is now grinding the Senate to a halt by trying to pass a bill that doesn't do a single thing for your pocketbook, your house, your kids, your healthcare, or anything else he ran on. He is busy taking weeks at a time on this floor--time we could otherwise be working in a bipartisan manner to pass things that would help people with their cost of living--but he wants to do this because he wants to make sure he is not embarrassed in the fall.

All of those promises he said he was going to fulfill, that he has left open--he doesn't want the chickens to come home to roost for him in November.

So as Michiganders are waiting in line at the gas pumps right now, as the price of gas jumps 60 cents per day in some cases, as middle-class Americans are unable to buy a home, we are talking about making it harder for women and old people and the military to vote.

Instead of addressing the fundamental issues of Americans, we are doing the bidding of the President of the United States because he told us all that if he doesn't win, it is rigged, so we better cover down for him.

This is not what we should be spending our time on. Focus on the issues that the American public is calling all of us--asking us to address. It is not what we need.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this past weekend marked 61 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his ``We Shall Overcome'' speech to a joint session of Congress. Speaking from the House rostrum in the wake of Bloody Sunday in Selma, AL, President Johnson urged Congress to pass legislation that would secure ``the full blessings of American life'' to all, regardless of color or creed. That Congress would heed his call.

On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. That bill, nearly a century after the

ratification of the 15th Amendment, would finally, finally outlaw discriminatory practices that erected unjust barriers to voting for African Americans, like literacy tests and poll taxes. It would open the ballot box in America to everyone.

Six decades later, another President would speak from that same rostrum--this time at his State of the Union Address--and that President insisted Congress pass a bill that would make it more difficult, would make it harder for eligible citizens to vote. How far we have fallen from Lyndon B. Johnson's noble goal. We have not overcome. With the SAVE Act, we are still trapped in bigotry.

Earlier this week, at President Trump's request, the Senate began consideration of the SAVE America Act in a marathon debate session. Why? Because President Trump is throwing a temper tantrum, demanding that Congress pass his legislation and nothing else.

I have long said that in politics, there is always a good reason and a real reason. The good reason the President touts when arguing in favor of this bill? That it supposedly would put safeguards to prevent voter fraud.

Nobody wants to see voter fraud. That is a good reason, isn't it? But here is the truth: Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in Federal elections, and cases of noncitizens voting are extremely rare.

In 2024, the Bipartisan Policy Center decided to figure out how frequently we encounter voter fraud in American elections. The conservative Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database found that in the period of 1999 to 2023--24 years--how many cases do you think they found of voter fraud, incidents where noncitizens successfully cast ballots? Out of the millions and millions of votes that were cast, they found exactly 77 in a 24-year period--77. That is barely more than three per election cycle.

You say to yourself, where is the voter fraud that is leading the Republicans now to create new obstacles for voters to face if they want to register to vote? What is the real reason if there are only 77 cases of voter fraud in 24 years? I will tell you. It is for MAGA Republicans to cling to power by rigging the elections in November. It was the same motive when it came to creating new congressional districts for Republicans.

This President is scared to death of what is going to happen when the American people finally get to say the last word on his policies, and so he wants to change the election rules. Hard to imagine. He is very blatant about it. They are not hiding it.

The lead sponsor of the bill, the senior Senator from Utah, said this weekend:

Republicans will lose power--likely for a long time--if we

don't get SAVE America passed.

Unless we change the rules on registering and voting, even though there is little or no evidence of fraud and abuse, this Republican Senator who is leading the charge concedes the obvious: It will hurt them in the next election if they fail to pass this bill. They don't think they can win the election fair and square, so they need to change the rules and make it harder for eligible voters.

So what is in this Republican political liferaft that is on the floor? Among the provisions is one that requires all States to obtain proof of citizenship in person--two critical words--in person for people looking to register to vote.

In their bill, a driver's license--the most common form of identification in America--and most REAL IDs would not be enough to register to vote. You need more. You have to prove your citizenship before you can register under the Republican plan. Only birth certificates, passports, or similar documentation would count. Well, let's go through those.

How many Americans actually know where their original birth certificate can be found? And how about those who have a birth certificate with a maiden name--a woman who is married--or are in a hyphenated relationship? What do you do with those documents?

Do you know how many Americans don't have a passport? Almost half of the people living in America have no passport, half of the population. You say to yourself, well, go get a passport; there can't be much to it. Have you tried lately? Do you know what it costs? A hundred and sixty-five dollars. So before you get to vote, you have to write a check for a passport for $165. That applies to 146 million Americans. And how long does it take? Well, I can tell you, people work hard to get out the millions of passports each year, but we are talking about 3 to 4 weeks, in some cases months. If you put an extra 60 bucks on it and make it $225, they will expedite it. That is your poll tax.

Do you want to vote? Do you want to register? Do you have a passport? If you don't, get ready to fork over $165 to over $200 for a passport.

When you consider how long you have to wait, how long you have to wait for the opportunity to have this passport, maybe you are not doing it in time for this election.

That is the Republican plan--make it more bureaucratic and more cumbersome and more confusing despite the fact there is little or no evidence of voter fraud in the United States.

What this amounts to is a modern-day poll tax for a passport.

This bill would also unfairly impact married women who have taken their spouses' names. They would either have to amend their original proof-of-citizenship documents or go through paperwork and bureaucracy to register to vote.

You are going to hear from my Republican colleagues about how this bill has been updated to accommodate people who don't have the required documentation, but the fact remains that unnecessary barriers have been put in place to block access to the ballot for no apparent reason.

Mr. President, 77 cases of voter fraud in 24 years--is that a national scandal? Is that a national crisis? Of course not.

Here is the good news: At this moment, my Republican colleagues in the Senate don't have the votes to pass the bill, so now the question is, Will the majority leader throw out the Senate rules and bend to the President's pressure? I certainly hope not.

If we truly believe, as President Johnson said, that we must not refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that we participate in, then we must reject this terrible legislation which will deny the right to vote to eligible voters across the United States.

The SAVE America Act is an affront to the fundamental right to vote, and I will be voting no.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, did you hear what the President said about this piece of legislation that is entitled the SAVE America Act--how important it is to him? Earlier this week on social media, President Trump said:

Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or

Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.

And then he threatened to sink any Republican who doesn't fall in line. Here is what he said ``I WILL NEVER (EVER!) ENDORSE ANYONE WHO VOTES AGAINST'' this legislation.

What is going on here? What is it about this bill that the President is so

aggressive about? Why is he saying these outrageous and exaggerated things? I will tell you: Because this legislation is the crown jewel in a grand scheme to rig the results of the upcoming midterm election.

Some of my Republican colleagues have come to the floor to defend it, saying it is necessary to safeguard our elections. So let's just look at the facts.

Let's pick a period of time. How about from 1999 to 2023--24 years in American history. Every 2 years, we have an election cycle, and 80 to 100,000,000 people are going to register to vote in each of those 2- year cycles.

So in the period of time between 1999 and 2023--24 years--12 different election cycles and millions of people registering to vote in the United States, how many were discovered to be falsifying their country of origin and to be illegal and unqualified to vote? Take a guess. Seven million, right? No. Well, 700,000. No. How about 700? No. Seventy-seven people were found to have tried to falsify where they were from to vote in a 24-year period of time--77 in 24 years.

You say to yourself: And so this bill is a death by legislation for us? Take it or leave it?

I don't buy it. There is something more to the story.

When I got involved in politics, the fellow who used to counsel me said: Durbin, when you get in politics, there is always a good reason and a real reason.

The good reason is voter fraud. But 77 in 24 years? We have the cleanest and most accurate elections in the world. We ought to be proud of it. There is only one man who disagrees with that. He happens to be the President. He still has this Big Lie concept that he won in 2020. He will go to his grave believing he won in 2020, but he didn't. He lost fair and square. He just can't accept defeat. It is beyond him.

So you say to yourself: What does this bill do? Well, what this bill does is establish a standard for registering to vote in America. The current standards generated 77 violations in 24 years. They want to change them all. And you go through the first few pages, and the way they approach it is amazing.

One, if you want to register to vote, present your passport. Well, guess what. More than half of Americans don't have a passport.

You say: Well, go buy a passport then.

What does that involve? There is a $165 fee to pay for a passport in this country. If you want an expedited passport, it is another 60 bucks. So in order to vote, you have to buy a passport, you have to pay for a passport. It is kind of like a poll tax, isn't it? So 165 bucks if I want to vote in November? No, thanks. I will spend it on gasoline. I don't need to buy a passport. But that is what the bill says. It is one of the first provisions.

The second thing you can produce is your birth certificate to show you were born in the United States. Do you know where yours is? I don't know where mine is at home. It is in a box somewhere in the bedroom. I will have to go looking for it. If I find it, I am OK.

My wife has a problem with hers. It has her maiden name on it. She got married to me a few years back--happily, I hope--and she doesn't identify by her maiden name any longer. But to prove she was born here, she is going to have to do some fancy footwork with documents to prove it.

So I looked at this, and the interesting thing is what this is all about. There is a belief in the White House among the political leaders that they are going to do poorly in the November election, so they want to change the rules and they want to keep some people from voting. How do you keep people from voting? Well, you set hurdles up like this.

I will give you an example. We have more support in the African- American community than Republicans do, so if the Republicans want to enhance their chances of winning, they want to diminish the African- American vote.

Let's take a look at a few statistics. When it comes to passports, 42 percent of White Americans have a passport; 34 percent of African Americans. So if you demand a passport as proof to register to vote, it puts them at a slight disadvantage, doesn't it?

How about birth certificates? Well, 6 to 7 percent of all U.S. adults--that is 15 to 18 million--are in a situation where they have no easy access to proof by birth certificate--6 to 7 percent of all U.S. adults, 11 percent when it comes to people of color. What is the problem? Some of them were born in the South. Some were born in segregated hospitals. Some were given a birth certificate and some were not. So there is a slight bias against African Americans when it comes to birth certificates.

Well, how about government-issued photo IDs? Eight percent of White Americans don't have government-issued photo IDs--8 percent--and 25 percent of all African Americans do not.

How about low-income people, who may be inclined to vote for Democrats, perhaps? They are less likely to be able to prove their citizenship than those who are better off.

So it isn't an algorithm; it is a bias that is built into this bill that says it will be less likely that people who are going to vote Democrat are going to register to vote. That is why it is so important to the President. That is why he is threatening members of his party: If you don't vote for it, I will never support you. He feels that strongly about it.

But I don't think it is fair. It is fundamentally unfair. With only 77 cases of voter fraud in 24 years, why in the world are we doing this? Why are we changing the rules? Why are we creating obstacles? Why are we forcing people to spend hundreds of dollars to go buy a passport so they can register to vote?

If you are legally in America--and most people who vote overwhelmingly are--then you shouldn't face these obstacles. That is what this is all about, and it ought to come to an end with a big ``no'' vote on this floor.

I will be voting no. I am sorry the President won't be supporting me, but I am not running again anyway.

I yield the floor.