Nomination of Amber Faye McReynolds

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor tonight to spend just a few minutes to speak about Amber McReynolds, President Biden's nominee to serve on the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service.

Everyone in America relies on the Postal Service, but hardly anyone knows about the Board of Governors and how much it matters to all of us. The Board sets the policies for the Postal Service. It directs its budget and reviews its practices. It also selects the Postmaster General.

But the Board's most important job is to represent the public interest, not special interests, and to help manage the Postal Service in a way that is competent, professional, and completely nonpartisan. That matters for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important is the critical and growing role that the post office plays in our democracy.

Over the past year, States all across the country followed our example in Colorado by giving people the freedom to vote by mail. As we have learned in my State, the case for voting by mail is overwhelming. It is more convenient. It is more accessible. It costs a lot less to administer and, during a pandemic, it is a lot safer than voting in person. But it only works if people have confidence that the post office can deliver their ballots in a way that is reliable, secure, and completely free of politics.

That is why I can't think of anyone better to serve on the Board of Governors than Amber McReynolds, who is one of the most respected election officials not just in Colorado but all across the country.

Ms. McReynolds spent 13 years serving in Denver's Elections Division, including for 7 years as the city's director of elections. Under her leadership, Denver became a national model for making it easier for people to vote while increasing election security

She oversaw Denver's transition to a fully vote-by-mail system, where every active voter can receive and return their ballot by mail or by taking it to a drop box in their community. Last November, we saw images on television of people lining up in this country for hours and hours on election day to cast their ballots.

In Colorado, I left my ballot in a secure drop box. There is no line. There is no wait. The whole process took 30 seconds, if that. It is like that all across Colorado. It is like that all across my State because we have made it incredibly easy and secure for Coloradoans to cast their ballots.

Ms. McReynolds had a lot to do with that by introducing one popular reform after another. She helped to make Denver the first city in America to adopt a ballot tracking system, which notifies voters when their ballot is mailed, when it is delivered and counted so they can have transparency about the process every step of the way.

I never have to wonder whether my ballot is in the mail or not or whether I sent it back or not because I get an email from the clerk telling me. You even get an email that tells you when your ballot has been counted. She had a lot to do with that. And after Denver put that system in place, cities across the country followed our example.

Ms. McReynolds also led efforts to launch a new voting system that used touchscreen tablets and other technologies from Dominion, a fantastic Colorado company, that was much easier for voters to use and was just one-tenth the cost of typical voting machines.

Under her leadership, Denver was also one of the earliest counties in Colorado to pioneer something called a risk-limiting audit, where election officials match a random sample of ballots against the official results to catch any discrepancies. It was a cost-effective way to reinforce the public's trust in local elections, and it set the stage for Colorado to become the first State in America to introduce risk-limiting audits statewide.

The same thing happened with vote-by-mail. Ms. McReynolds' success in Denver helped pave the way for Colorado's transition to a fully vote- by-mail system in 2013--2013. That was 8 years ago. That is two Presidential elections ago that we went to vote-by-mail.

And just like in Denver, when we did it in the State, none of those changes were partisan. We actually transitioned to vote-by-mail under a Republican secretary of state. In fact, there was a view at the time that moving to vote-by-mail would help Republicans because it made it a lot easier for Coloradoans in rural areas to vote.

In reality, it has made it easier for everybody to vote--Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, urban voters, suburban voters, busy voters, working people, students, everybody. And it is why we adopted vote-by-mail statewide, and turnout went up in every demographic group, seniors included. Costs went down, and people across the State cheered the new system.

Today, I guarantee you, if a politician in Colorado tried to take away vote-by-mail, people would run them out of town. In my State, we are proud of the election model that we built in a collaborative, nonpartisan way, and Ms. McReynolds deserves a lot of credit for that.

She is the right kind of leader who isn't satisfied with the status quo. She is constantly asking how to make things better, how to make things more efficient, and how to make complex systems simpler and more accessible and useful to people. That is exactly the kind of experience we need at the Postal Service, especially at a time when more Americans are voting by mail than ever before.

The Postal Service needs someone with her expertise, her leadership, and her impatience, frankly, with the status quo, and that is why I urge my colleagues from both parties to come together and confirm this outstanding nominee from my home State of Colorado.
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