Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. FIGURES. Mr. Speaker, all of my colleagues today are speaking about this bill, and it is personal to me because I represent Alabama. I represent the birthplace of the civil rights movement.

I would be remiss not to mention that election integrity was not an issue that my colleagues had been pushing until Donald Trump told them that they should be pushing this issue.

Americans have confidence in elections. For me, it is about too many people doing too many things too courageously for me to be able to stand here today. There are names like James Reeb, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. These are people who died for me to be here today. Congressman John Lewis, who most of you served with, died for me to be here today.

This bill would make it tougher than it has ever been in American history to register to vote at a time when we have the technological ability to be able to verify election eligibility, but we don't want to do that. We want to make it tougher for people to actually get registered to vote, and that is not what we should be doing. We should be making it easier for people to vote.

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