Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, you know, when it comes to broken promises, it seems like Trump and Republicans have raised every price that they ever said they would lower--costs on groceries with Trump's sweeping tariffs, the largest tax increase on working families in American history.

They sent energy costs higher by canceling clean energy projects. They sent gas prices skyrocketing by starting a new war in the Middle East.

And they let healthcare premiums skyrocket for patients--doubling, tripling, and more through sheer indifference.

And now, desperate to avoid the wave of angry voters to whom Republicans had promised to lower prices and no new wars, Republicans are even going to raise the cost of voting, because their ``Save Trump Act'' would nickel and dime Americans who are just trying to vote but have to slog through one new Republican roadblock after another.

Under the Republicans' bill, one of our citizens' most basic freedoms now comes with a price, and it comes with a lot of brandnew hurdles that serve no purpose but to trip people up. Some folks will have to shell out for a copy of their birth certificate. Some will have to get a passport. That is 165 bucks, by the way.

Some folks will have to travel hours away to register in person, costing time and travel fare or maybe gas costs, which Trump is now sending through the roof.

And that is not the half of it.

Just consider all the people who will face new challenges just to vote for no good reason. If you are a student who just moved to start college, Republicans will make it harder for you to vote because, if this bill passes, you will need to show a photo ID and proof of citizenship in every single State. But a student ID won't count.

Many Tribal IDs also won't be enough under the new Republican restrictions.

If you are a married woman who changed her last name, like me and the overwhelming majority of moms across the country, Republicans will make it harder for you to vote because you would now have to bring an ID, proof of citizenship, and some additional paperwork showing your name change. That could affect 70 million people.

If you are a senior who just moved into a new nursing home and has mobility issues, Republicans will make it harder for you to vote because you can no longer just register online or by mail. You now have to show up in person to show your papers.

Voting will also be harder for rural families far from any place where they could show their papers and register in person.

In Washington State, we have a lot of families who might have to take a ferry just to register to vote. Or heaven forbid you are someone living abroad, maybe working for an American company or working at a nonprofit or even serving our Nation as a diplomat. You might just have to buy a flight all the way back home so you can register.

And the inconvenience doesn't stop at registration because Republicans will make voting by mail harder for everyone as well. They are going to require you to photocopy your ID when you apply for that mail-in ballot, and then they are going to require another photocopy when you send in your mail-in ballot--at least as long as Trump doesn't get his wish to scrap mail-in voting altogether.

And if you are someone who doesn't know where your birth certificate is or doesn't have easy access to it, or if you are one of half of Americans who doesn't have a passport--that is 146 million people--you are going to have to pay fees and fill out a lot of paperwork.

And what is the Republican plan for when the State Department gets flooded with a recordbreaking number of passport applications, by the way, because there is no money for surge capacity in this bill?

What are Americans supposed to do when their paperwork gets delayed for weeks on end or, heaven forbid, the President just slow-walks it?

And, by the way, under the ``Save Trump Act,'' there is a perfectly awful chance that you do everything right and still get robbed of your vote by Republicans because this bill pushes States to rely on a DHS- verification tool that just frankly is a dumpster fire.

States that have tried this got results with huge errors where DHS was wrongly saying many citizens were not citizens. The Trump administration tool has already wrongly advised States to purge lawful voters from their voter rolls.

But the biggest problem with this bill goes to its roots because the biggest problem is that Republicans' own premise is built on a lie. Trump has been lying for years now about our elections--lying about winning in 2020, lying about winning in States like California, lying about crazy conspiracies that have been debunked, time and time again.

He has been debunked by Republican elections commissioners. He has been debunked by thorough news investigations and carefully conducted audits. He has been debunked by million-dollar legal cases where other liars were sued for defamation.

That has not stopped Trump.

Instead of calling out the lies like so many of them once actually did, first, Republicans just started ignoring this, and then they started normalizing them. And now, many of them are repeating these lies and conspiracies.

Our elections are free, and they are fair. That is beyond question. Anyone who values our democracy should be shouting that from the rooftops. But instead of defending our democracy, instead of defending our elections from misinformation and conspiracies and a President who has stated, quite directly, that he wants to take control over the elections, Republicans are joining Trump in the same sort of ruse he pulled to rile people up on January 6.

The biggest fraud here is this: Republicans who know their agenda is unpopular; Republicans who know that when entrusted by the voters to fulfill their promises, all they have done is break them, raising prices, starting new wars; Republicans who know they will not keep their majorities in a free and fair election. So they are pushing for this bill instead.

This is not how elections work. This is not how America works. In this country, we fight for change with our voices and our votes. And if Republicans think for a second Democrats will let them take away people's votes, they better buckle up because you can bet we will use our voices to block this bill for as long as it takes.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source