Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I would like to speak about the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, is part of President Trump's and the Republicans' agenda to disenfranchise voters.

You know, I heard my colleague from Oklahoma talk about the Voting Rights Act, and that was really an effort on the part of this Congress to respect and ensure that people who are being denied the vote had the right to vote, and it did take Federal action to make that citizens' right a reality.

The SAVE Act is really an effort to interfere with the right of people to vote, and it is based on an assertion that is flatout false about widespread voter fraud. And, of course, that goes back to January 6, after the election defeat in 2020, when President Trump then said that that election was rigged and that it was false; the outcome was not correct.

There was litigation. Sixty-three courts ruled that the President had lost to President Biden.

The President is now relying on conspiracy theorists like Kurt Olsen, one of the lawyers that pushed Trump's ``Stop the Steal'' efforts in court to now lead the effort, seizing election materials related to the 2020 elections.

And those claims have been debunked, even by many Republican elected officials. A lot of our local Republican elected officials care deeply about protecting the right of citizens to vote.

Last month, President Trump said that the Republicans should ``take over'' the election administration in 15 States. Any attempt by a President, including this President, to take over elections is flatout unconstitutional, as article I, section 4, of the elections clause of the U.S. Constitution gives States the duty to administer elections and Congress the ability to legislate laws around election administration.

The executive branch itself has literally no role in direct election administration.

And this system works. It has worked well for 250 years because the States are best positioned to identify and create policies that meet the needs and accommodations of their own communities.

There is public reporting that officials in President Trump's White House have been coordinating with far-right activists and operatives like Jerome Corsi to declare a baseless national emergency. We have heard that term used quite a bit in this administration. But to declare a ``national emergency'' surrounding the 2026 election--that term has been used. It has been invoked to justify the imposition of tariffs unilaterally by the President with respect to the IEEPA tariffs. The Supreme Court held that that position was unconstitutional. We haven't had the Court weigh in on a ``national emergency'' that may be declared around voting, but it is worth very much taking seriously.

The Trump administration has defunded election security infrastructure while at the same time making false claims that our elections are insecure.

The administration has gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act, known as CISA, which Congress created in 2018 to oversee programs responsible for securing our elections, like the cyber threat intelligence.

The administration is also trying to seize voters' personal data in violation of Federal privacy laws, despite research proving that noncitizen voting is very, very rare.

This is a concerted effort on the part of the President whose ire over losing the 2020 election resulted in January 6 and has also been a sustained campaign on the part of the President to insist that that election was bogus.

The SAVE America Act, in any form, as it is drafted, would block millions of U.S. citizens from voting. And we can have reasonable ID requirements like allowing U.S. citizens to register with a driver's license or a military ID. Several States have them.

Vermont does not have that, except at the initial point of registering, and we have such good, high-level participation by voters and basically zero election fraud.

But voter registration should permit all eligible citizens, and only eligible citizens, to register and vote in Federal elections. That is already Federal law. That is not what this SAVE America legislation does.

Your driver's license wouldn't work. That wouldn't be a valid ID. Your REAL ID wouldn't work. It gets us on a plane, gets us through security, but it wouldn't work to get you in to vote.

Your military ID--you know, we just had a tribute to our soldiers. But our soldiers with that ID would not be allowed to use that to be able to register to vote.

If your passport has your maiden name on it, as millions of American women's passports do, that won't work because it doesn't correspond to their married name.

The list of acceptable identification under the SAVE Act to register to vote, such as passports or birth certificates, is stricter than many of the 36 States which do require some identification to vote. And therein lies the problem because the more onerous you make this, the more difficult it is--a person who doesn't have a passport, doesn't have a driver's license, has to do something just for the purpose of voting--the fewer people who are going to be able to do that.

So here are some facts that we should not ignore. About 146 million Americans don't have a passport. In 2024, 153 million Americans voted. And, by the way, passports are pretty expensive. A new passport is at least $165 for the passport application and the facility acceptance fee or even more if you want it expedited.

And approximately 69 million women have a birth certificate with their maiden name and not the name matching their identification, meaning their birth certificates would be insufficient identification for voter registration under this bill. How can we do that to millions of American women?

Eleven percent of registered voters don't have access to their birth certificate; 52 percent of registered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name; and 9 percent of all eligible voters do not have or do not have easy access to documentary proof of citizenship.

These details really matter. You know, it is not just the top-line name ``voter ID.'' It is what is in this legislation that limits what can be a legitimate voter ID for the purposes of voting.

And even if voters were to provide documentary proof of citizenship, verifying the authenticity of those documents is an inherently complex task, one that election officials in motor vehicle departments often don't have the resources or the training to perform.

The SAVE America Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races. But younger voters, rural voters, poorer voters would suffer disproportionately. Rural voters--and by the way, 60 percent of whom identify as Republican--would face some of the largest hurdles to showing up in person at their election office to register to vote. Many rural voters rely heavily on remote voter registration methods that would be effectively blocked by the SAVE America Act, such as registering to vote online or mailing in an application, and also these voters rely greatly on mail-in voting.

This has been an incredible convenience for voters, and reliable. This would become much more difficult under this legislation, with the need to scan and print out copies of their voter ID.

By the way, when it comes to seniors, nearly half of all seniors don't have a passport.

The SAVE America Act would make it harder for Americans to register and vote in 2026. If the SAVE America Act were signed into law, it would go into effect immediately--overnight--changing the requirements for voter registration for all Americans from the day before the act was signed to the day after. This would effectively block voter registration methods nearly all Americans use and add new restrictions on voting at the polls and by mail in virtually every State. It would be a mess.

The bill not only requires proof of citizenship but also proof of residence in order to register. This could block even more voters from voting. Roughly 9 percent of the U.S. population has moved to a new home within their own State in the past year, but many will not update their driver's license until they expire--more people who aren't going to be able to vote who are entitled to vote. Right now, we have protections 90 days out from an election that prevent voters from being removed from the rolls. This bill would end those protections.

The SAVE America Act would eliminate mail registration, and it would disrupt online registration. In 2022, more than 7 million Americans registered to vote by mail and almost 11 million Americans registered to vote online without any problem to election integrity. These bills would also require online registration systems to be overhauled to fit the bill's requirements. The bill would also prohibit universal mail voting, requiring all mail voters to submit an application in order to receive a mail ballot--a lot of bureaucracy here being created. This would end the longstanding principal method of voting in eight States and in Washington, DC--and, by the way, in my State of Vermont.

The bill would require voters registering to vote by mail to submit documentary proof of citizenship, which States do not currently require. And, by the way, that is without incident.

Mail-in voting supports rural communities that local election administrators can't reach well. This is why several of my Republican colleagues' States--Nebraska, Idaho, North Dakota--make mail-in voting possible for certain voters. Arkansas and Louisiana allow digital IDs as valid voter identification.

The Trump administration has been on a furious effort to silence citizens and deny them our most fundamental constitutional right: the right to vote. The ``show your papers'' requirement is an attack on the freedom to vote.

Congress should stand firm to protect the right of all of our citizens to vote and reject the SAVE America Act.

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