Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, my colleagues across the aisle are presenting what they call the SAVE Act and are saying it is about stopping noncitizens from voting, but that is not true. This bill is entirely about stopping citizens from voting, taking away the ballot box from millions and millions of Americans.

So let's call this bill what it really is: the ``Stop Citizens From Voting ACT'' or ``Stop Act.'' It is about rigging the next election, and we know so because Donald Trump said it himself. He said: You pass this act, and ``It will guarantee the midterms'' and ``every election for a long time.''

Why did he have such confidence that it would guarantee the November election for his party? The answer is because this bill is about stopping groups from voting who tend to vote for Democrats. This is, again, about rigging the next election.

There are repeated investigations by law enforcement, by news organizations, by universities that have found that you are more likely to get struck by lighting than for a noncitizen to vote. It is not just rare for a noncitizen to vote, it is super rare.

In Oregon, a review of vote-by-mail by the State over 19--actually 20 years, 2000 through 2019, found less than 1 in a million cases of voter fraud.

In Utah--my colleague who is presiding tonight is from Utah. Utah completed a citizenship review of its voter registration list of more than 2 million voters. They identified one noncitizen--one--and zero instances of noncitizen voting. One registered out of 2 million; zero voting.

Even Speaker Johnson admitted about noncitizen voting that ``it's not been something . . . provable.'' Well, actually, what he really should have said: It is not provable because it is rarer than rare.

That is why we know this bill is not about noncitizens voting; it is about stopping citizens from voting.

Let's just take a look at the impact, starting with the impact on married women.

The Republican plan: Stop married women from voting. A slightly softer version of that is, make it very difficult for them to vote, because this is what the bill does. It says that each State has to submit its voter registration database to the Trump administration. The Trump administration will go through and identify anyone it suspects might not be a citizen. And it has clarified that that means if your last name is different than the name on your birth certificate, you are suspect.

Well, where we are--69 million married women in America changed their names when they got married. That means 69 million American women get pinged by the Trump administration saying: We are not sure you can vote, and you are going to have to start from scratch and reregister.

Reregistering is very difficult. You have to have a passport or you have to have a combination of a birth certificate and another form of approved ID in combination--either a passport by itself or two forms of ID, one of which is your birth certificate, and that other piece has to be very specific, meeting the terms of the bill.

In Oregon, our estimate is that 700,000 married women would have to reregister to vote, including my wife. My wife's name is Mary Sorteberg. That was the name on her birth certificate, except on her birth certificate, her middle name is different because when we got married, she changed her middle name to honor her grandmother Rose. She would have a hard time voting. Millions of American women would have a hard time voting.

It is also about stopping Tribal citizens from voting. The ``Stop Act'' makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID to register to vote, and it makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID by itself to actually vote. You can't use it for registration, and you can't use it by itself to actually vote.

Tribal citizens are less likely to have a passport in the first place, and we know that many do not have a birth certificate. All across America, there are people who have been born at home who do not have birth certificates--more common in some Tribal communities.

Tribal communities are remote. Often, they have to travel a long way to get to a place where you can register to vote because you have to register to vote in person.

So all of these things are designed to make it harder for Tribal members to vote, and that is wrong.

This bill is also about the less affluent being able to vote. It makes it hard for them. Stop the less affluent from voting or at least make it much more difficult for them.

You know that a passport takes 6 months to get and costs about $165. That is a big toll. A couple, if they were trying to get that passport so they could vote, might not get it in time for the election, and they would have to pay $330. Wow. That is a poll tax on the less affluent to be able to vote.

If they can locate the county registrar and their specific county in America and if they were born in a hospital and if there was a birth certificate, they might also be able to acquire their birth certificate. That also costs money.

We know that the less affluent are much less likely to have a passport in the first place, and therefore it is much more expensive for them to undertake the qualifications of this bill. In fact, only one in five Americans who earn less than $50,000 has a passport. And we know that poorer States are less likely to have passports, including many States in the South--Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

So we are facing an attack on each of these groups, but those are not the only groups. Let's talk about students.

The ``Stop Act'' is designed to make it hard for students to vote. First of all, it says you can't have a voter drive. Why? Because you can't register people at their dorm room with ordinary documents the way it has always been done everywhere. No. They have to go in person to an election center, and who knows where that election center is.

And they are going to have to miss class or go to do it, and they are like, well, why can't I upload these documents online to be examined? Well, because they are trying to make it hard for you to vote. Why? Because students tend to vote on the blue side of the aisle.

And if you need your birth certificate to register, now, if you are going to school in a different State from where you are registered to vote or where you would register to vote, you would have to travel home.

Well, many students don't travel home during holidays because it is expensive, and students often don't have money.

Oh, they are rich; they are fine. I am sure they will take a private jet to go get their voter registration.

But ordinary students, they are struggling to pay that tuition. That is a big imposition to say you have to travel to another State in order to be able to register to vote.

So here we are with yet another attack beyond these groups, and that is an attack on vote-by-mail. Under the amendment that has been filed by the Republicans this evening, it bans vote-by-mail.

Now, let's think about how hard it is to hold an election in a State like Oregon or a State like Utah that votes by mail. Oregon hasn't had a vote at a polling booth in 28 years.

So here we are. This law goes into effect immediately. Our primary election in Oregon is on May 20. How are you supposed to get all those polling places in place, all that whole new system, in just a few weeks' time? Extremely difficult.

And then you submit your voter database to Team Trump. They purge it with a very big bias to make it hard for demographic groups that associate more with Democrats to vote. They ping them and say: You are no longer registered. You have to reregister.

And maybe they get that ping. I don't know. The election in Oregon is on May 19. Maybe they get that notice on May 10. You have 9 days to get a passport. It is not going to happen.

You have got 9 days to reach out to your county somewhere around the country, where you were born, and get a birth certificate. It is not going to happen.

Millions of people are instantly disenfranchised in an impossible-to- set-up system in a few weeks' time.

Those groups that I talked about--students, Tribal members, the less affluent, women--this bill is targeted at them with extraordinary precision because this bill is about rigging the November election.

And that is exactly what Trump said: You give me this bill; my party will win November and every other election for a long time to come.

So, colleagues, this is wrong. Every one of my fellow Senators on both sides of the aisle knows what this is. This is an attack on a partisan basis to rig the November election. Every person here who took an oath to the Constitution to defend the right to vote knows that this is about rigging the election by stopping people from voting. It is really a violation of your oath of office.

So let's not let this happen--this egregious assault by an authoritarian President. We have already seen this authoritarian President take away powers from this body--the House and the Senate, Congress--that belong under the Constitution to Congress.

Our Founders said the power of taxation, including tariffs, belongs to Congress. This President took it anyway and said: I don't care that I am violating the Constitution. Challenge me in court.

It took a year for the courts to act.

He proceeded to say: I am going to cancel programs that are both funded and authorized by Congress--which is a violation of law and the Constitution.

It is the power of the purse, and he said: I don't care. Challenge me in court.

He proceeded to launch a war without authorization, even though the Constitution requires this body to authorize a war.

So here we are, three major powers--power of the purse, power of taxation, power of war--all stolen by the President and not confronted by the House or Senate leadership.

And now we have House and Senate leadership conspiring with the President to strip the vote from millions of Americans, an extraordinarily unconstitutional act. But this time, it is not the President acting alone. He is acting with the support, the cooperation, the partnership of the majority party.

There is probably nothing more sacred in a democratic republic than the ballot box. It is the beating heart of what it means to be a democratic republic. This bill takes a knife and stabs it through that beating heart.

Let's not let this happen.

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