Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, 250 years ago--actually, 250 years ago this summer--we wrote a letter to good King George III, and in that letter we now call the Declaration of Independence, we complained about foreign intervention into the activities of Americans, the colonists. We wanted the right to be able to actually control our own destiny. We wanted the ability to be able to speak for our own future, decide for our own families, without having foreign interference coming across an ocean to be able to affect us. We determined that we wanted to run our own Nation.

Now, 250 years later, we still want to run our own Nation. We want to make our own decisions without foreign interference, without anyone stepping in and telling us, as Americans, whom we are going to be and what we are going to do. We disagree with each other enough; we don't need individuals from the outside coming in and expressing their opinion. We handle this as Americans, and the way that we do that is with elections.

Elections have been routinely done through the history of our country since our Constitution was ratified in 1789. It has been a distinguishing mark of the United States. We are the oldest functioning constitutional democracy in the world. And in our Republic, we choose representatives. Those representatives speak on our behalf. And if we decide we don't like them for whatever reason, we choose different representatives. But we, as Americans, choose our own path through our own elected officials. That is what we do, and we do it on a regular, consistent basis.

Now, in the earliest days, it was literally a wooden box and slips of paper. We have improved that over the years. Step by step, decade after decade, we have done elections a little bit differently.

Now, they are done differently all over the country on it, but we have some basic foundational rules that are also guidance. We choose our own leaders, but we do it the right way.

It wasn't always that way. But as we have improved, we make our elections more transparent, better, with faster responses, giving more trust.

Many folks in my generation will never forget the photograph of staring at a hanging chad from the Bush election, with a person in an election board closely staring through a magnifying glass to try to figure out if there was a dimple on a piece of paper.

There is no election system in the country that does chads anymore because we all determined that is a terrible idea. It is just a bad way to be able to prove the intent of a vote. And the whole younger generation has no idea what a hanging chad would even be because we no longer do that anymore.

We protect the right of all individuals to vote--every American citizen--because in the middle of the 1960s, we as a Nation passed the Voting Rights Act, determining that every person in America has the right to be able to vote and that would be protected, that if there would be any jurisdiction in the country that would violate that, a Federal court could literally step in and just say: No, every single citizen of the country would have a protected right to vote.

In fact, if you want me to read it to you, the Voting Rights Act actually begins with this simple statement:

All citizens of the United States who are otherwise qualified by law to vote at any election by the people, in any State, Territory, district, county, city, parish, township, school district, municipality, or other territorial subdivision, shall be entitled and allowed to vote.

But the simple statement that the Voting Rights Act begins with-- ``All citizens''--what is interesting is the Voting Rights Act protected the ability of a court to step in and say, if some citizen is not being allowed to vote, the courts can step in and mandate that that actually occur. But it did not set up a way to say: Are you a citizen at all?

It was just assumed that only citizens would actually be the ones to vote. It is the baseline of the civil rights in that time period and in the Voting Rights Act--that our elections would be protected only for citizens. But this is a ``trust'' bill in that way, and there is no ``verify.''

What we as Republicans have brought--we have brought out of the House and brought to the floor of the Senate--is not a ``trust'' bill. It is a ``trust and verify'' bill. It takes the next step from the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which mandated that it would only be citizens that would vote.

In fact, there was a penalty actually established that if you are a noncitizen, you get up to 5 years in prison if you vote in a Federal election. That is a big deal.

The challenge is, we have no way to be able to track it. That doesn't actually occur anymore. So we want to just be able to bring a most basic thing that all Americans can agree on--we would hope--that only citizens of the United States would be able to vote, and that before you register to vote, we would have some way to be able to show you actually are a citizen. That is, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 said that all of those American citizens have a protected right to be able to vote, and they can choose to--hopefully, they do--or not. That is up to them as an American.

So let me walk through this.

The first thing I wanted to be able to say is thank you to the State election board folks and all the State election officials and the poll workers that work for every election all across the country. We lose track of this at times.

It takes almost three-quarters of a million people just to run a Federal election--three-quarters of a million. Those are poll workers. Those are poll watchers. Those are State election officials. Those are folks that work behind the scenes in every county and parish, in cities and municipalities all across the country--three-quarters of a million people just to be able to pull together an election.

Those folks are incredibly important to be able to protect the most basic rights of individuals to be able to vote and to protect the basic right of one person, one vote.

Let me share this with this body. Here is how we do it in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, we have one of the highest rated, secure election systems in the country--in the country. And we encourage people to come out and to vote and to participate in the entire process.

Some of the things that we choose to do is, in all of our polling locations and every time ballots are actually presented, there is always a Republican and a Democrat poll worker that is always there in every area--always--so both parties are always represented in that and so everyone can look at each other and constantly be able to check the system.

We are still old school. We do a piece of paper and a marker, and you mark your ballot. And it runs through an optical scanner, and it registers that ballot was actually fully handled. So at the end of the night, if there is any challenge at all to that ballot, we can go back to the paper ballots and actually count them by hand and be able to verify all of them, because we want to make sure, every single election, we can verify every single vote, every single time.

In fact, at the end of the night, when machines are finished, we literally print out on a piece of paper and post on the window of the election board location, wherever this was that the election was being held--we actually publicly post, at the instant the election was done that night, at 7 p.m., so that it is public information immediately how many votes were taken in this area. So if, at some point, it shows up later that it was a different number, everyone could see it.

We have full verification through the entire process.

In Oklahoma, we have voter ID at every single location, at every single vote. How do we do it? If you vote in person and you show up to vote on election day, you pull out an ID, and you show an ID--every single person.

If you vote early, absentee--we have that all over our State in county election boards everywhere--as you walk up, you have to pull out an ID and to be able to show that ID to vote.

And if you are going to mail in your ballot, we welcome that, but you have got to show ID when you actually do it. That means actually going into a location where you can get a notary that, before you put your ballot in the mail, it shows your envelope, you show the ID, it shows on the envelope who the person is on it, and you actually have a notary to do that.

We have voter ID at every single stage. We don't allow ballot harvesting at all. We are a very, very secure system, and we are proud of that. We want every single person to be able to vote, but we want to make sure it is one person, one vote.

We occasionally still do have some folks who try to vote twice in Oklahoma. I am sure that happens in other States, as well, where they will do a request for a mail-in ballot, they will mail it in with a notary and verify that it is them, and then, on election day, they will show up and vote again.

During the last Presidential election, we had a little over 1.5 million people that showed up to vote on that. We found 2 people that double-voted in multiple counties and 27 people that actually double- voted in the same county--29 folks total that double-voted in over 1.5 million people.

By the way, we didn't ignore those 29. They were all referred for prosecution because according to Federal law--Federal law, now-- according to Federal law, it is up to 5 years in prison if you vote twice.

So we refer folks for prosecution to say we don't allow that. We are careful in how we do the balloting and the voting on this. But we have a voter ID, and we walk through the process to make sure that every person actually has that opportunity to be able to vote.

Interestingly enough, in Oklahoma, we asked a question several years ago: How many folks showed up for jury duty and, when they showed up for jury duty, were excused from the jury duty because they went before the judge and said: I am not a citizen of United States?

This happens all the time, actually, where someone comes in and says: I am not a citizen of the United States, and so I need to be excused.

They are not eligible for a jury if they are not a citizen of the United States. We had about 40 people in Oklahoma that made that claim and said: I am not a citizen of the United States.

But when we checked voter rolls, they were registered to vote--40. They were excused from jury duty but were also registered to vote.

So in Oklahoma law, do you know what we do? Anytime, in any county, if someone says, I am not a citizen of the United States in the jury duty, that now gets turned into a list. And if they are registered to vote, their registration gets purged because we are serious about only Oklahoma U.S. citizens voting in Oklahoma.

Do you know why? Because 250 years ago, we fought a war against good King George to say: We make our own decisions, not someone else outside our country. We make our own.

So we make sure that we purge our own voter rolls. In fact, that is State law, to be able to do that.

Listen, we have a very simple, straightforward proposition. It is called the SAVE America Act. The two most basic features of the SAVE America Act should not be controversial. They are simple and straightforward.

We have to verify you are an American citizen. It is already Federal law--already right now--that you have to be an American citizen. We just don't verify it. So this is the ``trust and verify'' portion of the bill. We trust you that you are an American citizen. How about we just check?

So you have to show that you are an American citizen to be able to register to vote.

The second part of it is you have to have ID to be able to vote. Again, we have done this in Oklahoma for years. This can be done and should be done, and it just shouldn't be that controversial.

I have to share, though, just as who I am as a person. Mr. President, as a personal note of privilege on this, I had to smile when I saw the title of our bill, when it started working its way through the very calm House of Representatives and was sent over to us: The SAVE America Act.

There are a lot of things that can save America, and this bill is incredibly important. It is vital that we get it done. But just as a personal privilege, can I just say: I personally believe what saves America is that more people had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I think that would be the greatest thing ever to be able to save the nature of our country.

Our country has become incredibly divided and angry. People are mad and screaming at each other and don't even know why anymore.

Two thousand years ago, a young lawyer walked up to Jesus, and said: Rabbi, of all the teachings, of all the commandments that are out there, what is the heaviest? What is the greatest commandment?

And he said: The biggest one is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and spirit.

And then he said: You didn't ask me for two, but let me give you the second one. The second one is just like the first one--he said--to love your neighbor as yourself.

If we are going to save America, protecting our voting integrity is incredibly important, and let's get that done. But if we are really going to save America--not just a bill--I think we need to get back to the most basic truth, to restart again and ask ourselves, as individuals that make up a nation, if we are going to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourself.

And as the old joke says, when the person says, ``Who is my neighbor?'' the response is, ``probably the person you wish I wouldn't say.'' That is the person who is your neighbor.

Jesus was headed toward his execution. He knew it, but the people around him didn't. And he was heading through Jericho, and as he approached Jericho, there was a tax collector there. His name was Zacchaeus. He was up in a tree because he was a little guy and because he wanted to see Jesus come by.

Now, he was a wretched guy who had stolen from everybody in town, and everybody knew it. When Jesus saw this wretched guy, he looked at him and he said: Why don't you come down? I want to spend some more time with you.

And the one person in town that everybody thought Jesus would ignore, Jesus actually pointed him out and said: I want to spend more time with you.

At the end of the conversation, everybody looked at him and said: Why did you spend time with that broken, depraved person?

Jesus responded: Because I came to seek and to save what was lost. That is why.

Just a personal privilege, if we are going to talk about saving America, maybe we should start with our own souls.

But in the meantime, as we contemplate that as individuals, why don't we just do the most basic thing? Why don't we verify that only American citizens are voting--because we all know it is happening, and I just told you stories from my own State.

Why don't we just verify, as we go through the polls, to increase the trust of all Americans for our election process? I am looking forward to the debate on the floor this week and for folks to have the opportunity to be able to talk this through. This is something important that we need to be able to finish, and it is something strongly the American people are supportive of.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source