Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, here we find ourselves today, a little over 24 hours after we began consideration of the SAVE America Act, having passed the motion to proceed to that measure yesterday afternoon.

It is important to me. I think it is important to the American people, who overwhelmingly support this measure and the policy changes it would bring about when enacted into law, that we keep our running tally of the arguments being raised against it. The arguments for and against it are and properly should be monitored by the American people so that they can see what is going on.

This does, after all, impact them, and it impacts them in a way that goes beyond the run-of-the-mill piece of legislation.

Everything we do potentially affects the American people one way or another, some things more than others. A simple sense of the Senate resolution declaring ``National Sofa Care Week'' might impact them less than something like raising taxes, for example.

This one is, in some ways, upstream from all of those because the SAVE America Act deals with something very fundamental. It deals with the way that the citizens are able to interact with and influence their own government. Really, it is the fundamental premise of the founding of our Nation and the creation of our Republic.

In many respects, the Declaration of Independence, whose birthday we are about to celebrate this year--we are nearly 250 years since we became our own country, since we declared independence. In the Declaration of Independence, in addition to kicking off the creation of the greatest civilization that human history has ever recorded, it also set out a vision for the type of Nation we aspire to become and, in fact, have become. It established a few basic principles. In many respects, the Declaration of Independence, while not quoted as often, while not celebrated as much, and while it is maybe a step or two detached from the day-to-day operation of the government--in some respects, the Declaration of Independence is itself the picture that we look at when we assess who we are as a country. The Constitution is the frame--the structure that holds it in place, that sets the boundaries-- but the Declaration provides the picture.

The Declaration acknowledges the existence of popular sovereignty. It acknowledges the natural fundamental rights that God and nature's God lay before us; that acknowledges the fundamental truths about who we are and what government is in relation to us; that we have these self- evident truths, these God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the understanding that government exists for the well-being of human beings and not the other way around; and that whenever government becomes destructive of those same ends--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for example--it is the right, it is the duty, it is the obligation to alter or abolish that government and to establish something that will secure their freedoms.

Some 11 years after that document was penned, after several years, we won the war against what was then the world's last-standing great superpower in a conflict that could be analogized to David and Goliath. We were not Goliath. We were David--we were the underdog of underdogs-- and, somehow, we managed to win that war. We established a form of government, after winning that war, under the Articles of Confederation.

Instinctively, intuitively, we adopted a form of national government that was weak, that was meek, that was mild--in part because we had just come off of an experience with our mother country where we saw that the risk of tyranny was greater at the national level than it was at the local level. Meanwhile, during our Colonial period prior to the Revolution, we had had a taste of local self-rule in a way that was somewhat different than local government had been prior to that time back in the mother country. Given how far we were removed geographically, physically, in miles from the mother country, that by itself offered a degree of independence from our London-based government, and we became accustomed to it.

The amount of muscle flexed by the mother country would wax and wane over time depending on what was happening back in London, throughout the British Isles, and throughout the British Empire during periods where there were a lot of debts to pay off often from wars waged on multiple continents. There were times when our British overseers became more aggressive in the way they regulated us, in the way especially that they collected taxes from us, and they became more of a brooding omnipresence during those seasons. It was during one of those seasons in which the American people had decided that they had had enough and that it was time to break our ties with the mother country and become our own country.

So years passed. We won the war against all odds, against all expectations. We set up the Articles of Confederation instinctively, reflexively, creating a fairly weak form of national government, but it was so weak that it couldn't perform the basic functions that we needed a national government to perform, and it was that set of circumstances that led the individuals who would write the Constitution to try to come together.

They tried to come together in 1786 in Annapolis. They couldn't form a quorum, so they abandoned that project. They reconvened the following year in the late spring of 1787. By the time they formed a quorum in 1787, the heat of the season was upon them. It was unseasonably hot, and it was muggy as Philadelphia often is during that time of year. They labored through a process that was intense, that was itself a system that you might describe almost as flying a plane while building a plane. They came together initially, ostensibly, to amend the Articles of Confederation to correct some of these inadequacies--the inability of the national government to forestall the economic balkanization that had started to take place among the former Colonies--now States--and to deal with some of the defects of the Articles of Confederation.

What came out from all of that was, of course, a completely new document; and it was a document that, I believe, was written by the hands of wise men raised up by Almighty God under that very purpose, but it preserved these basic tenets--the basic tenets of popular sovereignty, of natural rights that had been articulated so well in the Declaration of Independence--and it gave them substance; it gave them form. It put in place a structure that would be there to guarantee their endurance and to make them a reality.

How is this relevant to the SAVE America Act? Well, it has everything to do with the SAVE America Act.

In that Constitution--predicated on the Declaration of Independence-- we made clear that the people are, in fact, the sovereigns; that this is their government. It set up these three coordinate branches of government. One branch of government--the branch of government in which we operate--makes the laws. They understood this government from the outset to be the most powerful and the most dangerous because the other two operated, would operate, or were designed to operate in some ways ancillary to this one. They certainly understood that this was the most dangerous branch, and we know that because it is the branch of government most routinely subject to regular elections. Every Member of the House of Representatives is subject to reelection every 2 years, and a third of the Members of this body are, likewise, up for reelection every 2 years.

So it is no accident--it is not a mere coincidence--that the Founding Fathers subjected us to the most regular elections because we are the most dangerous branch. We make the laws. The executive branch implements and executes and carries out those laws. The judicial branch resolves disputes over the meaning of the laws that we put in place where two or more parties can't agree as to what a particular provision of Federal law--whether it is statutory or constitutional-- might mean.

For all of this to work, popular sovereignty has to be maintained, and that means a close, tight connection to the American people themselves. These elections matter. It is one of the reasons why, in article I of the Constitution--the part of the Constitution that sets up the legislative branch--it gives the Congress the power to establish rules with some significant limitations but rules nonetheless that would apply nationwide with respect to the election of Federal officials--of Members of the House of Representatives and Members of the Senate. Those rules would need to have nationwide application because they involved, distinctively, national lawmaking powers. That is why we have the power to operate here to begin with.

If at any point the Federal Government generally or in particular at this particular branch of government becomes untethered from the will of the people--from the elections and the decisions made in those elections concerning those who serve in the Congress of the United States, whether in the House or in the Senate--we have a problem. To the extent that our elections for these Federal offices lose their legitimacy--actual or perceived or a combination of the two--we end up with problems because the government itself starts to lose its legitimacy. And it is not just that, well, it is one of the three branches that is in question in this part of the conversation. It is that this is the wellspring of everything else that happens within the U.S. Government. What happens in the executive branch and what happens in the judicial branch are in many respects downstream from what happens in this body, in this building, whose job it is to make laws.

So that is where the SAVE America Act comes into play, but it comes into play after decades of Congress previously adopting laws, enacting laws, putting laws in place that somewhat altered the landscape for how elections or, at least, Federal elections are carried out.

One of those pivotal moments that we have to keep in mind as we discuss the SAVE America Act is a law that was passed in 1993--a law that really without which we wouldn't be here today having this discussion. The law passed in 1993 to which I am referring to is the National Voter Registration Act--the NVRA, also known as the motor voter law.

What it does is it allows people in the United States and in any State that participates in the NVRA process--nearly all the States do, with only a very small handful of holdouts. An overwhelming, super, supermajority of the American population lives in those States that participates in it. It allows people in those participating States, when they apply for a driver's license--it is something that was unheard of, something that wouldn't have existed because none of the technology existed for it at the time of the American founding but that, today, is more or less ubiquitous among the adult, voting age American population--a driver's license. So the NVRA allows people, when applying for a driver's license in an NVRA-participating State, to show up at a DMV, and as they are filling out their driver's license application, they may simultaneously register to vote.

The reason Congress had authority to do that was because of our authority under article I of the Constitution to set up rules governing these Federal elections to which I refer. It was a fairly simple concept, and it has been successful in many ways in helping a lot of people register to vote. There is some natural appeal to it in that a lot of the same information that a person has to supply in order to apply for a driver's license is information similar to what one supplies when registering to vote. So there seems to be a nice symmetry for it, and it has resulted in a whole lot of people registering to vote.

A few things have changed in our laws and in our society since that law was adopted some 33 years ago. One of the things that has changed is that we do have a lot more noncitizens residing in this country right now than we did then or perhaps at any time in American history. Some 30 million-plus noncitizens reside in the United States.

Between 2021 and 2025 alone, some 10 to 15 million people entered our country unlawfully during the Biden administration. That was a very significant development--a development that came about as another trend was also developing--a trend in which, in nearly every State, you can now apply for and receive a driver's license even if you are not a citizen of the United States. In 19 of those States, plus the District of Columbia, you may apply for and receive a driver's license even if you are a known illegal immigrant--someone who is in this country unlawfully. In 19 States, plus the District of Columbia, you can apply for and receive a driver's license.

Something else happened in the intervening time period. Twenty years after the NVRA was passed by Congress, the Supreme Court of the United States--the highest Court of the land that sits just across the street from us--decided a case, a case called Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona.

And in that case, the Supreme Court did something that I still find puzzling, that I still find wrong--something that made the SAVE America Act very, very necessary. So I want to talk about that case for a minute and how that relates to this law, and why the reference to that law is so important in refuting some of the arguments that are made against this bill, because one of the arguments that you hear is we don't need the SAVE America Act. We don't need it because Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting, and so it doesn't happen. Or if it does happen, it is exceedingly rare, so much so that it almost never happens--more than likely to get struck by lightning twice while standing in the same place than you are to see noncitizens voting, so the argument goes.

And the argument goes: Therefore, this legislation is not necessary. Go on with your lives, citizens. Don't worry about this. ``These aren't the droids you're looking for.'' Whatever argument you want to make from it, that is kind of what they say.

It doesn't wash. In fact, we can reach exactly the opposite conclusion of that.

Let's get back to this decision made by the Supreme Court in 2013, Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. In that case, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that States are prohibited from requiring proof of citizenship from those registering to vote in Federal elections using an NVRA supplied form, which is the form available at DMV locations across all of America, at least in those participating States, which are nearly all of the States.

Now, this holding is problematic, especially considering, in many places, you are dealing with States that, even if they have reason to believe they might be registering people who are not citizens of this country, they still can't ask for documentary proof or any evidence of citizenship because the Supreme Court concluded that this was preempted out, that it was taken off the table, made something beyond the authority of the States under this law.

It becomes doubly problematic in light of the fact that it is a relatively recent trend or at least a trend that most people haven't been familiar with until fairly recently. There are some places throughout the country in which noncitizens are fully permitted to vote in certain non-Federal elections, more typically in the context of local elections in certain States, including California, Maryland, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.

And so while explicitly permitting noncitizen voting in that context--while doing that--you are registering people to vote in those elections who are not eligible to vote in Federal elections. So that raises the question: What steps, if any, are they taking to separate out those ballots, those voter registrations for people who are known noncitizens of the United States, making them eligible to vote in some of these local elections in those jurisdictions like California, Maryland, DC, and in Vermont? What are they doing to make sure that those same voters in those voter registrations are not able to vote in Federal elections?

So why not have those jurisdictions certify that those voting in State-run Federal elections are, in fact, U.S. citizens and that they have excluded all noncitizen voters registered in those jurisdictions from voting in any Federal election? Why not enter into cooperative agreements, for example, with the Federal Government, allowing the relevant Federal Agencies to verify citizenship of anyone registered to vote, at least for purposes of voting in a Federal election?

But the Democrat-run governments in those jurisdictions refuse to do this. In fact, more than half the States have currently entered into memoranda of understanding with the Federal Government, with Federal Agencies allowing for this cooperation to take place. But these Democratic States refuse to enter into any such MOUs.

So while Democrats argue Federal law prohibits noncitizen voting and insist that noncitizen voting is not just rare but exceedingly rare, so rare that we shouldn't even consider it cognizable in this Chamber, it remains unknown--and, in many instances, unknowable--how many illegal votes are being counted in Federal elections or how many illegal votes cast by noncitizens might be cast in any future Federal election, including the midterm congressional elections taking place this November.

There is currently no mechanism to verify the citizenship status of those registered to vote, and that is what this legislation was designed to provide--to fill this gap left quite inadvisably and unnecessarily by the Supreme Court of the United States in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona.

Now, look, that interpretation of the NVRA was wrong. This Congress did not preempt out State authority to verify citizenship in the NVRA. It didn't speak to that; nor did it so preempt the field that one could look at it and reasonably conclude that that is what it did. The Supreme Court was wrong. Nonetheless, a majority of the Supreme Court did reach that conclusion, and it remains the conclusive authority on that.

My former boss Justice Alito wrote a beautiful, masterful dissent, like so many others that he has issued. Nonetheless, this remains the holding of the Court, and it remains the law of the land to this very day, and that is why we are here.

So Federal law prohibits noncitizen voting, yes, but a prohibition without a reliable verification process is an incomplete safeguard. In fact, it almost is at risk of becoming dead-letter law in much the same way it would be if--I don't know--other laws, for example, prohibiting the sale of alcohol to underage purchasers, if that too ran on the honor system, because, ultimately, that is how this NVRA form works. After this Supreme Court decision in 2013, all a person need do is go into a DMV, say, ``I want to apply for a driver's license,'' fill out the form, and here is what their proof of citizenship looks like. It consists of checking a box saying: Yes, I would like to register to vote, and then signing their name, certifying that, yes, I am eligible to vote. Nothing to see here, no worries. ``These aren't the droids you're looking for.'' Go on with your lives.

That doesn't work, and it wouldn't work the same way if we borrow, by analogy, my point about underage drinking--if all you had to do is go into--I don't know--a 7-Eleven or a liquor store or wherever people buy alcohol these days and say: I am old enough to buy alcohol.

The kid is maybe 12, doesn't have to shave, never even looked at a razor, and has got a high-pitched voice that hasn't even started to crack yet. All he has to do is check a box and sign his name. He is home free.

It would then be almost impossible to detect, almost impossible to punish, in law. So you can have a law on the books, but if you leave no mechanism for the detection of violations or for any type of enforcement when a violation occurs, the law becomes more or less dead letter.

That would be bad in any society that decides it is a bad idea to sell alcohol to children. It is not really heading in a good place. It doesn't lead to good policy outcomes. That would be bad.

But I think it has got to be infinitely worse when that law deals not with just a general issue of public policy, as underage drinking does, but is at the very headwaters of all other Federal law because this determines the citizens' relationship with their national government.

If they are no longer in charge of it but somebody else is going to be, you are allowing, in effect, and inviting foreign election interference in U.S. elections. That is a big problem. We have spent a lot of time, expended a lot effort in this body, talking about the risk of foreign election interference in U.S. elections. I can think of no greater risk of foreign election interference than that which is occasioned by the NVRA and the Supreme Court's interpretation of it and the circumstances we have now, in which almost every State issues driver's licenses to noncitizens--including close to half of them issuing freely even to known illegal aliens, when we have got 30 million-plus noncitizens living in this country, 10 or 15 million of whom entered in the country unlawfully in the 4-year period between 2021 and 2025 alone.

This is a recipe for disaster, and we are kidding ourselves. We are lying to our constituents if we pretend otherwise.

Look, the core issue is not whether the law against noncitizen voting exists. It does. It is whether there are consistent, enforceable mechanisms to confirm eligibility, because if there are not, this law is fake, and it can't protect us; it can't protect anybody.

Pointing to an existing prohibition really misses the real issue: verification and enforcement. A law on the books is only as strong as the system used to enforce it. Federal law might prohibit noncitizen voting, but without reliable verification and cooperation between the States and the Federal Government and a reasonable mechanism by which the Federal Government may gain access to or insight into the voter registration files to verify, to confirm, as to whether or not compliance is taking place, then that prohibition is not going to be enforced--certainly, not meaningfully enforced, not consistently, not reliably. So much so that, over time, the legitimacy and the perception of legitimacy of those elections is going to be badly impaired, and that is precisely where things stand today.

This decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona created this massive structural gap. States administer Federal elections, like they do all elections. We don't want, we don't need, we never had, we never will have wholesale Federal election authority. This is appropriately left to the States.

But as has been the case since the dawn of the Republic, we are allowed to make rules in the form of laws that govern what happens specifically in the conduct of Federal elections, elections for Federal office. That decision left States administering Federal elections without consistent tools to verify citizenship at the time of registration or subsequently.

And, meanwhile, you have got these jurisdictions I have referenced-- including California; Washington, DC; Maryland; and Vermont--permitting noncitizens to vote in certain local elections. Well, those policies are limited to non-Federal elections on their face because otherwise they would be trampling on Federal law. They make it even more important to maintain clear, verifiable distinctions between those voter rolls used for local elections versus those that are going to be used in Federal elections. That clear separation and that possibility of verification between voter rolls is important. In fact, it is of such tantamount importance that it warrants us having this discussion today and requires us, as it were, to pass this law. It morally compels us to do so.

So this current system relies far too heavily on self-attestation, just a basic honor code. ``You are on your honor'' system--don't make it up--on fragmented State processes.

Instead of this fragmented and insufficient process, States should be anxious to make full use of cooperative verification tools such as data-sharing agreements or memoranda of understanding with Federal Agencies to confirm citizenship status where legally permissible.

That is what Utah has done. It is also what nearly every Republican- majority State in the whole country has done.

And yet the Democrat States--the blue States--refuse defiantly. That should tell us something.

And this is where the policy disagreement that is at the heart of this discussion becomes even clearer. While some States have pursued data-sharing arrangements and verification partnerships with Federal Agencies, others--led by Democrats--have refused to adopt these tools, defiantly so. This is cause for great alarm.

Even if improper or fraudulent noncitizen voting is rare, the absence of uniform verification means that we cannot even measure it with any degree of confidence. And that, in turn, means we have no idea whether the problem is great or small, or as some implausibly suggested, nonexistent. And that uncertainty itself undermines trust, and that trust is at the core of any system of government that relies on self- rule. Certainly, any constitutional republic founded on democratic principles, like ours, cannot afford and must never experiment with anything that can detract from that.

This legislation would close that gap by strengthening verification mechanisms, encouraging consistent cooperation, and ensuring that Federal election rules are backed by enforceable processes--not just assumptions, not just faith and hope that everything will turn out well because, after all, nobody is going to do anything bad.

Well, we know through sad experience and through an understanding of the human condition that faith, hope, and trust without any verification are no adequate system for any form of government.

We see it depicted everywhere, and we have heard it recited from great Presidents throughout history, including most recently Presidents like Ronald Reagan have talked about the need to trust but verify.

We see it in architecture and the art of this building--constant reminders that we are to trust but verify.

On the balustrade designed by Constantino Brumidi just one floor beneath us right outside of this Chamber, there is this great bronze depiction of a cherub, an angel. On one side of the angel, we see a snake; on the other side, we see a dove. To me, that has always conjured biblical images of Jesus' admonition to be wise as serpents but harmless as doves.

We see it in Statuary Hall, the old House Chamber--Enrico Causici's classic sculpture called ``Liberty and the Eagle.'' You have this angel with her right arm outstretched, holding a scroll, which we presume to be the Constitution--maybe the Declaration; maybe both. I don't know. On one side of her, there is an eagle preparing to take flight. On the other side, there is a bundle of sticks--known in architectural and artistic terms as a fasces. It is the symbol of ``e pluribus unum,'' that we are stronger than the sum of our parts. Normally, the fasces is bound up by leather straps or ropes. This one is bound up with a snake. It is another of these conjured biblical images--wise as serpents, harmless as doves.

It is something buried deep within our DNA as Americans. It is something that inheres in any constitutional republic like ours--trust but verify. Be wise as serpents but harmless as doves.

In the Book of Matthew, some of this stuff can be found in the teachings of Jesus and within the same sequence of verses that tell us to beware of wolves in sheep's clothing--again, the importance of remembering to trust but verify.

So the concern is not simply that noncitizen voting is or might be or might later become widespread but that the absence of uniform verification standards makes it difficult to impossible to measure, detect, or confidently rule out ineligible participation.

Fraudulent votes--cast by voters who may or may not be nice people, may or may not be friendly to the United States, may or may not be agents of a foreign power but are not citizens and are thus prohibited from voting in our elections. In that context, the legislation is framed as a preventive measure strengthening verification, improving transparency, and increasing public confidence in Federal elections.

Look, if States are going to administer Federal elections, which they do, and I hope they always will, they should meet, they must meet certain baseline standards for verifying voter eligibility--including cooperation with Federal data systems where appropriate.

Even if noncitizen voting turns out to be rare, the current system makes it difficult or impossible to detect that with any degree of confidence. Even if it were rare today--a point that I am not willing to concede--we have no guarantee that it would remain rare for very long. Why would it remain so when it is so easy to carry out this form of illegal voting with virtually no chance of detection, apprehension, or penalty as a result?

A law that strengthens verification and ensures consistent cooperation is not redundant; it is not unnecessary; it is not a nuisance. It is a necessary, indispensable step to make existing prohibitions enforceable and credible.

So what else did they argue? Well, they have a whole bunch of arguments. One of the arguments that they make goes something like this. It relies on the fact that in 2023, the Brennan Center for Justice partnered with VoteRiders, the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, and Public Wise to survey Americans about what identification they possess and what they know about voter ID laws in their State.

They asked respondents whether they had documents that proved their citizenship--a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers, as the case may be--whether they had them and whether they had them readily available.

Their research indicated that more than 9 percent of American citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, don't have proof of citizenship readily available. Now, they note that there could be many reasons for this--that documents might be in the home of another family member or in a safe deposit box. At least 3.8 million--or so they concluded--don't have these documents at all, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen.

So on that basis, some are arguing that the SAVE America Act, if enacted, would somehow disenfranchise 20 million or so Americans. Well, let's see if we can disentangle this argument so we can respond to it.

I have some questions.

First, did the Brennan Center verify the citizenship of the respondents? What if only noncitizens responded to the survey? If that were the case, then certainly those folks wouldn't have access to those documents that prove citizenship because they wouldn't be citizens.

Second, let's assume that they positively verified the citizenship of those surveyed. Even if that were the case and even if those surveyed did not have access to the documents noted in the survey, it would not change the reality that this legislation does not disenfranchise them or anyone who is a citizen or keep any citizen from registering to vote.

The bill allows for use of more than just the documents noted in the survey, and importantly, it includes multiple fail-safe mechanisms to provide flexibility and to ensure that those who may not have their documents due to whatever mishap or misfortune they may have encountered--to make sure that they can still register to vote with the help of an affidavit submitted to an election official, an affidavit setting forth the basic facts surrounding their birth if they are natural-born citizens or surrounding their naturalization if they are naturalized citizens.

So to the Brennan Center and to those organizations and individuals who have been peddling this false narrative of voter suppression and disenfranchisement--which, remember, is a really aggressive claim suggesting that 20, 21 million Americans will be disenfranchised if this becomes law--that is a lie. That is an absolute lie. It is just not true.

To those peddling this lie, I strongly suggest--I implore you to check your cross tabs, verify your survey participants, do your homework, and more than anything, even if you don't spend any time with the survey at all or inspect the methodology, read the bill.

If you just read the bill, you will see right there in black and white, in plain English, in the bill now before us that was recently passed by the House of Representatives that we proceeded to yesterday-- go to page 12, line 22. Right there in black and white, you will see this is so much easier than anyone is making it out to be.

Those who are lying about the bill are ignoring this provision altogether because whether you are missing one document or you are missing all of them, either because your house burned down or your dog ate them or you never had them to begin with or you belong to some religious sect that doesn't allow you to keep such documents in the home--I don't know if such religious beliefs exist, but if they do, somebody might raise them. They can still get around this because all they have to do is, when they register to vote, swear on an affidavit setting forth the basic facts behind their citizenship, and the burden then shifts to the State election official to confirm or refute those basic assertions to which they have sworn under penalty of perjury are true, and they can carry it from there. You don't have to shell out a dime. You don't have to go back to grandma's house and dig through a mountain of documents in order to find the magic documents.

Now, I will note here that there are other circumstances in which you have to prove who you are. There are other circumstances in which Americans routinely are required to not only show who they are with a photo ID but to prove their U.S. citizenship.

Perhaps the most common of these can be found in the form known as the I-9. Any American who has ever worked as an employee has filled out an I-9. You cannot get a job and begin new employment as an employee without filling out the I-9. When you fill out the I-9, the I-9 is very, very prescriptive, and it is very strict.

There are a few ways you can establish citizenship. One is through a U.S. passport establishing the fact of your citizenship. If you don't have a U.S. passport, as many people don't, you can supply a birth certificate and, with the birth certificate, a form of government- issued photo ID. In some instances, a social security card gets factored in. But it is very rigid. It is very prescriptive.

It is very, very important for us to remember that this is far easier than anything in connection with the I-9 form.

So if you have ever had a job, you have already had to prove your citizenship, if you are an American citizen, before starting that job, and you have had to do so under a set of standards far more exacting, far less forgiving, far less permissive than what we are dealing with right here.

So this whole argument about 21 million people being disenfranchised--well, I mean, even 1 person being disenfranchised--it is a lie. You have to willfully, consciously disregard and lie about the existence of the text beginning on page 12, line 22 of this bill.

Another argument that gets raised is that the right to vote is constitutionally protected as a right and it should not be restricted by requiring documentation. Now, this is an interesting argument. There are lots of constitutional protections that we have. Yes, we have multiple constitutional protections that deal in one way or another with the right to vote. Voting is important. The Constitution not only protects that, but it is built around your right to vote. But it doesn't mean, it can't mean, has never meant, and will never mean that the government can't take steps to make sure that people are voting lawfully and that they are entitled to vote. To suggest otherwise would make a mockery of all elections.

The fact is that we have done everything we can to make this bill comply with our mantra: Let's make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

There are some in this body who are perfectly content with forgetting the second half of that equation altogether and saying anything that makes it anything other than easy to vote must be unconstitutional because it is a constitutionally protected right.

It is hard to identify a single constitutional right that is not without some limitation dealing with, among other things, curtailing the risk of fraud, of manipulating a right to harm or injure others.

There are plenty of other constitutionally protected rights where you have to comply with steps in order to exercise them. The Second Amendment, for example, protects your right to bear arms. Yet, if you want to buy a firearm from any federally licensed firearms dealer, you have to fill out a fairly onerous set of forms; you have to prove who you are; you have to establish under penalty of perjury that you are entitled to own a gun, that you don't fall under any of the prohibited categories under 18 U.S.C. section 922(g), either as a convicted felon, as somebody who has been declared by a court of competent jurisdiction to be mentally insane, as an alien illegally or unlawfully inside the United States, or any of the other categories of prohibited persons under 18 U.S.C. section 922(g).

You have to submit this information with a government-issued photo ID, and then you have to wait--sometimes minutes, sometimes hours--in order for a background check to be completed.

Is this a burden on your Second Amendment right to bear arms? Yes, but it doesn't make it unconstitutional--just like whatever incremental burden that you face in establishing that you are who you say you are and that you are entitled to vote in Federal elections doesn't undo your constitutional right to vote. And it doesn't make this unconstitutional that we are just making sure that we don't make a mockery of our own elections.

(Mr. RICKETTS assumed the Chair.)

So the fact that something is a constitutionally protected right doesn't mean that you have a right to do it in a completely uninhibited manner. I don't know anyone who believes that. I don't think I have ever heard anyone make that argument here in this Chamber--at least not seriously. And, in fact, making it easy to cheat directly undermines the very same right that these people purport to be espousing because it undermines the right of law-abiding Americans to cast their vote and to not have their vote diluted, offset, rendered meaningless by noncitizen voting.

We just want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. We can and we must accomplish both. We can't skip over either one.

Another argument is that the SAVE America Act somehow violates what they refer to as States' rights, which is a term I hate. It is a misnomer. States don't have rights; States have authority. Authority is the opposite of a right. A right is a privilege against authority, whether by a State, by the Federal sovereign, or otherwise.

So States don't have rights. I don't like it. It conjures George Wallace images, and it is a complete misnomer. So let's refer to that as federalism, State sovereign authority, the relationship between the States and the Federal Government, whatever you want. Don't call it States' rights. But a lot of people are calling it that.

And the people calling it that this week are the people opposed to this bill for completely ridiculous reasons that overlook the purpose of the bill, the text of the bill, and the constitutional structure in which we find it.

Look, States work to protect individual rights, with the authority granted to them by their State Constitution and within the bounds set by the U.S. Constitution. And, unfortunately, Federal law currently prevents States from using this authority to protect voters and the integrity of our elections when it comes to protecting the rights of voters by excluding noncitizen voter participation.

This law that we have been referring to is an existing Federal law, the NVRA--the National Voter Registration Act--which the Supreme Court decided prohibits the States from requiring proof of citizenship, even though the statute itself says nothing about that. That is the Supreme Court's conclusive, binding interpretation of it.

It needs to be changed in response to this ruling. It is a statutory interpretation, not a constitutional one, so we have the power to do that. It doesn't require a constitutional amendment--just a simple act of Congress--to do it.

So what I am saying is that, for those invoking federalism, the sovereign authority of the States, it is just nonsense. This is absurd. If what they are saying is that the Federal Government has no place operating here because it involves elections and elections are conducted by States, even when they involve Federal office, then the true remedy there would be then let's undo the NVRA because the NVRA is a Federal law that imposes obligations on States.

Nobody is calling for that. I am not calling for that here. But what I am saying is you can't accept the NVRA as law, which we all do, and simultaneously say that Congress may not make laws governing the election of Federal officials because that might infringe on the authority of the States. That is an absurd argument.

The only reason this bill became necessary is because we have an existing Federal law that has been badly interpreted, is prohibiting the States from making any inquiry into a voter's identity and citizenship, thus thwarting the purpose of Federal laws prohibiting noncitizen voting.

Here is another charge. This is an interesting one. Another accusation, another argument being raised against the SAVE America Act is that this legislation would establish a private right of action that could be used to penalize hard-working election workers. OK. That sounds scary to a lot of people if you don't do any inquiry, if you don't do any digging into what the law actually says because what we all imagine when we hear that--we think of these great people, whether they are employed full time by the State or whether they work during election season, either to help people register to vote or help them cast their vote or otherwise, and it would seem unfair to put them in the position where they could become subject to litigation over it.

But when you look into what the law actually says and the context in which it arises, it is not scary at all. It would be scary if we didn't have it. It would be unthinkable to not have it because otherwise the law could become completely meaningless and unenforceable, absent some sprawling Federal bureaucracy, which we are all loathe to create another one of those.

The fact is that private rights of action against election workers engaging in voter fraud already exist under Federal law--the same set of Federal laws that we are amending and that we were required to amend in this very act, making the SAVE America Act necessary to begin with. Those private rights of action already exist under these existing Federal laws. This provision in the SAVE America Act merely extends the same provision that exists elsewhere in the NVRA to violations of the additional requirements of this legislation. And it would be insane not to do it because, again, we would render that dead letter, just as we are rendering dead letter the criminal prohibition against noncitizen voting. That is not an argument against this bill; it is an argument for it.

Another argument is that Americans are simply not comfortable with government management of personal information for use in the database that would be used to help give meaning to all this: the Department of Homeland Security's SAVE system. This is a really interesting argument.

Look, the information that the Federal Government uses to verify citizenship is already in the Federal Government's hands. It is already available for its use. The State voter data is not fully made available to the Federal Government under existing law but should be in order to verify the citizenship of those voting in State-run Federal elections.

The U.S. Government is the only entity on planet Earth that has data already whereby we can ascertain the citizenship or lack thereof of anyone in this country; and it would be an absolute absurdity, an absolute shame, an absolute miscarriage of justice to say that the Federal Government can't use that, it can't maintain that database, and it can't use it in such a way as to prohibit noncitizen voter participation in the context of Federal elections. This is absolutely crazy.

Now, if we want to start talking about the Federal Government having too much data about us, look, join the club. Sign me up for that parade. It bothers me too. But it is really absurd to say that this one can't be used, especially because the citizenship data is already there. The Federal Government has already got all kinds of information on you, on me, on every one of us--more than I wish it had. But if there is anything, any set of data the Federal Government ought to have and maintain and be able to use, it is data on who is a citizen and who is not. Show me any American who believes otherwise, any American outside of this building, and I will be shocked.

Another argument is that the SAVE system is somehow a DOGE-like system, given to the same Department that runs ICE. Oh, horrors.

Look, for people who think that we should have immigration laws but we can't enforce them, it makes perfect sense why they want to oppose the SAVE America Act. They want to render vestigial our criminal prohibitions against noncitizen voting, just like they want to render vestigial our immigration laws.

In any event, this is a terribly misleading correlation. The SAVE system verifies citizenship and highlights ineligible voters. Citizenship verification happens across government. It does happen. It will continue to happen. It must happen. That is one of the fundamental duties of any government is to know and have access to information to ascertain whether somebody is a citizen. Verifying citizenship through the SAVE system would protect Federal voters, would protect actual American citizens who are allowed to vote while noncitizens are not.

Another argument: Well, if you don't have a passport, you won't be able to vote. And passports cost money. You are going to have to shell out close to 200 bucks in order to get one, and this is going to end up disenfranchising everybody who doesn't have a passport. This is one of the most pernicious lies in the entire pantheon of paranoid-fantasy- derived lies against the SAVE America Act.

See page 14, line 15, of the bill. If you don't have documentation, you don't have a problem. Page 14, line 15, is in the substitute amendment. In the text of the original House-passed vehicle which we are now considering, I believe that is on page 12, line 22.

Again, maybe your house burnt down and all your documents burned with the house. Maybe your dog ate your passport, your birth certificate, and every other document or maybe all that stuff got stolen when you went to Europe or Mexico. Maybe your Aunt Madge took off with all of them before she went crazy and sent all of it to the dry cleaners and then ended up having all of it burned for some inexplicable reason.

No worries. Even if all that happens to you, there is this attestation process administered by State officials to put the burden back on the State--not on you--without a single additional document other than what you provide to them in the form of a sworn affidavit, made under penalty of perjury. You put the obligation on them to complete the process without a single scrap of official additional documentation.

Another argument is the SAVE America Act would somehow disenfranchise millions of citizens, including and especially women and persons of color. Look, no one--no one in this body, Democrat or Republican, should ever disrespect the dignity of racial minorities or women by claiming that they are somehow incapable of obtaining an ID and proof of citizenship. An ID is necessary in daily life to drive a car, to get a job, to board a plane, to open a bank account, or even to attend the Democratic National Convention.

Yes, you have to show who you are. Yes, you have to prove that you have the right to be there, to attend and participate in the Democratic National Convention. No, you will not get in; no, you will not be able to participate in that because you don't have the right to do that. You have to have the proper documentation to prove who you are.

So if this is somehow Jim Crow, then so, too, is the Democratic Party, the party which, after all, is the original gangster behind the Jim Crow movement. So this is stunning to me that anyone from that party, the party of Jim Crow, the party that subjected so many millions of Americans, over so many decades, to hateful, racist laws, prohibiting them from participating in the most basic activities of human existence, let alone their participation in civic life, in government, in education--for them to call this Jim Crow is inexcusable. It is illogical. It does not reflect well on them, and shame on anyone who makes that comparison because that is not what that is.

Moreover, the soft bigotry of low expectations comes into play in here and to every woman and to every racial minority I know is deeply, deeply offensive. Shame on anyone who makes this argument. It is not credible.

Mr. President, I have been passed a note from my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from Minnesota. The distinguished Senator from Minnesota needs to speak.

I don't know whether this is in the form of a question to the speaker--

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Mr. LEE. May I proceed? Thank you.

Mr. President, another accusation, another argument that is being made here that is quite spurious and that just isn't accurate is that U.S. elections are already free and they are already fair and so we don't need to mess with them; that we shouldn't mess with them; that if we do anything to mess with them, that will upset that.

Well, yes, look, Americans are promised free and fair elections. That means that the elections should be rid of any election fraud and any voter suppression because an election isn't free and it isn't fair if, in fact, we allow people who don't have the right to vote to vote, especially if we set in motion a sequence of events that will inevitably culminate in not just a few but ultimately thousands, then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of noncitizens to vote in these elections. This is not hyperbole, with an estimated 30-plus million noncitizens in this country and with nearly every State freely issuing driver's licenses to noncitizens--19 States plus the District of Columbia issuing them to even known illegal aliens.

And all you have to do is fill out the form and check the box and sign your name at the bottom. No problem. ``These aren't the droids you're looking for.'' I am just fine.

You think nobody is going to do that? You think a lot of people aren't going to do that? Shame on all of us if you fall for that. That is absurd.

The threat of noncitizen voting--the mere potential for it--violates these standards. Citizens should not have the force of their vote--the meaning of their vote--diluted, bastardized, adulterated by noncitizen participation.

The SAVE America Act works to verify and protect the votes of American citizens.

Now, here comes another one, an argument that is also really sophomoric--that is probably too polite, but I will use that term for the moment--that somehow the SAVE America Act will suppress voters generally but protect Republicans. That is offensive, and it falls under its own weight.

Look, the SAVE America Act will protect the value of each citizen's vote. It is utterly agnostic. It cares not whether you are a Republican or Democrat, a member of the Giraffe Party or the yet-to-be-formed national party of people who are opposed to vote for Democrats and Republicans, the Green Party, the Purple Party, whatever party you want to belong to, or no party at all. It protects your vote. It is party- agnostic.

It in no way, shape, or form controls the priorities that the voters bring to the ballot box or preferences one group of them over another and, instead, ensures the priorities developed into law by way of our elections accurately reflect the will of U.S. citizens and only U.S. citizens, because remember that concept of popular sovereignty that we have been talking about this entire time.

In fact, the entire 250 years of the American Republic, we have been talking about popular sovereignty. It is the fundamental building block of Congress, on which all of our laws and our Constitution and our Declaration are built--the idea that the people are sovereigns. We have no King. We the people are the sovereigns. We the people collectively enjoy that right.

Identifying what the franchise is and who has that right to vote is so fundamental to protecting the popular sovereignty. As the saying goes, if everyone is family, no one is. So too here--if everyone is a citizen or everyone has the same prerogatives as citizens, no one does. It ceases to be meaningful because it gets diluted past the breaking point.

Here is another argument that is patently fraudulent. On its face, it fails. It is made with reckless disregard for the truth or knowledge of its falsity when it is made--that the SAVE America Act would somehow require every American now registered to vote to reregister.

There is just not a scintilla of truth to this. I have never really known what a scintilla is. It is a very small thing. There is not even a particle of truth to this. It is not only guilty of being false; it is the very definition of false argument and should not be countenanced in this or any self-respecting legislative body.

Nothing--nothing at all--in the SAVE America Act, no plausible interpretation of it, would require voters to reregister.

At the end of the day, we can scan the horizon for as many straw-man arguments as we can fathom. I have yet to conceive of, much less hear articulated, any legitimate reason for anyone to oppose this bill, which in me raises a question--a question I don't like to ask myself: Why, for the love of all that is sacred and holy, all that is good in our constitutional Republic, why would somebody oppose this? What legitimate reason? Who benefits? Cui bono, as they would say in Latin. I don't know why, but it sounds more impressive when they say it in Latin. Who benefits from the status quo? Who benefits from allowing noncitizens to continue to register to vote?

And yes, it does happen. Those on the other side of the aisle continue to insist that it does not. It does. More information comes out every day on it, and it is going to continue to come out in larger and larger numbers.

I don't know whether it has anything to do with the fact that, so far, some of those--a whole lot of them--most of them that I have seen where they have dug in, looked at the voter registration files, looked at which way they have registered to vote--a lot of them happen to be registered Democrats. I hope that is not the reason, but it does make you wonder: Why are they so opposed to this?

If the best they could come up with is it is already against the law, well, there are a whole bunch of things that if we use that same argument, that argument would collapse.

Yes, it is also against existing law to sell alcohol to minors, and yet we have laws in place to make people identify themselves with documentation establishing who they are and that they meet the criteria necessary to purchase alcohol.

We have countless other instances in Federal law, in State law, in daily citizen interaction in which we have to prove that we are who we say we are in order to access that which we want to access.

We don't flinch. We don't question it because we understand, when we allow somebody else access to--I don't know--our bank account, our medical records, our flight logs, our airplanes in interstate travel, our Social Security benefits, our veteran's benefits, our Federal benefits, hunting licenses, fishing licenses, ballparks, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Super Bowl, or the Democratic National Convention, bad things happen when we allow just anyone to come in, even if they don't have the right to do the thing that they want to do in the moment.

It is not only not wrong for us to insist on this proof; it would be morally irresponsible of us. It would be a reckless disregard for one of the most sacred principles underlying our constitutional Republic for us to ignore it.

I will not ignore that, and I intend to continue to come back here, day after day, week after week, as long as it takes until this bill is passed into law. The American Republic, the oath to the Constitution, and those who have elected to us this office require nothing less.

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