Mike Lee
Senator for Utah · Republican · United States
“Meanwhile, opponents to this legislation are doubling down, and they keep repeating the same lie: Noncitizen voting is illegal, so we don't need this. Exactly. Now robbery is illegal. We still lock the bank, and we still hire a night watchman. Identity theft is already illegal. Yeah, well, we still verify identities. Fraud is illegal.”
“Yes. As Cicero once said on the floor of the Roman Senate: If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice--actually, that wasn't Cicero; it was Rush in the song ``Freewill.'' But the point was made: When you are aware of something and you do nothing about it, that, by itself, is a decision.”
“They wanted to pass their own voter ID law. Now, theirs is a little different than ours. Theirs is a little bit more permissive. They allow all sorts of other things, like--depending on how you read it, you could argue that a library card without your picture on it would even suffice under this.”
“Whether you call it hypocrisy and inconsistency or something else, it can't be reconciled with what they themselves have done. Now, I have got a copy right here of a significant portion of that bill, the bill offered up by the Senate Democrats in 2021 during the 117th Congress--the so-called For the People Act.”
“Those who argue against it argue, among other things, well, this will disenfranchise women because--at least married women who have changed their name after getting married, taking on their husband's last name, this would disenfranchise them because they won't be able to vote.”
“This might well be the dumbest one that I have ever heard-- not just against this bill but against any bill--that because X is already illegal, we don't need any law making sure that the law making action X illegal is, in fact, enforceable. That is the dumbest argument ever.”
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“Remember, there are two pieces of the SAVE America Act. Part 1 deals with establishing citizenship. Part 2 deals with voter ID. Let's deal first with the proof of citizenship. When you show up to register to vote, if this were to pass into law today--which it should pass today. It is that popular with the American people, and it is that lacking in any legitimate argument against it. If it were to pass into law today, then your existing voter registration would remain valid indefinitely. Nothing about that would change. It would only be that the next time you have to register to vote-- because you have moved or something like that--then you would have to show up, and you would have to provide some type of proof as to U.S. citizenship.”
“And they back this up by arguing, quite absurdly, that women and minorities will be unable to vote--oh, and also rural Americans and also young Americans and also older Americans because, at any given moment, these same people who are opposing the SAVE America Act--the 47 people in this Chamber, more or less--those are the same people who may stand to benefit if we don't pass it because the status quo benefits them. And they should not be able to benefit from this by not passing something. The effect is that if this were to pass, this wouldn't disenfranchise anyone. Why? Well, because the kind of proof that we require--proof of citizenship and proof of identity--it is based on the same sort of document that every American has to provide routinely in the most mundane, routine encounters. Let's break them up into two pieces.”
“It may be a reason, but it is not a good reason. It is not a valid reason. It is not a legal, moral, ethical, or constitutional reason. It is just a reason, but that is about where the reason stops because every other of their arguments cannot withstand scrutiny. For example, a number of them will say things like the following: If we pass the SAVE America Act into law, there will be anarchy, there will be lawlessness, dogs and cats living together in the streets, Book of Revelations stuff, apocalyptic nightmares unfolding everywhere.”
“The SAVE America Act is popular literally everywhere in the United States of America, except in this Chamber and except among Democrats in this Chamber. Everywhere else it is a no-brainer. Everywhere else it is popular. It is only here that they don't want to pass it. Why? Why don't they want to pass it? Well, one could argue that if you benefit from the status quo, you don't want any change to that status quo, especially if you benefit from it in a way that is likely to go away if you change the status quo. These are all fancy ways, Mr. President--nice ways--of saying: Perhaps some of those who are opposed to it might be afraid of what happens if they are not allowed to rely on noncitizen votes, even though Federal law flatly prohibits noncitizen voting in U.S. elections. That is not a good reason to oppose this.”
“Well, it certainly isn't the [[Page S4153]] American voter because the American voter, by a margin of like 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 5, depending which poll you look at, believes that it is important that people who show up to vote ought to have to prove who they are. And they ought to, at the time they register to vote, have to establish their citizenship and, thus, their eligibility to vote in the first place. We are talking about 75 to 80--some as high as 85 percent, depending on which poll that you look at. Those are Democrat voters and Republican voters alike, all agreeing that this is a problem, and it is a problem that Congress can and should fix. So what is the holdup? Well, it is hard to say what the holdup is? But I can summarize it this way: It is Senate Democrats.”
“So that is the whole reason why the SAVE America Act is necessary, is because of the NVRA and, specifically, the Supreme Court's butchered interpretation of it prohibiting the States, even where they have actual doubts, from asking someone to verify their citizenship at the time they register to vote. So, if the SAVE America Act is unconstitutional, then so, too, is the NVRA, in which case, we don't need it--at least not nearly to the same degree as we do. But, of course, neither the NVRA nor the SAVE America Act is unconstitutional; they are both squarely within the authority provided to the U.S. Congress under article I, section 4 of the Constitution. So, as a result of all this, it is clear that Congress can fix this problem. We have the authority to do it. So what is the holdup?”
“We have got a system of laws under the NVRA that makes it really easy to go into a DMV and fill out some forms, check a box and sign your name and say I want to register to vote. That is how we got 278,000 registered voters who are noncitizens just in those four States alone: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada, to say nothing of the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of others in other States who may have done the same thing. It is phenomenally easy to cheat. It is stunningly easy to register to vote as a noncitizen, in some cases, without really realizing what you are doing, much less that you are committing a very serious felony offense by doing that.”
“And in a move that, I believe, is incompatible with the text and original understanding of the statutory language, the Supreme Court-- about 20 years after the NVRA was passed, the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted the NVRA, mistakenly but nonetheless conclusively, as prohibiting the States from doing anything to verify the citizenship of someone registering to vote at a DMV using an NVRA- supplied form. Now, the Supreme Court was wrong. Justice Alito explained in his dissent in that case--Inter Tribal Counsel v. Arizona why that was wrong. Nonetheless, it remains the conclusive interpretation of the NVRA, and it is why the SAVE America Act is necessary because what we have got now, Mr. President, we have got an estimated 30 million-plus noncitizens residing in the United States.”
“You have got to establish your residency, what your address is. And so it made a certain amount of sense to provide this option for American voters to go and register at a DMV. The problem is that that is all you have to do, is check a box saying: I would like to register to vote. And then at the end of it, you sign your name in a conclusory statement to the effect that I am entitled to vote; I am a U.S. citizen, and I am not prohibited, for one reason or another, from voting, and so I am allowed to do it. But that is all the verification that is allowed.”
“But if there were, then the entire predicate of existing law, making the SAVE America Act necessary in the first place, would also be invalid. Every time I hear this argument made, I wish, like anything, that those same people making this argument would acknowledge that if the SAVE America Act is somehow unconstitutional, so, too, is the National Voter Registration Act. The National Voter Registration Act enacted by Congress in 1993 created a system whereby people can vote at a DMV in their home State. Now, when somebody goes into a DMV to register to vote in that State, all they have to do is check a box saying: Yes, I am applying for a driver's license, but I would like, simultaneously, to register to vote with this application. After all, you have got some of the same features there. You have got to prove your identity.”
“And in one particularly poignant and relevant provision-- article I, section 4--the elections clause of that provision states that Congress may, at any time, by law, make or alter what we will loosely describe as laws establishing the time, place, and manner in which Federal elections will take place, except as to places of choosing Senators. So we have the authority to do this under the Constitution, not as to State races but as to Federal races, principally U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate races. We have that authority; article I, section 4 gives that to us. Moreover, if those who mistakenly argue that this somehow tramples on State sovereign authority, if there were any doubt about that, which there is not because article I, section 4 puts that issue to bed quite nicely.”
“Among those who make an argument against this, sometimes, you will hear the argument--one that I find especially galling and especially disingenuous--that, ``oh, this somehow tramples on the authority of the States,'' which some mistakenly refer to as States' rights. I don't call them States' rights. States don't have rights. They have authority. A right is a privilege against the exercise of authority. It is the inverse polar opposite of a right; therefore, I don't call it States' rights. It is State authority. This, Mr. President, emphatically does not trample on State authority. How do we know that? Well, because the Constitution delineates the relative responsibilities of the States and the Federal Government.”
“As of just Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that there are 278,000--that is over a quarter of a million--noncitizens registered to vote in U.S. elections in just four States alone. This doesn't count all of them. This is 278,000 noncitizen votes, just in the States of California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada Now, that is a problem. When you add to that the other States that have refused to cooperate, that have made it very difficult for us to ascertain how many noncitizen votes they might have registered in their States--they are not cooperating. That is one of many problems that we face here. Fortunately, this is a problem that Congress can solve. It is a problem that it can solve and, therefore, must solve.”
“Never, at the time, could we have predicted how much attention this would get, and never, at the time, could we have predicted the absurdity of the arguments that would be raised against this because, if you are careful--if you listen carefully--what you will find is that there is not a legitimate argument against the Senate passing the SAVE America Act--no, not even one. The arguments that you will hear against it, over and over and over again, are based entirely on contrivance, on pretext, on false statements and false assumptions. Look, at the end of the day, the SAVE America Act is about reestablishing, restoring trust in U.S. elections. That trust needs to be restored, especially in light of the facts that we have discovered just over the last few days.”
“Some people, when denying that there is any need for us to act here, will throw up things and say: Well, that is fine for the bank or for theater tickets or for the pharmacy. But this is an important constitutional right. It is a fundamental right. My response to that is: Yes, exactly--and that is exactly why we need it. The fact that it involves a protected, fundamental constitutional right is a reason why we need to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. That is exactly what the SAVE America Act does. It is exactly what it would do. When I set out, about 3 years ago, to write this bill, along with my partner in the House, Congressman Chip Roy from Texas, that was our mantra: Let's make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
“The same could be said of a whole bunch of other human transactions, ordinary human interactions involving day-to-day transactions that any of us could be expected to engage in multiple times every single week. One day, maybe it is theater or opera tickets. Maybe the next day, it is withdrawing money from a bank. You show up, and money is gone from your account because your bank stopped requiring people to show ID. They can come along and claim to be someone they are not and take someone's money that is not theirs. The mere fact that we have a lot of people that are allowed to vote doesn't diminish the seriousness of not requiring people to prove that they are, in fact, who they claim to be when they show up to exercise that important right.”
“Mr. President, imagine your shock if, while on your way to the theater, let's say--I don't know--maybe you are going to the opera. You are planning to pick up your tickets at will call. You arrive at will call at the appointed moment and say: Yes, I am Senator Pete Ricketts. I am here to pick up my opera tickets. They gave them to somebody else. If you found out that the theater was handing out tickets at will call without any form of ID, you would probably be a little disappointed--you or any [[Page S4152]] other American, any other human in that circumstance--realizing that it is important to find out whether you are who you claim to be before you are given something, something where your identity matters.”