[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 18 (Wednesday, February 27, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1223-S1232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             EQUAL PROTECTION OF VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 2001

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will now resume consideration of S. 565, which the clerk will 
report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 565) to establish the Commission on Voting 
     Rights and Procedures to study and make recommendations 
     regarding election technology, voting, and election 
     administration, to establish a grant program under which the 
     Office of Justice Programs and the Civil Rights Division of 
     the Department of Justice shall provide assistance to States 
     and localities in improving election technology and the 
     administration of Federal elections, to require States to 
     meet uniform and nondiscriminatory election technology and 
     administration requirements for the 2004 Federal elections, 
     and for other purposes.
  Pending:

       Clinton amendment No. 2906, to establish a residual ballot 
     performance benchmark.
       Dodd (for Schumer) Modified amendment No. 2914, to permit 
     the use of a signature or personal mark for the purpose of 
     verifying the identity of voters who register by mail.
       Dodd (for Kennedy) amendment No. 2916, to clarify the 
     application of the safe harbor provisions.
       Hatch amendment No. 2935, to establish the Advisory 
     Committee on Electronic Voting and the Electoral Process, and 
     to instruct the Attorney General to study the adequacy of 
     existing electoral fraud statutes and penalties.
       Hatch amendment No. 2936, to make the provisions of the 
     Voting Rights Act of 1965 permanent.
       Schumer/Wyden amendment No. 2937, to permit the use of a 
     signature or personal mark for the purpose of verifying the 
     identity of voters who register by mail.
       Smith of New Hampshire amendment No. 2933, to prohibit the 
     broadcast of certain false and untimely information on 
     Federal elections.


                           Amendment No. 2937

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
until 10 a.m. shall be equally divided in the usual form for debate 
relevant to amendment No. 2937.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I understand that is 30 minutes equally 
divided?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time until 10 a.m.

[[Page S1224]]

  Mr. DODD. I ask unanimous consent that the vote occur at 10:05 a.m. 
so as to provide for 30 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DODD. I ask unanimous consent that the time of the proponents of 
the amendment be equally divided between Senator Schumer and Senator 
Wyden.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Who yields time? If neither side yields time, time will be charged 
against both sides.
  The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes.
  This is a very important amendment. We have done a great deal in this 
bill to make it easier for people to vote and at the same time prevent 
voter fraud.
  I very much thank our colleague from Missouri for leading the charge 
on voting fraud. There are lots of provisions in this bill that we have 
worked on that deal with that. However, in our efforts to prevent voter 
fraud, we cannot go so far that we actually create barriers to the 
polls for eligible voters. That would be the antithesis of what this 
bill is about.
  The intent of this legislation is to take people, particularly those 
who live in the corners of America who do not fly airplanes and use 
their credit cards all the time but rather people who may not have a 
driver's license, who may not have a utility bill, and allow them to 
vote, our most sacred right. This amendment does that. It does it in a 
way that does not increase fraud at all. It does it in a way that rises 
to the real purpose of this bill. It is a crucial amendment.
  If one believes in extending the right to vote and believes we have 
to allow people who need that right because that is all they have--
perhaps their vote is equal to ours but they may need it even more than 
ours--then he or she should vote for the Schumer-Wyden amendment. I 
will have a little more to say later.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Who yields time?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Fourteen minutes.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I am glad we can begin this debate because 
there is much to be said, but let me go to the heart of the matter. 
This amendment simply guts the compromise, the key antifraud provision 
that was carefully negotiated over 6 months as a part of the bipartisan 
compromise. We asked for some protection against the widespread 
practice of loading up voter rolls with phony names and then voting 
those names. It is something that every voter can comply with. It has 
been negotiated to make sure it did not have any unfavorable impact on 
people we are trying to get to the polls.
  After 6 months of negotiations, I feel like we are playing rope-a-
dope. The Senator from Oregon gets up and says, why, this is a photo ID 
requirement. Everybody knows a photo ID requirement is discriminatory.
  Then the Senator from New York gets up and says these antifraud 
provisions really do not prevent fraud absolutely either way.
  I said we devised a compromise that recognized the concerns that 
their side had about making sure we did not impose any unreasonable 
restrictions on voters who might not have a driver's license, for 
example. That is why we said voters can use a bank statement, a 
government check, utility bill, anything that has your name and address 
on it, the first time you register.
  No, it is not as strong as I would like, but that was part of the 
compromise. No, it does not limit the identification that must be shown 
to a driver's license photo ID--which my colleagues on the other side 
and some of the groups that were supporting this compromise and are now 
against it are saying would be unfair. So we compromised. And now the 
people who worked on the compromise say the compromise is not a good 
one.
  I have seen that game before. But the people of America are tired of 
having their votes diluted because someone in a drop house registers 8, 
10 people. Yes, we have had dogs registered. We have had dead aldermen 
registered, mothers of dead aldermen registered, and dead neighbors 
registered. Under the current Federal motor-voter registration law it 
is very difficult to stop the mail-in registration fraud.
  We talked yesterday about 3,000 ballots being dropped off before the 
mayoral primary in St. Louis in 2001. Because of the attention we have 
brought to this problem, they were reviewed. It was found that most of 
those 3,000 were in the same handwriting and were for new registrants 
on one or two city blocks. St. Louis did not have time to check 
thoroughly before the November 2000 election. There was a registration 
of 200,000 people, with 30,000 post card registrations that were 
dropped off in the final days, a more than 15 percent increase. Nobody 
checked these, but initial suggestions are at least 15,000, half of 
them, were phony.
  One can conjure up all kinds of scenarios where maybe one person will 
not have the kind of ID needed to vote under the provisions in the 
underlying bill. We allow provisional voting; 39 States already provide 
it. We will take care of those people. One thing we have seen for 
sure--not just in Missouri, but across the country--is fraudulent 
votes, by nonexistent people. They are diluting the votes of legitimate 
voters.
  I yield the floor and I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, there is a reason the American Association 
of Retired Persons so strongly supports this amendment. They and the 
sponsors feel strongly that the photo ID provision in effect is making 
it tougher for those who saved our democracy in World War II to 
participate in our democracy today.
  Nursing home residents in this country are not asking to be taken to 
a copy center. The Senate should not be telling them they should have 
to go to the copy center before they can vote by mail, which is clearly 
one of the most popular ways to participate in our democracy today.
  I am particularly troubled that the tough provisions to deter fraud 
do not even kick in until 2004. I would like to work with colleagues to 
address those issues. It seems to me various approaches that encourage 
voting are not kicking in for quite some time.
  Last night, the Senate voted wisely to call this the Martin Luther 
King Voting Rights bill. If we put in place a photo ID for first time 
voters, we step back, in my view, to the days when only the 
enfranchised had the opportunity to vote. That would be a mistake. I 
urge strongly this amendment be supported.
  I retain the remainder of my time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, one of the pitiful results of motor 
voter registration systems in America is that we have countless dogs 
registered to vote. That is why Senator Bond's provision makes so much 
sense. There are countless examples of dead people voting, dogs voting, 
and people voting multiple times. Nearly all these instances of voter 
fraud have one thing in common: They were perpetrated through lax mail-
in registration requirements.
  Many of our colleagues were obviously not around last night when we 
debated this amendment. Let me take a moment to show a copy of a 
photograph that appeared in the Washington Post last summer, which I 
discussed last night. This is Mable Briscoe, 82, and Holly Briscoe, her 
terrier, both long-time registered voters in America. Both Mable and 
Holly have been registered to vote for quite some time in Maryland. 
This is a photo of the long-time registered voters--as I said, Mable 
and her terrier, Holly. According to the article accompanying this 
photograph, Mable says she registered her dog to prove a point about 
the lax registration process that opens the door to fraud. Mable's 
crime was finally detected when her dog, Holly, was called for jury 
duty. Holly got called for jury duty and then the game was up. Perhaps 
Mable Briscoe said it best when she said: I just think the system is 
broke and needs some fixing. Anybody can register. I can register a 
dog.
  The system is broken. It invites fraud. Senator Bond's modest 
antifraud measure will do a great deal to help make voter fraud more 
difficult. As he said, he wanted to go further. This underlying 
provision that the Schumer amendment seeks to strike is quite modest. 
The amendment of the Senator

[[Page S1225]]

from New York amounts to a fraud loophole. It actually undoes what 
Senator Bond and all five of the original cosponsors worked so hard to 
achieve, the underlying compromise. If this amendment is agreed to, it 
is completely stripped out.

  This amendment needs to be tabled if we are serious about this 
legislation. We will have that vote shortly.
  How much time remains?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Seven minutes.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I retain the balance.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon has 5 
minutes.
  Mr. WYDEN. I yield 3 minutes to our distinguished colleague from 
Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the 
Schumer-Wyden amendment because I believe it is a critical issue that 
we must solve before we can pass this bill. Millions of people in my 
State, and I think across America, will be done a great disservice by 
making voting harder. If we do not pass this amendment, the bill as 
currently written forces States to rely on a photo identification as a 
means of making sure that first-time voters are who they say they are. 
While I believe we need to be vigilant about preventing fraud in our 
elections, the provision as currently written goes too far in mandating 
a particular response and has the real potential to result in fewer 
legitimate voters having their votes counted.
  This bill requires voters who registered by mail to show a photo 
identification or utility bill when they go to the polls for the first 
time. This will create a disincentive for seniors, disabled, and those 
who have a tough time getting that information.
  In our State, 64 percent of the voters in the most recent election 
voted by absentee ballot or mail-in ballot. Requiring a photo 
identification or utility bill to be enclosed with their ballots is an 
incredible burden in order to prove they are who they say they are. In 
fact, in those cases where those copies were not provided, their votes 
would not be counted.
  It is very important we look at the underlying system. The underlying 
system, based on signature verification, makes sure that people who are 
attesting under the penalty of perjury are who they say they are and 
that they are properly registered to vote in that jurisdiction. When 
the ballot is received, the signature is carefully checked against the 
registration rolls to make sure they are a match. Only then is the 
ballot counted.
  Unlike the signature, the election official receiving the photocopy 
has nothing to compare it against, and it is of no use in verifying the 
authenticity of the vote.
  Although the photocopy has little use to officials, if it is not 
included, as I said, it disqualifies the ballot. That is correct--if 
the voter fails to include a photocopy that is of no use to the 
election official, the vote will still not be counted even though the 
signature on the ballot matches the signature in the registration 
rolls. This is simply unacceptable.
  This amendment fixes this problem by allowing states the option of 
relying on other methods to make certain that votes are valid, 
including signature verification which is currently used in my state 
and other states.
  While I am very concerned about passing this amendment to fix the 
problems that photo ID requirements create for voters who vote by mail, 
I am also concerned that the requirements will lead to serious problems 
for voters who go to the polls. The Secretary of State and other 
election officials in my State are concerned that the requirements 
place a huge burden on volunteer poll workers in the polling place, and 
a Federal court has already ruled that this type of photo ID 
requirement may present a disparate impact on minorities seeking to 
have their votes counted. The right to vote is the most important right 
that we have as citizens, and it is important that we do everything 
that we can to make certain States can strike the proper balance 
between facilitating voting and preventing fraud. This amendment helps 
to do that.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment and I believe 
that passage of this amendment is essential to making certain that our 
electoral system is improved by this legislation.
  I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time.
  Mr. McCONNELL. How much time remains, Mr. President?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Seven minutes.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, we have just heard some inaccurate 
statements about the underlying amendment. Nobody says you have to go 
to a copy center. Any antifraud provisions do not hold off in this bill 
until 2004. They are effective upon the signing of the bill. The 
provisional voting provision in this bill that says it will not take 
effect until 2004 was not something I wrote. I will be happy to take an 
amendment to say it is effective right away as well, because 39 States 
have provisional voting and we need to clean it up so it works for all 
50 States.
  It is important to note that, believe it or not, the current system 
offers few protections to States that want to maintain clean rolls. The 
Senator from Oregon said we need to make sure registrations are 
accurate at the beginning. Believe it or not, motor voter actually 
prohibits States from requiring verification of the cards. Registration 
by mail makes it much easier to put fake names on voter lists and then 
voting by mail makes it very easy to vote these names illegally.
  The opponents of my anti-fraud provision claim the bill will 
disenfranchise millions. At the same time, several States, including 
West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, Nevada, and 
Louisiana, have tougher standards--tougher than in this bill. I would 
like to see them as tough as these States'. No one has come forward and 
shown that these States actually deprive voters of the right to vote on 
any level, much less on the level claimed here.
  Furthermore, the way the amendment is drafted, the steps taken by 
these States to protect themselves from fraud will be undercut. We will 
be here, making it easier to cheat. This amendment makes it easier to 
cheat, not just easier to vote.
  There are those who said recently that this will create an 
administrative problem. Nonsense. The States I just named already keep 
track of first-time voters. The State of Michigan has offered to 
provide its software to do this for free to any State that has a 
problem. If free is not cheap enough, we provide funds in this bill to 
buy the systems you want, to track the voters. This will not threaten 
mail-in States. It will actually make it better for them.
  As I pointed out last night, when we hear about Oregon, the great 
State that has no problem with mail-in registration and balloting, 
Portland State Professor Melody Rose studied the Oregon system and 
determined that 5 percent of voters had someone else mark their ballot, 
2.5 percent had someone else sign their ballot, 4 percent had someone 
else either sign or mark their ballot. In States with 1.6 million cast, 
close to 200,000 of them could have had some sort of irregularity.
  Carter-Ford noted that signature verification does not work. This is 
the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, page 31:

       Signature verification puts an extra burden upon 
     administrators, especially on often ill-trained poll workers 
     practicing a very subjective, often impossible task.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 3 minutes.
  Mr. BOND. I rest my case. Signature verification does not work. I 
urge people to support the motion I will offer.
  Mr. McCONNELL. At the beginning of the debate we worked with the 
Senators from Oregon and Washington to fix a provision their State 
election officials thought threatened their system of voting. That has 
already been accomplished. Obviously this provision threatens only one 
thing the way it is now, fraud. It could mean increased work for those 
who administer elections, but that is a very small price to pay for 
fair and honest elections. Make no mistake about it, this amendment is 
the poison pill of election reform.
  The bill is a carefully crafted compromise agreed to by all 5 
cosponsors, including the Senator from New York. There has been a lot 
of misinformation about this anti-fraud provision. It applies only to a 
small number of voters

[[Page S1226]]

who register by mail and vote for the first time. As Senator Bond made 
clear, this is the prime area of voter fraud.
  When we negotiated this compromise in December, none of us thought 
that it was too much to ask that voters be real, live people.
  Senator Bond had a bill that would have required first-time mail 
registrants to vote in person and show a photo ID. He agreed to 
compromise on that requirement, to reach the agreement we have before 
us today. Mail registrants who vote for the first time now have many 
options to identify themselves. Photo ID is only one of them. A current 
utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or any other 
government document would serve the purpose. This very broad universe 
of identification was advanced and advocated by Senator Schumer and was 
even suggested by advocacy groups who now claim it must be changed.
  The same groups who originally suggested it now want to change it. 
The very language of this amendment was also suggested by the advocacy 
groups, notably in a November 6 document sent to ``interested 
parties.'' We spent well over a month discussing and debating the very 
language of this amendment. We agreed on the language in our compromise 
bill instead.
  The bill language does not require every voter to show 
identification, be they rich, poor, disabled, young, or elderly. Let me 
tell you what the amendment of the Senator from New York would do.
  First, not only does it not improve the current system, it could 
actually make it worse in many States. It creates new and improved 
opportunities for fraud in States with more restrictive requirements. 
Second, this could become the most expensive mandate in this bill. Not 
only will States have to buy new machines and data bases under this 
bill, but the 34 States that do not have signature verification will 
have to buy technology to verify signature and marks.
  Third and most important, all of the 1.4 million poll workers 
nationwide will have to become handwriting and personal mark experts. 
What a great idea. All of the 1.4 million poll workers nationwide will 
have to become handwriting and personal mark experts. The shortage of 
poll workers is already a major problem, as reported by GAO. Now they 
will have to be handwriting experts.
  Finally, the poison pill amendment has already been discussed, 
debated, and dismissed by the cosponsors of this bill. I urge the other 
95 Members of this body to support our joint resolution on the issue 
and vote against this amendment or vote to table it. Senator Bond will 
make the tabling motion when all time has been yielded back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the opposition has expired. Who 
yields time?

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Chair of the 
committee, Senator Dodd.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me thank Members here who have argued 
both in favor and in opposition to this amendment. It has been a very 
worthwhile debate. Unfortunately, as my colleague from Kentucky pointed 
out, we didn't have enough Members around last night to hear the full 
debate, but it was very worthwhile. I repeat what I said a week or so 
ago. This is one of those issues that has come down and is a clear, 
almost equal division, I think, in the Chamber about what ought to be 
done about this particular issue.
  I had hoped we would find some compromise to it. That is what you do 
in the legislative process. We did this on 35 amendments that have come 
along here. I didn't like voting against Dick Durbin's amendment. I 
happen to agree with it. I did not like having to accept amendments 
from my friend from New Hampshire, Senator Gregg, and other amendments 
that we worked on to make this process reach the point it has today.
  I am still hopeful. I don't know how this vote will come out. But my 
plea would be, to those on either side of this question, to see if we 
can't find some common ground. That is not going to happen, obviously, 
in the next 5 minutes. So this vote will go forward. Then my hope is 
that we can find some resolution here that will satisfy the concerns 
that are raised--legitimately, in my view--by the proponents of the 
amendment and the concerns raised by my friend from Missouri who has 
raised from the very beginning his concerns about this.
  My desire has been to try to find some common ground and compromise 
on this proposal. That has not happened yet, but I am prepared to try 
to work that out when the time arrives.
  With that, I thank the Members for their time in debate. We still 
have a few minutes left for the proponents of the amendment to make 
some closing arguments, and then we will get to the vote.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to explain my vote in favor of 
tabling the Senator Schumer/Wyden amendment to S. 565, election reform 
legislation pending before the Senate.
  For United States citizens, voting is a fundamental right guaranteed 
by the United States Constitution. In no way am I attempting to deny 
that right by not supporting the Schumer/Wyden amendment. In fact, I 
believe that strong anti-fraud language strengthens the right to vote, 
and the integrity of the election system in our nation.
  The Schumer/Wyden amendment would dissolve the carefully crafted 
bipartisan framework in this legislation--designed to ensure proper 
voter identification methods exist to protect the validity of national 
elections. This framework allows for a person to use a current and 
valid photo identification to validate their registration and vote. 
Those individuals who lack these forms of identification could also 
present a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government 
check, or other government document that shows the name and address of 
the voter.
  The Schumer/Wyden amendment would have gutted these protections by 
allowing individuals to simply use a signature or a personal mark.
  It is important to note that if an individual fails to meet the 
required identification methods on election day they can still cast a 
ballot. Provisional balloting protects an individuals' constitutional 
right to cast a ballot in an election. The validity of provision 
ballots is determined later, thus ensuring that no eligible voter is 
turned away.
  My fellow colleague from Missouri, Senator Bond, recently spoke on 
the floor of the Senate about some of the most egregious examples of 
voter fraud in his home State. Senator Bond explained how the drop 
house and other scams have been used in St. Louis to register dead 
neighbors, deceased aldermen, ghosts, and dogs. Drop house scams occur 
when one person submits multiple mail-in registration forms using one 
address. Then, as election day approaches, that one person requests 
absentee ballots for each of his phantom voters, and then votes them 
all.
  There are a number of other examples of voter fraud as well: Over 
30,000 illegitimate voters were added to voter registrations in the 
2000 presidential election in St. Louis, MO. Over 5,000 illegal ballots 
were cast in the 2000 presidential election in Florida by individuals 
who were not U.S. citizens and not permitted to vote. One individual in 
Missouri actually voted 47 times--and was not even prosecuted!
  In fact, voter fraud can be easily traced back over a hundred and 
fifty years before the 2000 presidential election. In 1844, New York 
City had 41,000 people in their voter pool. However, on election day, 
55,000 people cast ballots!
  Clearly, voter fraud is not a new issue in elections. Congress passed 
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (``Motor Voter'') allowing 
States to require that individuals vote in person if they registered by 
mail and have never before voted in that jurisdiction.
  The anti-fraud provisions of this legislation strengthen the 
provisions from 1993. Under S. 565, any person who registers by mail 
must, either when registering or voting in a Federal election, provide 
some form of identification that connects the name on the registration 
form to a real, live, qualified citizen of voting age. The requirement 
is not onerous.
  In the 2000 presidential election our country contained wide-spread 
voter fraud and abuses by individuals who were clearly casting 
illegitimate ballots. This legislation works to prevent such fraud and 
restore confidence in the election process. I will continue to work 
towards strengthening voter

[[Page S1227]]

rights, but not the ability of individuals to cheat or manipulate the 
system.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to 
support the Schumer-Wyden amendment to the election reform bill.
  This important amendment would fix what I believe is a very 
problematic provision in the bill. That provision requires first-time 
voters who registered by mail to provide either a photo identification 
or a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, or other 
government document establishing their identity.
  I commend the sponsors of the bill for their focus on ensuring strong 
anti-fraud protection; but I believe this provision goes too far and 
could end up disenfranchising significant numbers of voters. In 
particular, the elderly, students, low-income voters, minorities, and 
the disabled are examples of people who could have a difficult time 
meeting the requirements of the Election Reform bill, as written.
  In addition, the bill would impose a significant burden on many 
States, including my own, that currently allow the use of signature 
verification and attestation to verify identity. If the bill is not 
amended, my State would have to do away with that procedure altogether.
  For these reasons, I am proud to be a cosponsor of the Schumer-Wyden 
amendment, and I urge my colleagues to vote for it.
  This important amendment would add two alternative verifiers for 
first time voters who vote in person: (1) it would allow voters to 
attest to who they are by signing a sworn statement, falsification of 
which is punishable as perjury; or (2) it would allow voters to have 
their signatures verified by matching them to signatures on record with 
State or local election officials. First time voters who vote by mail 
also would be given an alternative to a photo ID or other government 
document--they would be allowed to use signature matching to establish 
their identity.
  I believe this is a sensible and necessary measure. And I'm pleased 
to report that it enjoys the support of the nation's leading civil 
rights organizations, including: MALDEF, the NAACP, the National 
Council of La Raza, LULAC, AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil 
Rights, and the League of Women Voters.
  The intent of the Election Reform bill is to ensure that every vote 
counts, but if we do not act now by passing the Schumer-Wyden 
amendment, I fear that many tens of thousands of voters will once again 
face significant barriers to voting the next time they go to the polls.
  I urge my colleagues to do the right thing today, vote yes on the 
Schumer-Wyden amendment.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes to express 
my strong support for the amendment offered by Senators Schumer and 
Wyden.
  History has shown that requiring photo identification or certain 
other documents most significantly impacts minority voters. It will be 
difficult for some citizens to meet such requirements. For instance, a 
rural voter may have difficulty even finding a copy machine to make a 
copy of his or her driver's license. Individuals living below the 
poverty level may not have drivers licenses or utility bills. Students 
who live at home with their parents also may not have a utility bill 
with their name on it.
  Ironically, the current language in the bill puts an added burden on 
some of the very people that we should be working to make it easier to 
vote. This is contrary to the purpose behind this legislation. We are 
not trying to lower voter participation with this Election Reform bill; 
we are trying to raise it, and make the voting process better for the 
American people. The photo ID requirement would without a doubt have a 
chilling effect on voter participation. And while the provisional 
voting system would address this problem to some extent, it will not be 
in place in time for the 2002 elections. The language in this amendment 
is a much fairer way of dealing with this problem, and that is why I 
want to express my full support for the efforts of Senators Schumer and 
Wyden.
  I want to take one more minute just to go over briefly a couple of 
initiatives that I proposed for this bill; amendments that I will no 
longer be offering, but I want to mention nonetheless. My first 
amendment would establish election day as a Federal holiday. Currently, 
this bill contains provisions for the new Election Administration 
Commission to study the possibility of designating Election Day as a 
Federal holiday. And just yesterday Senator Hollings added language to 
the bill calling for a six-month turnaround on this study.
  I commend Senator Hollings for his amendment, as well as Senators 
Dodd and McConnell for specifying the EAC study in the original bill. I 
look forward to seeing the results of the study later this year, and I 
hope Congress will act quickly on the recommendations of the report.
  The second measure I proposed would change the Federal match in this 
bill to be fair to all states regardless of economic circumstances. 
This is an issue in which I have had a long-standing interest. While 
Congress often passes bills that provide a Federal match for States in 
various programs, it is rare that any effort is made to level the 
playing field for states that have fewer resources. States like 
Louisiana, with high poverty a generally lower standard of living, 
receive the same matching rate as other States.
  My concern is that in this bill, as well as others, the matching 
rates for these States are the same. Despite the huge difference in 
resources in these States, the Federal matching rate remains the same. 
To me, this is unfair and counterproductive.
  In closing, let me state again that I fully support the efforts of 
Senators Dodd and McConnell, as well as my other colleagues who have 
worked so hard on this bill, to bring about election reform. In fact, 
because this bill is so important I have decided not to offer this 
amendment today on this legislation, but will continue to press this 
important issue in the future.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 6 minutes.
  Mr. SCHUMER. How is that divided?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Four for the Senator from New York, two for 
the Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in Oregon, the penalty for registering dogs 
that have become so famous, the monetary penalty is something like ten 
times the amount in this bill. When fraud happens with the vote-by-mail 
system, it is caught and it is stopped. Our penalties prove it. Any way 
you slice it, making it harder to vote isn't the way to deter fraud.
  I come back in closing to why the American Association of Retired 
Persons and senior citizens groups feel so strongly about this 
amendment. They like voting by mail. It is convenient for them. They 
and millions of Americans are saying make it easier to vote. Congress 
should do everything possible to make it easier to vote rather than to 
make it harder. I don't think this body this morning should make it 
tough for those who saved our democracy in World War II to participate 
in our democracy in the days ahead.
  I urge my colleagues to strongly support the amendment, and I yield 
the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bingaman). The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, as we come to the conclusion of this 
debate, I ask why so many groups--the AARP, the AFL-CIO, American 
Association of People With Disabilities, the Mexican-American Legal 
Defense Fund, the NAACP, La Raza, the National Hispanic Leadership 
Council, as well as the secretaries of State of so many States--are not 
opposed to this provision if it is as terrible as the opponents say. I 
will tell you why--because they know what this bill is all about.
  Let us go over the history of this bill for a minute.
  There was a national outcry after what occurred in Florida. We 
realized that millions of people are deprived of their right to vote 
because of the way we vote. I say to my friend from Kentucky that the 
outcry after Florida was not because dogs were voting. That argument to 
use the fact that one fraudulent person might have registered a dog, or 
maybe five of them,

[[Page S1228]]

could deprive millions of people of their right to vote is sophistic, 
at best. I don't like it. It is not fair.
  What are we talking about? What happened in Florida and what moved us 
to debate this issue is that thousands of people in every city in this 
country who had the right to vote couldn't.
  What the Schumer-Wyden amendment does is very simple. It says we are 
allowing you to vote. We are not going to make you do things that in 
your world are next to impossible. If you think of every voter as any 
middle class person with a lot of credit cards in his pocket and a 
couple of cars in the garage and several cell phones, sure, there is no 
problem. But think of the new immigrant who waited five years and has 
just became a voter, who doesn't have a car, who is just learning 
English, and who is afraid of the government where that immigrant came 
from. You say, You have to do this, this, this, and this. When you show 
up at the polling place, you may not be allowed to vote. Yes. It is the 
first-time voters.
  I say to my colleagues: I have seen the look on the faces of first-
time voters who waited in line with their eyes bright with the first 
chance to exercise their franchise and then were turned away. And they 
never come back again.
  We do plenty in this bill about fraud, but the key in this bill is 
balance because every time you make it easier for people to vote, you 
may make it a little easier for a nasty person to commit fraud; if you 
want to eliminate fraud totally, eliminate the right to vote.
  That is not the argument. The argument is do we take people who are 
elderly, who are new immigrants, who are poor, who are members of 
minority groups, and say, Yes, we welcome you into the American family, 
we welcome you into the franchise of voting.
  If you go through the process that 40 States have used, we are not 
going to create signature experts. We have them. Every bank teller is a 
signature expert. In my State, we have used signatures for years with 
no signs of fraud.
  We are saying to them, We welcome you into the American family. We 
are not going to put 17 laws in the way before you vote. Your right to 
vote is a right. It is not an obstacle course, which is what this 
amendment creates.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Schumer-Wyden amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon has 1 minute remaining 
before the conclusion of the debate.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, we are out of time on this side. Is 
that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. WYDEN. Does the Senator from Kentucky desire time?
  Mr. McCONNELL. No. We will make a motion to table when the time is 
used up.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded.
  The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, this amendment undoes a carefully crafted 
compromise and opens wide the door to fraud. Therefore, I move to table 
the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion. The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, on this vote I have a pair with the Senator 
from Nevada, Mr. Ensign. If he were present and voting, he would vote 
``aye.'' If I were permitted to vote, I would vote ``nay.'' I therefore 
withdraw my vote.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and 
the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 51, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 38 Leg.]

                                YEAS--46

     Allard
     Allen
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burns
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cochran
     Collins
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Enzi
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gramm
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Helms
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Roberts
     Santorum
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Voinovich
     Warner

                                NAYS--51

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Carnahan
     Carper
     Cleland
     Clinton
     Conrad
     Corzine
     Daschle
     Dayton
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Mikulski
     Miller
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Reed
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Smith (OR)
     Stabenow
     Torricelli
     Wellstone
     Wyden

       PRESENT AND GIVING A LIVE PAIR, AS PREVIOUSLY RECORDED--1

       
     Reid, nay
       

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Ensign
     Hatch
       
  The motion was rejected.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the amendment is still pending before 
the Senate. We would like to continue discussing that matter. I know 
the Senator from Missouri is going to talk on the subject. I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, before my colleague speaks--and I will be 30 
seconds on this--I had hoped, and I say this to my two friends on the 
other side with whom I have worked very closely to put this bill 
together, I had hoped we could find compromise language on this last 
provision. That is still my hope. We have worked very hard. We have 
considered around 35 amendments. Both sides have added to the bill with 
accepted amendments. We have modified some; some have been withdrawn.
  We are very close to final consideration of this bill. We still have 
to go to conference--the White House, obviously, will get involved--
with the House-passed bill. We will not have completed this process 
when we vote this bill out of the Senate.
  My hope is we can find some way to work on this amendment while we 
are considering other amendments--the energy bill is waiting to be 
considered--rather than have this now splintered off. Too much effort 
has been made to get us to this point.
  It is my fervent plea to my friends on the minority side to try and 
work on some resolution of this issue. That is what we ought to be 
doing as legislators. That is my plea to my colleague from Missouri and 
my colleague from Kentucky.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the vote was not a good sign. It was 
almost totally a partisan vote on a bill we had been advancing on a 
bipartisan basis. We had long and difficult negotiations across party 
lines to achieve the core agreement that was represented by the bill 
that was brought up by the majority leader.
  The vote that was just taken, should that amendment ultimately be 
successful, strips out one of the core principles of the bill.
  So I am not terribly optimistic, I must say, about the future of this 
bill. Maybe something can be worked out, but this was certainly a 
dramatic step in the wrong direction.
  I know the Senator from Missouri seeks recognition. I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized.


                Amendment No. 2940 to Amendment No. 2937

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I send to the desk a second degree amendment 
to the Schumer amendment and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Missouri [Mr. Bond] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 2940 to amendment No. 2937.

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I would like to see a copy of the amendment.

[[Page S1229]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the unanimous consent 
request?
  Mr. DODD. Reserving the right to object, if I can see a copy of the 
amendment so I can know what we are talking about. Maybe my colleague 
would like to explain what we are doing.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will continue to read the amendment.
  The assistant legislative clerk continued with the reading of the 
amendment, as follows:

       At the end, add the following:

     SEC.   . SIGNATURE VERIFICATION PROGRAMS.

       Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a State 
     may use a signature verification or affirmation program to 
     meet the requirements of section 103(b) relating to the 
     verification of the identity of individuals who register to 
     vote by mail only if the Attorney General certifies that less 
     than one-half of 1 percent of votes cast in the 2 most recent 
     elections for Federal office were cast by voters who were not 
     eligible to vote under the law of such State.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, as I think the Senator from Kentucky 
indicated, we were very disappointed that after working 6 months to 
establish a very modified, watered-down provision to help prevent 
fraud, the other side chose, without objection, on a party line vote, 
to refuse to table a motion to strike an amendment that really guts the 
compromise.
  When we began this debate, I said I thought every American understood 
the importance of the vote. There are two aspects to that which are 
involved in this bill. One is making it easier to vote for those who 
may have had difficulty in the past. We worked on those items and many 
of them went further than I and some of my colleagues would like.
  Coming from Missouri where we have seen significant vote fraud, which 
we believe may have affected close elections in our State, I said we 
needed to change some of the provisions of the motor voter law which 
permits mail-in registration and prevents the States from verifying the 
bone fides of the registrant.
  As a part of the compromise we reached over 6 months, we said one 
does not have to show up with a photo ID with their address on it the 
first time they vote after they have registered by mail; we will let 
them bring in or send in either a photo ID or any of a number of 
documents which would tend to show that they are a real person, such as 
a utility bill, a government check, a paycheck, bank statements.
  That would be supplanted under this amendment, if unamended, to say 
you can sign your name. We have seen the wholesale fraud that signing 
one's name can bring in Missouri: Drop houses, 3,000 almost assuredly 
phony registrations before a mayoral primary in 2001 in St. Louis; 
30,000 last-minute mail-in registrations prior to the November 2000 
general election in St. Louis. The guess is at least 15,000 of them 
were phony. That was followed by an effort by the Gore-Lieberman team 
in St. Louis and Kansas City to continue fraudulent voting by getting 
courts to keep open the ballot boxes in both cities on the theory--and 
I have to say the laughable theory--that the Democratically-controlled 
election boards in St. Louis City and Kansas City were conspiring to 
keep the Democratic voters in Kansas City and St. Louis from casting 
their votes in a general election for the Democratic candidates. Now 
that does not compute.
  So we are saying, number one, we stopped the effort to keep the polls 
open in the Missouri Court of Appeals, pointing out that it is just as 
much a denial of civil rights to have one's vote deluded by an illegal 
vote as it is to be denied the opportunity to cast a vote yourself.
  This amendment I proposed is the starting point to continue and 
reopen the negotiations. As I said, it is important that we balance 
this bill, make it easier to vote but make it tougher to cheat. This is 
one minor suggestion I am offering to avoid wholesale fraud through 
signature verification and affirmation. Frankly, I think we have seen 
enough to know that signature verification and affirmation does not 
work.
  I ask my colleagues from New York if they know how many of the New 
York City voters, 14,000 of them who are registered in South Florida, 
voted only in one place in the 2000 election? I think that is something 
we need to find out.
  There are real problems with the amendment that is now pending. I 
urge my colleagues to consider my second degree amendment favorably. We 
will look forward to continuing negotiations but, frankly, unless and 
until this is resolved this bill is a significant step in the wrong 
direction.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this is the first time we have seen this 
proposal, but certainly on its face it raises a number of very 
troubling issues. To start with, it seems it goes after the wrong end. 
Our view has been if the question of vote fraud is really going to be 
tackled, we have to go after the registration kind of process. That is 
what we have sought to do.
  Once again, this goes to the process of signature verification, which 
is basically trying to deal with the problem after it is all out of the 
barn and off to the races.
  I think what really troubles me is that this would make a presumption 
that in scores of States, the State and local officials are not doing 
their jobs. They are essentially bad guys. They would have to go 
through a very cumbersome, almost incomprehensible process, to try to 
prove they are good guys.

  In our State, it has empowered thousands and thousands of people, 
without instances of fraud. We are running a system that has not been a 
sieve of fraud and abuse. To say they are now going to create a 
presumption that people who are running effective, efficient vote-by-
mail systems are essentially bad guys and they should have to go 
through a process from Washington, DC, to prove they are good guys does 
not make a whole lot of sense to me. Hopefully, there will be further 
discussion how this will work, how you would even go about determining 
who these so-called abusers are in the two most recent elections.
  I have great reservations about what I have seen at this point. 
First, it seems to go at the wrong end of the process. We ought to be 
trying to address voter fraud questions at the registration level 
rather than essentially so late in the process. Second, I am very 
troubled by the presumption that seems to underlie this amendment that 
all these State and local people are bad guys, they are doing an 
inefficient job, they are not up to the task of challenging fraud, so 
what we ought to do is create a presumption, in effect, that they are 
the problem and that somehow they ought to have this convoluted process 
to convince the Federal Government they are not.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I inquire of my colleague from Kentucky, I 
don't know know if we can resolve the amendment at this moment, but 
there are other matters we might consider on the bill. I don't know if 
there is the appetite to temporarily lay these aside to consider the 
other matters, knowing nothing gets resolved until this issue gets 
resolved. I Know there are colloquies, including Senator Thomas, and 
Senator Smith had an amendment we can try and work on.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I think we need to resolve the current pending matter. 
It goes to the heart of the bill. I know even if I didn't object to 
laying aside the amendment to go on to other matters, others would 
object. We need to stay on the amendment, the second-degree amendment 
and continue to discuss how we might unravel the knot which we find 
ourselves.
  There would be an objection to laying the amendment aside and going 
on to other matters.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, the authors, the direct opponents of the 
amendment are not here. I will make the case again, as I tried a week 
or so ago. I see where we are headed with this. We need to try and find 
a compromise. Obviously, people feel strongly about this. The debate 
went on for some time. When Members feel strongly, no matter how you 
try and resolve

[[Page S1230]]

it, sometimes you have to go through the vote process to have some 
clarity. Then a compromise can emerge. That is how this works from time 
to time. We have all been in that situation at one time or another.
  Certainly, that is where we find ourselves in this case. I have great 
respect for how Senator Bond feels. We all bring a very strong local 
experience to this national debate. He had a very strong, in his view, 
local experience which provoked his interest in the matter. I respect 
that.
  I respect very much the point of view of others that feel there are 
ways, particularly with statewide voter registration efforts, that we 
can take major steps to reduce the dangers of fraud or the realities of 
fraud. The establishment of our Election Commission in this bill will 
allow on a continuing basis examining the election structures of the 
country, rather than waiting for a crisis to occur, so we can continue 
to address matters like this and others we have not considered in this 
bill.
  I had hoped that might occur. I think it will. We can find a way to 
get together. There are only 6 or 7 other amendments that I know of to 
consider on the bill. There could be more out there. We were down to 
either amendments that could be accepted or modified to some degree and 
become acceptable. I am still hopeful that can be the case.
  I know where some of the Members are now on this issue. Perhaps we 
will go into a quorum call for a while and see if we can find some 
language that could satisfy both sides.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, we are happy to have discussions. I 
assume there will be on this issue, sooner or later. Our view is sooner 
rather than later, which is why we are going to stay on this subject.
  Therefore, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bayh). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to speak in 
opposition to the underlying amendment offered by the Senator from New 
York, Senator Schumer, which would permit people to vote by mail with 
only an authentication of a signature. The amendment modifies the 
underlying bill, which would require that there be either a photo 
identification or a government check which would establish that the 
individual is, in fact, in existence, not a false person; or a 
paycheck, again establishing the person is in existence; or a utility 
bill or a bank statement or some other governmental document.
  There is no doubt that it is in the interests of democracy to have as 
many people register to vote as possible so that people can express 
themselves in the electoral process. That is very fundamental. It is 
also fundamental that we ought to do whatever is reasonably possible to 
avoid vote fraud. This is an issue which I faced to a very substantial 
extent when I was District Attorney of Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a 
rough, tough, political town.
  When I was DA in the 1960s and 1970s it was a rougher, tougher 
political town. I had the responsibility to enforce the election laws. 
In that capacity, on a bipartisan, nonpartisan basis, I prosecuted both 
Republicans and Democrats alike for vote fraud, and there was a lot of 
it in the city of Philadelphia. We could only detect a relatively small 
amount of it, but that was a real problem in our city elections.
  When motor voter came up, I supported it, to try to broaden the 
availability of registration for the broadest number of people. 
However, there have been very substantial problems with people 
purporting to vote when those people are not in existence.
  When I was DA of Philadelphia, we had a great many people purporting 
to vote where there was no such person. It is a difficult matter to 
police and to enforce. The underlying bill has a minimal check, to see 
to it that there is, in fact, a person who is registered to vote. If 
you have somebody who has a government check, that is a solid 
indication. It is not absolute proof that the person is in existence, 
but they wouldn't be getting a government check or paycheck or utility 
bill or bank statement. The photo ID, of course, is the best, but the 
underlying bill does not require that. It is a modest stand in seeing 
to it that somebody actually is in existence.
  If we are to continue motor voter and to have the broad sweep of 
availability for people to register so you do not have to go down 
specifically to the registration spot--which is the customary way, in 
many, many jurisdictions--if we are to have these procedures which make 
it very, very easy for people to register, and they are to be 
maintained and continue in existence, then we are going to have to take 
steps to stop fraud.
  It seems to me the provisions of the underlying bill are minimal. So, 
if you have an amendment which the Senator from New York has offered, 
that says all you have to have is a signature, anybody can sign a 
purported signature. Anybody can sign a name. Then, if securing the 
right to vote simply requires putting that writing down again, it may 
be the signature of someone other than the person which it purports to 
represent. So, I believe the underlying Schumer amendment is unwise. 
That is why I voted to table it.
  Now we have a second-degree amendment, offered by the Senator from 
Missouri, which would seek to limit the applicability of the underlying 
Schumer amendment. I think that would at least take some steps to 
safeguard against voter fraud.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, does the Senator from Pennsylvania yield for 
a question?
  Mr. SPECTER. I yield, Mr. President.
  I am reluctant to do so, knowing the cross-examination expertise of 
the Senator from Missouri, but I will take my chances.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I am not here to cross-examine. I am just 
here to ask some experience from a Senator who is distinguished by his 
career as a prosecutor previously. Many people have said that if 
anybody votes fraudulently, they will be prosecuted.
  I have looked long, far, and wide to see any consistent pattern of 
prosecution of vote fraud. I just do not know that there has been any 
significant effort. I wonder if the Senator from Pennsylvania can 
inform me to what extent vote fraud is even prosecuted and what are 
some of the problems that are entailed in a prosecution for vote fraud?
  Mr. SPECTER. Well, vote fraud is prosecuted. When I was District 
Attorney of Philadelphia, I prosecuted Republicans and Democrats. 
Customarily, vote fraud is illegal assistance when somebody goes into 
the polling place, and this happens, and pulls the lever. There you can 
have a witness. You can identify the individual, and you can prosecute 
them. If you are seeking to prosecute someone who has sent in a 
purported signature which matches the signature on record, and there is 
registration by mail so that no one ever sees the person, you don't 
have an identification of the voter in the first instance. If you do 
not have an ongoing identification of that person's actual existence, 
it is not virtually impossible. It is impossible. How are you going to 
find the person who signed their name, even if you ascertain that there 
is no such person as the purported signature? How are you going to find 
them? It is not a needle in the haystack. It is a needle in a city of 
more than a million people.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, the Senator from Pennsylvania pointed out 
precisely the problem with motor voter making it impossible for States 
to require a positive identification with the registration. As the 
Senator from Oregon I think wisely said in his debate, we ought to be 
making sure the registration is legitimate and that there is a real 
person behind it. Right now you can't do that under motor voter. The 
underlying bill, section 103(b) provides that.
  But the Senator from Pennsylvania is saying that if somebody 
registers the name of a dead person, a non-existent person, or even a 
dog, sends in that registration, writes the name on a card, gets the 
absentee ballot, and sends it back in, it is next to impossible from 
the prosecutor's standpoint to prosecute the unknown person who has 
done the registration and cast the vote.

[[Page S1231]]

  Is that a fair assessment?
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, the Senator from Missouri articulates it 
accurately. It is impossible to prosecute an unknown person. That is a 
matter of the fundamental definition. If you do not know the person, 
you can't swear out a warrant for an arrest. You also can't take the 
unknown person into custody. Then you would have the problem of proving 
that this unknown person committed the crime, and proving it beyond a 
reasonable doubt. It can't be done.
  I am concerned about changing motor voter. There is a lot of 
criticism of motor voter generally. When I supported motor voter, I got 
a lot of criticism from many people who thought that it went too far. 
However, I was willing to support motor voter legislation with that 
broad sweep to try to encourage people to be on the voter rolls to 
express themselves. Motor voter works against my interest as a 
candidate in a city like Philadelphia. That happens to be the fact of 
life. It works against my electoral interests as a U.S. Senator running 
in Pennsylvania. But notwithstanding that factor, I have supported it, 
and I continue to support it.
  If fraud becomes so widespread--and I think it is reaching that 
point--that we really do not know the level of fraud, it is impossible 
to determine. But, there is a lot of evidence that there are a lot of 
people who are not in existence who are voting. We do know that, 
because there is a check back. There is a signature of John Jones at a 
given address, and you find out that there is no John Jones at that 
address. Who signed the name? How can you tell? You cannot prove who 
did it to have a criminal prosecution. It is about the easiest form of 
voter fraud to perpetrate.
  If you go into the polling booth in Philadelphia, as we had a lot of 
people do, and walk behind the curtain with a registered voter and pull 
the lever, or give illegal assistance--there are legal ways to do it, 
if the person can't pull the lever--there the person is taking a 
chance. You can identify them. You can get a witness. You can prosecute 
them. You can convict them. But, that can't be done just on signature.
  For the people who are urging the enactment of the Schumer amendment 
to broaden the opportunities to vote, let me say to them head on that 
they are going to be defeating their cause, because motor voter is 
going to be in jeopardy unless we are able to work it out in a way so 
there is not fraud in this manner. The underlying bill is a modest step 
forward to eliminate that fraud.
  I compliment the Senator from Missouri for his diligence in pursuing 
it. I also compliment him for his diligence in pursuing it over the 
weekend. It is pretty hard to find most of us over the weekend. But he 
found me and talked to me about this matter. I told him that my 
experience supported the stand that he was taking, and that I was 
prepared to back him and come to the floor and make this argument.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I rise to thank my colleague from 
Pennsylvania for giving us some very practical insights on the 
difficulties a prosecutor faces in prosecuting a phony mail-in 
registration. It seems to be an almost impossible task, unless you are 
fortunate enough to get somebody's fingerprints or have some way-
beyond-the-normal way of identifying who sent it in.
  Obviously, everybody laughs about dead people being registered and 
Ritzy Mekler, the dog, being registered. We know they did not register, 
but finding out who registered them is a problem. Ritzy Mekler's owner 
claims he did not register her. Somebody else may have done so.
  But there is a real problem with the phony registrations piled on to 
our voter rolls in Missouri, for sure--I know in St. Louis, and I would 
imagine in most parts of the country.
  So since we have undone the compromise that we worked 6 months to 
achieve, I express, again, my willingness to come to a bipartisan 
compromise on how we make sure, A, that everybody who is entitled to 
vote gets registered, and, B, gets to vote. But also how do we get 
those phony people off of the rolls?
  I mentioned, in my earlier debate on this amendment, we know that 
3,000 registration cards dumped on the St. Louis City Election Board 
prior to the mayoral primary in 2001 were mostly phony--most of them in 
the same handwriting, most of them with addresses from one or two 
blocks of the city. So we actually got on those, and those have been 
turned over to the prosecuting authorities.
  But there is a little matter of 30,000 voters who were added to the 
rolls in St. Louis City, MO, just prior to the November 2000 general 
election. Nobody knows for sure who they came from. But let me tell 
you, I have some suspicions. I have some suspicions that we are seeing 
people who might benefit from those registrations opposing efforts to 
purge.

  So I would like to see if we can't work out a way to change some of 
the onerous provisions that the motor voter bill puts on States in 
trying to ascertain whether the voters who have been registered by mail 
are legitimate.
  I voted against an amendment offered by my good friend and colleague 
from Montana, Senator Burns. It was going to give some power to purge. 
I told him at the time I thought it was a good idea. I think it is an 
even better idea now.
  So we would like to work on finding a way to make sure we can make it 
easier to vote but tougher to cheat. As I said, if the Schumer-Biden 
amendment goes through as is, it makes it easier to cheat, not tougher 
to cheat.
  I started, in my remarks prior to the vote on the tabling motion, to 
share with some of my colleagues the wisdom from the National 
Commission on Federal Election Reform. They were talking about 
accountability. And they said: The question is whether to require 
voters to display some proof of identification at the polls.
  This is on page 31:

       All states hope that precinct officials and poll watchers 
     will have at least some familiarity with the residents of 
     their precincts. Seven states, all but one of them rural, do 
     nothing more. In the rest, the most common practice now is to 
     require voters to sign their names in an official registry or 
     on a ballot application. About a third of the states require 
     poll workers to check signatures against those provided at 
     registration. Fourteen states insist that voters produce some 
     form of identification.
       Most states that have histories of strong party rivalry or 
     election fraud require signature verification or voter 
     identification at the polls.

  This is the key part:

       Signature verification puts an extra burden upon 
     administrators, and especially on often ill-trained poll 
     workers practicing a very subjective, often impossible, task 
     while voter lines lengthen. Also, many polling places lack 
     the means to provide poll workers with accurate copies of the 
     voter's actual signature (the one the voter used in order to 
     register) and a signature may change over time.
       One alternative, favored by several Commissioners, is to 
     require those who are registering to vote and those who are 
     casting their ballot to provide some form of official 
     identification, such as a photo ID issued by a government 
     agency, (e.g., a driver's license). A photo ID is already 
     required in many other transactions, such as check-cashing 
     and using airline tickets. These Commissioners point out that 
     those who register and vote should expect to identify 
     themselves. If they do not have photo identification, then 
     they should be issued such cards from the government or have 
     available alternative forms of official ID. They believe this 
     burden is reasonable, that voters will understand it, and 
     that most democratic nations recognize this act as a valid 
     means of protecting the sanctity of the franchise.

  They then go on to talk about striking the right balance, and they 
conclude talking about whether a photo ID is too much. They talk about 
alternative forms. But they said on page 32:

       We do believe, however, that States should be able to 
     verify a voter's identity.

  That goes to the sum and substance of the Schumer amendment. The 
Schumer amendment is flatly contradicted by the National Commission on 
Federal Election Reform. That is why I have offered a modest amendment 
to say that verification and affirmation will only go into effect when 
and if the Attorney General of the United States certifies that a State 
has had less than half a percent of illegal ballots cast in the last 
two Federal elections.
  Frankly, I don't believe that signature affirmation or verification 
works as well as my colleagues claim. There are not hundreds of 
thousands of people denied an opportunity to register because they 
don't have any kind of photo ID or government check or bank

[[Page S1232]]

statement or utility bill or any other kind of paycheck stubs with 
their name and address on it. Any of those people who do exist can vote 
provisionally, and they should be able to vote provisionally. I think 
there is a handful at most, and we will accommodate them through 
provisional voting. But I am most worried, for future elections, that 
there were 30,000 names that came in out of the blue, mail-in 
registrations that had not been checked in the city of St. Louis. I 
would like to believe they are all legitimate voters who all of a 
sudden got the real view that they ought to register in one two-day 
period. But 15 percent of the electorate? I don't think so.
  Mr. President, I am not willing to give up on this process. But I am 
not willing to see a bill go through that makes it easier to vote and 
easier to cheat. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, first of all, I thank my colleague from 
Missouri for his expression of trying to find some common ground. We 
know each other pretty well, and I would never question the motivations 
of my friend from Missouri. He brings a lot of passion to matters he 
cares about. I like people who do that.
  As he knows, there has been a tireless effort to cobble together a 
proposal here that would enjoy the broad-based support of this 
institution. We are dealing with 98 other colleagues, and when you deal 
with a matter like elections, everybody is an expert. We have all been 
through them and everybody has a point of view--unlike in other matters 
where members can defer to other colleagues. Here everybody has 
something to contribute to the discussion and debate. I accept his 
words here to try to find some resolution of the situation we are in. 
That is what I have tried to do for a couple of weeks. Sometimes you 
need to have the votes, because then you know where; you are. Votes 
will let you know.
  This place is pretty equally divided on this issue. We have to try to 
find something here where a center can gather and move the bill 
forward. We are hoping to do that.
  On the second-degree amendment--and I appreciate him offering an 
amendment that is substantive and that goes to the heart of this. It is 
not a frivolous amendment. It is one not the least of which is--I 
presume the amendment refers to the U.S. Attorney General. My colleague 
indicates that is the case. The concern, I suppose, we hear from all 
States is that in this bill they want to avoid to have the Justice 
Department all of a sudden be reaching into States. We are already 
trying to become a better partner in the election process, and that 
attorneys general, regardless of party, can all of a sudden, under this 
amendment, be engaged in some ``fishing expeditions'' on some of these 
matters--I think we would all be concerned about that.
  There may be something we can work on that may provide a means by 
which we can come to an agreement on the issue of signatures and 
attestations. Let me say to my friend as well--and he and I went 
through this a great deal, back an forth, on how we can resolve these 
issues. As I understand it--and it gets hard trying to identify exactly 
what each State does--there are 28 or 29 States that do an attestation 
or signature. I may be off by a State or 2. As I went down the list and 
tried to determine how many States do that, many of these States 
believe that is a very viable means by which to deal with the fraud 
issue.
  I know my colleague from Missouri has had different experience in his 
State. I don't argue with that, except to say that around the country 
there are different views on how best to achieve these results. There 
is nothing in here, obviously, that precludes the photo ID from being a 
part of that means of identification. The issue is whether or not we 
are going to, in some way, restrict these other means of verification 
that a majority of States have been comfortable with over the years, 
and then if there is something else we might add to that to address the 
concerns the Senator from Missouri raised.
  Aside from these particular amendments that are pending, I will point 
out that, historically, the efforts of enforcement have to be in the 
States; that is, where there is a problem of fraud, the States have to 
pursue it. The Presiding Officer brings to this issue more than a 
casual acquaintance with these issues having been--the Secretary of 
State in his State worked directly in these areas. I presume he could 
bring to this discussion some additional thoughts and ideas, and I am 
grateful to him for that.
  As I said, the attestation and signature have been used, and many 
States are comfortable with that. I am hopeful we can find some 
mechanism which will allow us to get beyond this particular issue in 
such a way that while it would not do everything, as my colleague from 
Missouri might want, it certainly will do more than the present 
situation.
  What I suggest, because we have to resolve this one way or the other, 
is that we take some time and get our respective staffs together and 
sit down and skull on this and see if we can hammer out some ideas and 
come back with some proposals on how we might deal with this.
  My friend from Missouri is nodding in the affirmative. Rather than 
talking, it seems to me we would be advised to sit down and see, over 
the next half hour or hour, if we can come back with some ideas for 
consideration. That is the path we will follow.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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