[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 17, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1154-S1156]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SAVE AMERICA ACT
Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, the hour is late and many people have
spoken tonight on this proposal by my colleague from Utah and others.
But I just want to add my voice to the many who are very concerned
about this legislation.
I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say about
the fact that this was somehow necessary, that somehow things were
trending in the wrong direction, and that he did want to make it easy
to vote.
I think the fact that he wants to make it easy to vote is the essence
of what this debate is about because the U.S. citizen is given a
constitutional right to vote in our elections and the States to control
the running of our elections. It is hard to imagine how the passing of
the SAVE Act would help you on those constitutional rights.
I am here tonight to add my voice. Happy Saint Patrick's Day for
those who are here wearing the green, and I am pretty sure you wish you
were out of here by now and at some Irish festivities celebrating the
day.
But trust me, the Irish in the United States of America appreciate
voting rights and appreciate the right to vote, and so do many other
segments of American society who have had challenges in the past to get
their votes counted.
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So I do want to say to my colleagues in the Senate that the Federal
law does prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting. That is a cornerstone
to our law.
Now, my colleague thinks that we don't do anything to prove or to
require that these people have to say who they are, which is not true.
When you basically are part of a registration process, you have to fill
out or comply with an attestation and identification of who you are.
That is how the system works.
It worked when you were a registrant and knocking on someone's door.
It works that way on motor voter. It works that way everywhere, and you
have to say who you are.
Your signature becomes the identifiable piece of information that has
been used for a long time now, decades and decades and decades, as the
proof of who you say you are. Why? Because your signature can be
traced.
I always find it very interesting in our State because it is not that
fraud hasn't been committed; the question is whether you are going to
catch fraud. In an incident in our State where we had a very close
election and it got down to several votes, people started admitting
that they had voted for somebody who was dead or deceased. Why? Because
they knew we were going to catch them because it was based on your
signature.
So a man who votes for his wife after she has died to say she was
really enthusiastic about that Governor's candidate and really would
have wanted to vote for him but died before the election and didn't
cast her own ballot, yes, that does not count. And we have caught voter
fraud.
The point is, is that States already verify that identity. They do
it, as I said, when you register or are a registrant, it says right on
the registrant card: If you are not a U.S. citizen, stop right now.
Stop right now.
It also, at the motor voter place where it is checking your
identification, also you have to say that you are a U.S. citizen. Now,
you can say many things about what kind of identification is used, but
I like this best because we are a vote-by-mail State, as my colleague
from Utah is. And we have very high turnouts, as does Utah.
And what does it take to make sure that you are a U.S. citizen in the
State of Washington? So every ballot just like mine that is from a few
years ago says: Read the declaration.
It says right here, I can hardly miss this. This is the outside
envelope: Read the declaration, sign and date below.
So I have to sign this again, which is matched with my signature at
the voters' office. It is on a computer with voters' basically
witnesses, looking at my signature; and in my State, they are trained
by the State patrol to make sure that signature matches the original
signature that you signed up with.
Now, what I like most about this is right above where I have to sign
is this little attestation with these words on it. I know you can't
hardly read them, so I am going to make it a little larger for you to
understand the whole thing.
It says:
I do solemnly swear under penalty of perjury, I am a United
States citizen.
It says it right there. Every time you vote in the State of
Washington, you are attesting to that. But the bottom part is what I
think is most amazing, ``punishable by a maximum imprisonment of five
years or $10,000 in fine.'' And somehow people on this side of the
aisle think that immigrants who won't even go to the healthcare system,
won't even go to the grocery store, are afraid to take their kids to
school, and somehow you think they are signing up for a felony or
$10,000 or imprisonment of 5 years? No. They are not doing that.
Because this system is checked. It is validated. It is verified. You
have to attest to it. And so we have very, very, very, very, very
little fraud, and when we do, we catch it.
The point is: Why are we doing this today? Why are we changing a
system that has been in place for decades and replacing it because my
colleagues say the trend is going in the wrong direction? Which is
simply not true.
When you look at this, the SAVE Act, instead of basically protecting
our system for decades could disenfranchise over 21 million people.
That is why you have seen this out here, because it has been estimated
by many people. Think about this, when this goes to the President's
desk, it is implemented immediately this year.
It means that you have to start producing additional paperwork. What
my colleagues failed to tell you is that the system is based on all the
verification up front when you are registered and when you give your
signature and identification; and election day is about having the ease
of going to vote based on the fact you have already been identified.
But my colleagues would like to throw a big wrench in that and make
you find all sorts of documentation in the most unworkable chaos I have
ever seen in a system put in a bill.
It is simply not true that this is about ease of voting by them. It
is about disenfranchising millions of people and making it very hard
for them to vote.
Why do they want to do that? I don't know. Frankly, I don't really--I
don't really know why they think that is a good idea. I will tell you
what my former Republican secretary of state, who served more than a
decade, said to me in a statement.
Neither the President nor Congress should be in the
business of micromanaging elections. As a longtime Republican
election administrator official, I adamantly support our
nation's constitutional framers' decision that the election
process be decentralized to states.
Following he says:
I oppose the SAVE [America] Act. It gives the federal
government new powers of discretionary regulation. It
empowers ideologues to sue election administrators. It forces
states to turn over voter rolls to federal overseers. It
abolishes vote-by-mail--the preferred system in Washington,
Oregon, Colorado, Utah, Hawaii, Nevada, and Vermont.
In my experience, vote-by-mail best fits the modern
lifestyles. More importantly, it provides the opportunity for
voters to become better informed before casting [their]
ballots.
He continues by saying:
I subscribe to my party's fundamental and historic
commitment to local control. It is a time-honored Republican
principle that ``government closest to the people is best.''
This, importantly, includes the conduct of elections.
Now maybe that is why the senior Senator from Kentucky is voting with
us on this side of the issue, because he understands what States'
rights are about. States' rights are about running elections so a
demagogue or somebody in the level of government cannot force the
Federal Government to say who is eligible to vote and who is not
eligible to vote.
The notion that we would turn this over to DHS is preposterous. And
the notion that I had a constituent who basically got denied a Social
Security check because someone said he was dead, even though he went to
the Federal building, to the Social Security Administration and said: I
am not dead.
They had already ripped the check out of his, basically, bank
account. He basically then proceeded for 3 weeks to continue to tell
them he was not dead. He showed up in other places in person. He was on
national TV. And did they give him his check back? No. It took him
months.
Now, let's say that the Federal Government says the same thing about
you and the voter rolls on election day. What are you going to do then?
What are you going to do on election day? Not have a vote. What are you
going to do, say: No, it is me. I am right here.
But they are going to say: No, you are dead. You are not on my rolls.
You can't vote. I don't care how long you have lived at that address. I
don't care. You are gone.
I am not turning that over to the Federal Government, and our
constitutional Founders did not want that turned over to the Federal
Government. They saw mischief then, and believe me, the SAVE Act is
mischief now.
The League of Women Voters, the ultimate organization for finding and
pursuing policy to get people in America to vote basically said this
about the SAVE Act:
[This] is a coordinated effort to make voting harder for
eligible Americans.
Now, if you can't trust the League of Women Voters here, I don't know
who you can trust because they are the ones who have had an
organization that is about nothing but getting people to participate in
elections.
They are not Democrat; they are not Republican. They basically are a
great
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organization that holds all of us accountable, and they basically do
not like the SAVE Act.
This is why part of this effort is about protecting States and
protecting our rights. As I said, our constitutional Fathers have
basically said: This is what we should be doing, and this is why, here
now, turning this over, I object to the fact that the Homeland Security
is going to collect personal information demanding that a secretary of
state turn that personal information over to them for a massive
database by the Federal Government. I object to that.
I am not turning personal information over to people who just have
other things to pursue. Or maybe it is going to be like DOGE, and they
are going to sell it to other organizations and make money off of our
personal information. I object to that.
But now, if basically a secretary of state or an auditor basically
doesn't agree with Homeland Security, what are they going to do? This
bill also has a private right of action to say that you can sue them on
a private right of action. So now, we are going to create all of this
chaos and mischief at a level when somehow Homeland Security, which
they have gotten it wrong before on the vote, on information about who
and what information--the Federal Government has got it wrong before--
now all of a sudden, you are going to get it wrong again and what are
you going to do?
So as I mentioned, Sam Reed, he is not the only Republican I have
talked to. We had a Republican on a press conference today who was an
auditor. There are Republicans standing up.
I don't see any Democrats agreeing with you on the SAVE Act, but I
see lots of Republicans across America agreeing with us that it is a
bad bill.
But as Sam Reed said, former Republican secretary of state:
Neither the President nor Congress should be in the
business of micromanaging elections.
Why? Why? It has never been given to us.
But let's talk about this. My colleague seems to think that there is
a trend going in some direction. OK. What is the trend? Because the
Heritage Foundation, a group I am pretty sure you believe in, pretty
sure you quote them a lot, basically said in my State since 1982--since
1982 till now--there have been 15 cases of voter fraud.
OK. In our State, in the State of Washington, 15 cases. OK. So
hardly--hardly, a big trend moving in the other direction. Hardly a big
trend.
Similarly, the Heritage Foundation found that in the United States of
America, that noncitizen voter fraud is basically .00007, so that turns
out to be seven-millionths of a percent. It is not 1 percent. It is not
.1 percent. It is basically .00007. So seven-millionths of 1 percent
voter fraud in the United States of America based on the system that we
have today.
And you want to propose a system that would disenfranchise millions
of Americans by making it more complicated. And, yes, I don't know why
you don't want to stand up for vote-by-mail, but trust me, I am
standing up for vote-by-mail. Your last election had 84 percent turnout
in the State of Utah. You had 90 percent in 2020. I think that is a
prideful thing for a State.
I am prideful that our State has one of the highest turnouts too. It
is not probably 83 percent in a Presidential election. I don't remember
exactly what it was in the year 2000, but that is what we strive for in
the United States of America, a voting system where everybody
participates so when the outcome is something that other people don't
like, you can at least say the American people decided.
But if all of a sudden you start sowing doubt into the system, then
you have a problem; and that is where President Trump is. He is saying
he wants to eliminate mail-in voting, but one in three voters in this
country use it.
He is the one who is inspiring my colleagues to write this
legislation. He is the one who is inspiring the details. He would go
much further, I agree, than what the SAVE Act is.
But let's hear what third parties are saying around the United States
of America.
Let's hear what editorial boards who read the same judgment, the same
discussions that we have had here, and what have they said?
In my home State, where we have had one of the closest elections in a
congressional district, they basically said the SAVE Act is a threat to
our democracy.
What did the Seattle Times say? It said, ``Congress should reject
SAVE Act as unconstitutional voter suppression.''
That is not Democrats saying that; that is a newspaper saying that.
What did they say in the Maine Herald?
Maine Voters do not wish to be ``saved'' by the SAVE Act.
So now we know that third-party validators--who are pretty expert in
voting. Women Voters don't want this. Newspapers that basically have
looked at this issue are also calling this for what it is: suppression.
And I ask my colleagues to turn this down.
Now, if my colleague wants to continue to debate, I will stand here
as long as he wants to stand here to debate this issue. I will stand
here and get more facts and figures to show him that this voting system
today has empowered Americans, it has increased opportunities for
Americans to have their votes cast, and it has gotten rid of
generations of suppression that existed before. But if he wants me to
talk about all of the voter suppression that has existed in the United
States, starting with laws that basically disenfranchise various
segments of our population, I am happy to talk about them because every
generation should be about fighting to get the voters to cast a vote,
have a robust democracy, and distinguish the United States of America
from other countries as a beacon of democracy where free and fair
elections stand and where we are confident about the results.
We don't need the SAVE Act. It will cause chaos. What we need to do
is to continue to fight for democracy and continue the path forward for
a vote-by-mail system.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
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