Republican Press Conference on Voting Security

All right, we’re all here and we’ve got some other individuals that are coming. We’re here because the bottom line is we believe that our country, our elections have to be safe. I can just tell you, I’m on the campaign trail. Every speech I give, election security is a big deal. People don’t want… One, they don’t want illegals to vote. They don’t want non-citizens to vote. They want to make sure there’s no cheating because they don’t want their vote diluted. I mean, it’s actually really simple. We know that what Alabama, Virginia, and Texas have kicked 16,000 people off the voter rolls. We know that Texas said there were non-citizens. We know that Texas said that 2000 of them had voted in prior elections. So we know this happens. And put it all in perspective, elections are won by a few votes. My election in ’18, ultimately I won by 10,000 votes.

(01:12)
So I think anybody that’s ever been through a close election is really concerned that we cannot let any of our votes be diluted. Democrats claim that we don’t need to take additional action because non-citizens voting in federal elections is already illegal, which it is. If that logic holds up, then why do we do IDs to buy alcohol? If it’s illegal, why do we have to do that? Why do police set up DUI checkpoints or watch for speeders if drunk driving and speeding are illegal? It’s illegal. So we do it because checks and balances work. Here’s an even better question. Why do we have border patrol if crossing the border without documentation is already illegal? Because we know checks and balances work. We do these things because having laws without enforcement, as we all know, does not work.

(02:03)
We’ve seen at the border as Biden and Harris… More than 10 million people have crossed their border illegally. Now, they seem to be perfectly fine with letting them vote in elections. That’s wrong. No non-citizens should vote. And elections have consequences, and nobody wants their vote diluted. There are clearly loopholes that must be addressed. Current law doesn’t require you to submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote. All you have to do is, if you’ve seen the form, you just check a box. So non-citizens are on voter rolls. Current law requires states to verify identity and residency of a voter with their license. But every state issues a driver’s license to non-citizens. And 19 states issue driver’s license to illegal citizens, including Minnesota, where Governor Tim Walz signed the law allowing illegals to get a driver’s license. I actually can’t believe that. How does that make any sense?

(02:56)
So license alone is not enough. 22 states have same-day registration. A non-citizen could show up, register without proving citizenship, vote, and have it counted in our elections. That’s wrong. So ask yourself, “Why does Chuck Schumer… Why is he so afraid of the SAVE act? Why does he not put this up for a vote?” The House has already passed this. This doesn’t have to be attached to the CR. Why doesn’t he put it up? The answer is simple. Harris/Schumer/Democrats, they intentionally opened the border and allow people to come here illegally so they get to vote in our elections. They think that’s going to help them win. They can’t win on their policies because people… If you do any poll, you look at the Democrats policies, Democrats would lose.

(03:38)
I’ve been in tight elections. Basically, all my elections are tight and I hope this year’s not so tight. And every vote matters. We have to make sure we ensure that there’s actually zero fraud. I mean, we’ve had races in Florida that have been won by less than 20 votes while I was governor. So every vote matters, and non-citizens should never vote. So it’s very important that we get this passed. Whether we get this passed as part of the CR or we get this passed separately, we ought to get it done. Now, the sponsor of the bill, Senator Mike Lee.

Thanks so much, Rick. Look, no corporation would hold a shareholder vote in which non-shareholders were allowed to vote. When you board a plane, when you get a marriage license, a hunting, or a fishing license, you pick up a prescription, you go to the doctor… You do all sorts of things that Americans do every day. You’re required to show a form of idea. It does a couple of things. It allows you to prove who you are. Because proving who you are, identifying who you are, may determine whether or not you are available to do, you’re eligible to do that thing. Whether or not you are the person whose name is on that prescription, whether or not you are the same person whose name is on the airplane ticket, you have to prove that. It would be insane for us not to have any similar requirement attached to one of our most fundamental activities in our republican democracy, which is the right to vote.

(05:19)
You look at almost every country worldwide. They require some sort of identification in order to do that. Now, what we’re talking about here is the identification required in order to cast a vote in a federal election. We as a federal lawmaking body typically don’t have authority over state and local elections, but we do have some authority over federal elections. An existing federal law prohibits non-citizen voting. A lot of people, as Rick Scott mentioned, think that’s the end of the inquiry. That’s no more the end of the inquiry than it would be to say, “Well, it’s already illegal to kill somebody with a gun. Therefore, we don’t need any laws whatsoever regarding, I don’t know, your ability to prove your age and identity and your status as a non-felon before buying a gun.” That’s absurd. Current federal law is made almost impossible to enforce on this front.

(06:13)
In other words, when we look at that law, the existing federal law that says you may not as a non-citizen vote in a federal election, it’s been made very, very difficult by a couple of factors. Number one, passage in 1993 of the National Voter Registration Act. Which allows people in all states, in fact, requires states, when you go in to apply for a driver’s license to be offered up a form, “Would you like to register to vote?” And once that happens, you fill that out. And by checking a box and signing your name, you can in one fell swoop apply for a driver’s license and register to vote in federal elections. In all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, you can get a driver’s license even if you are a non-citizen. In 19 states, you are able to get a driver’s license even if you are an illegal alien.

(07:06)
So in all those circumstances, when you apply for the driver’s license, but check in a box and signing your name, you can register to vote. Which is exactly why some of these states that have looked at it, like Texas, and found 6,500 non-citizens just through their initial review of some of their voter registration files. I don’t even know if they went through all of them. 6,500 non-citizens who were registered to vote. Known non-citizens. Of those nearly a third, 1,930, had previously voted in one or more elections. So this is simply false to say, because it’s illegal, it can’t happen, and in fact, it doesn’t happen. That is not true. Now, the need for this is made even more pronounced when you consider the impact of a Supreme Court ruling just a few years ago. A majority opinion issued by Chief Justice John Roberts in a case dealing

… with an Arizona policy. Concluded wrongly in my view that the 1993 National Voter Registration Act actually precludes this state from asking for any kind of proof of citizenship, even if they know or suspect that the person is a non-citizen, that they cannot ask for anything else. So this is intended to plug that hole. There’s an additional consideration here that makes this especially timely, especially necessary now. More than at any other time in American history that I’m familiar with, we have very large number of non-citizens in this country, an estimated 30 million or so. Of those, we know that we’ve got at least 10 million or so who have entered illegally into the United States in the last three and a half years alone. Now with something approaching 10% of our nation’s population consisting of non-citizens, coupled with the Supreme Court ruling wrongly, in my view, interpreting, but interpreting nonetheless, the National Voter Registration Act is precluding the states from asking for that.

(09:06)
Coupled with the fact that in all 50 states plus DC a non-citizen can easily apply for registering to vote while getting a driver’s license. And the fact that the state can’t ask anything beyond that, the SaveAct is absolutely necessary. Look, we all know that elections including and especially presidential elections, tend to be decided within a pretty narrow range, in fact, within a few states and very often within just a few counties nationwide, and it would be folly for us to leave open this vulnerability. Now, there are those finally who will make the argument against this. This is unnecessary for the additional reason that it’s too late for it to do any good, absolute utter nonsense science fiction fantasy. That is not true that it would do no good. Let me explain briefly why. In 22 states, so nearly half of all voting jurisdictions in America, you were allowed to register to vote up to and including election day, same day voter registration.

(10:09)
Therefore, a number of people who may not have applied to register to vote so far, and at the NVRA who could do so up to and including the day of the election. In addition to those 22 states, many other states allow voter registration to continue up until some moment prior to election day. And finally, this bill has within it a criminal penalty that would attach to anyone who knowingly registers a non-citizen to vote in a federal election. The combined deterrent effects of these makes this bill not only helpful, but eminently necessary. And the reason we need to attach this to the spending bill has everything to do with the fact that this is the last train leaving the station between now and election day. If Americans are going to remain in control of their government, for heaven’s sakes, we should let only Americans vote in our elections. Thank you.

(11:06)
Ron Johnson, you’re up next.

First of all, I want to thank Senator Scott for leading this conference and for Senator Lee for leading on this bill. He’s provided pretty complete explanation of why I think this is necessary. I just wrote a column for The Federalist last week where I laid out certainly my rationale, but I also try to debunk so much of what we hear from Democrats from the mainstream media that our elections are perfect and these things are totally secure. It’s simply not true. There’s one side of the political spectrum that does want to make it easy to vote, but wants total election integrity. There’s another side that wants to make it easy to cheat, and I think you know who that is. One of the things I’d point out in the column, for example, in Wisconsin, as much as we’re told that 2020 was the most secure election in our history, that’s not true. In Wisconsin, we had 170 absentee ballots, and I’ll be charitable here. They were improperly cured by election clerks. That’s not allowed by Wisconsin Law. Now, Supreme Court didn’t want to remedy that because the remedy was almost unthinkable tossing out 170,000 votes. So that improper action stood. We had Zuckerbucks pay for people that pretty well took over the Green Bay election system to the point where they put so much stress on the election clerk, she resigned, and then their political hacks took over the election system for the 2020 election in Green Bay. We had something called balloting in the park, completely illegal in Wisconsin, and yet 17,000 ballots were harvested during that event. We had seniors voting without the proper supervision by election helpers. So there were so many things indisputable in Wisconsin where it was a very close election and for anybody to say that illegal immigrants can’t vote or non-citizens can’t vote, it can’t happen. We know that they do.

(13:18)
In my column I point out, for example, Mike talked about Texas, Virginia just recently purged over 6,300 non-citizens from their voter files. They did it by comparing DMV records with their election system. Again, 6,300. In Boston, 70 individuals requested to have their names taken off the rolls. I’m sure that they don’t want their immigration benefits impacted. In Ohio where they went through a multiphase audit, 499 non-citizens were taken off the rolls. Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg when you have the Biden administration with the executive order telling their federal agencies possibly unlawfully to register voters, anybody think that the Biden administration is going to register voters in a nonpartisan way? And I’ll just stand on this note. I mean, I can think of no other reason that a President of the United States, a vice president who’s the border’s czar, Democrats in Congress, would support and promote and facilitate an open border that is a clear and present danger to this country, the rapes, the murders.

(14:36)
Now the Venezuelan gang is taking over apartment cities, laying the seed for taking over communities like the cartels do in Mexico. This is unbelievably dangerous. Why would you as a responsible, elected official, do that? I can think of no other reason than to bring in a bunch of people very grateful to you and encourage them and facilitate their ability to vote unlawfully. That’s the reality situation. It’s an awful reality, which is why in the end, we should do everything we can to pass the SaveAct to at least mitigate that harm.

(15:13)
And I guess next, Senator Marshall.

Yeah. All right, well thanks Senator Johnson and good afternoon everybody.

(15:20)
Is there anything more vital to the survival and success of our democracy to our republic than election integrity? I would argue there isn’t. Does it make more sense that the people voting for the representatives or the president, that they should be citizens of the country. And of course, oh, by the way, that is the law of the land, but let’s put some teeth to it to make sure that truly happens. Today across America, you can’t get through a day without your ID. You can’t hop on an airplane, you can’t get a hotel room, you can’t open a bank account without a valid ID. Doesn’t the election process, if you commit a value on getting a hotel room

… or opening a bank account versus the value of being able to vote in this country. Isn’t that vote, the integrity of the election, have more value than any of those other processes?

(16:12)
But, astonishingly, our friends across the aisle are prepared to shut down the government to prevent proper identification to vote or for proof of citizenship to register to vote. Now American citizens all had the same question: what are the Democrats afraid of?

(16:29)
Indeed, they, the Democrats are jeopardizing the integrity of our elections. They are the threat to democracy. Again, we ask why? Why do they want this bar to be so low to vote or register? It’s because they’ve spent years courting millions of illegal immigrants that they’ve ushered across the borders in hopes of swinging a few tight elections in key states.

(16:53)
There are those who say that this isn’t necessary, but states like Texas and Virginia have found thousands of ineligible voters, including a significant number of non-citizens, on their current voter rolls, proving this is a real threat to our democracy.

(17:09)
Our elections, especially in battleground states, can hinge on a few thousand votes. Protecting the integrity of our system by requiring proof of citizenship isn’t controversial. It’s actually commonsense. Just as we have laws to prevent speeding, we need laws to prevent illegal voting. Passing the SAVE Act is the right thing to do to protect this democracy. Thank you. Coach Tuberville’s up.

Thank you. I’m new here. I’m amazed. Our job is to protect the Constitution and give the citizens of this country a fair election and spend their money properly. I’m appalled of what we do up here, absolutely appalled.

(18:03)
You can go down to the library … In this city, you can’t find a Webster dictionary that defines commonsense. It’s not here. Not here, anywhere you can find it. The American people should be sick to their stomach of what’s going on. You just heard my colleagues talk about this, and I want to thank Senator Lee for authoring this bill, along with Congressman Chip Roy over in the House, carrying the water for it over there. This is a no-brainer, absolutely no-brainer. We all know and have understood the last three and a half years one of the Democrats have had open borders. It cost us tens of millions of dollars monthly when we couldn’t come up with $5 billion for a border wall when President Trump was in office. Too much money.

(18:49)
It’s all a scam, like this whole place up here. It’s a scam. The Democrats have taken advantage of every opportunity they could get. It’s really scary, to be honest with you.

(19:00)
Now I went to 10 or 15 states in August, helping other senators get elected and raising money. They’d come up to me and go, “Coach, they wouldn’t talk about … Asked about the economy or the border or foreign wars or crime on the streets.” It was almost unanimous. Are we going to have fair elections? I could not look them in the face and say, “Yes, we are,” because if we continue down this path, it’s going to be the same old thing, and the American people deserve better than this. People that pay our bills and our salaries up here deserve better than this. The Democrats know better than this, but they want power so bad that they’re going to try to tear down our election system.

(19:51)
I’m going to tell you this. My first day was January 6th in 2021. What’s going to happen if we do not show the American people that the elections are going to be fair and they’re going to be satisfied with the outcome? No matter whether Republicans win or Democrats win, you are going to have hell to pay in this country. It’s coming, and I’m not so sure that’s not what the Democrats want. It’s an embarrassing situation for me as a taxpaying American citizen for the last 35, 40 years. It’s embarrassing to know that we have less control over our election system than we have on anything else.

(20:34)
That’s all American taxpayers and the citizens want in this country. They want to know that their vote counts and that whatever happens in November, that they feel good about it whatever happens. But you know what? That’s not going to be what’s going to happen. You’re going to have problems, and it’s because the Democrats will not bring this bill to the floor, pass it, and tell the American people, ” We’re with you. We’re going to have fair elections no matter what happens, and we’re going to be able to put our head on the pillow at night and know that nothing’s going to happen the next day or the next week. We’re going to go and make this country better.”

(21:14)
Democrats ought to be ashamed. Chuck Schumer ought to be ashamed. The Senate needs to get a backbone, bring this to the floor, and let’s pass it. Let’s get a budget and let’s get a bill passed to make elections fair.

We can answer any questions anybody has. Yes?

So Congressman Cory Mills is one of the members in the House who … He’s signed on to the SAVE Act, but he doesn’t support this strategy of attaching it to the CR, because he says, at this point, 55 days out from the election, there’s not even enough time to actually implement this before the November election. How do you respond to that?

Yup. He’s wrong in several respects. Number one, it takes effect immediately after becoming law. So let’s say if we were to get it passed in the next week, two weeks is roughly what we’ve got between now and the end of the month, it takes effect immediately. By taking effect immediately, it does a couple of things.

(22:08)
First and foremost, it provides a significant deterrent to anyone registering from that moment forward, any non-citizen to vote. If they do so knowingly, then they risk committing a felony offense independently of any voter action.

(22:27)
Secondly, and one of the reasons why that’s significant is because, as I mentioned earlier, there are 22 states that have same-day voter registration, up to and including election day. So that’s nearly half the states in the country in which this could have a significant impact.

(22:47)
We don’t know exactly how many non-citizens there might be out there who have previously registered, and we don’t know exactly how many have not yet registered, but might be doing so at some point between now and election day. But we do know that there is lag time between now and election day, and that some of those could register to vote and vote between now and election day, especially in those 22 states. To say nothing of the other states, that while not allowing same-day voter registration on election day, allow it up until some late date prior to the election.

(23:23)
So I have great respect for Representative Mills. I look forward to talking to him personally about this. I’ve been trying to reach out to him on that issue in particular. We haven’t yet connected, but I look forward to explaining that to him. He’s been misinformed on that front.

(23:40)
This would make a difference. It would make a big difference. All of this begs the question, if as many Democrats are saying, and unfortunately some Republicans, if this is unnecessary, why oppose it? What’s the worst that can happen? If this really isn’t a problem, if this

… really would do no good. Why do you oppose it? And why would you oppose attaching it to a spending bill? Why worry about that? It worries me greatly that some are obsessively worried about it, and we need to ask why.

Yes?

Senator, how do you get a vote on this if it’s not [inaudible 00:24:21]?

Well, first off, we’re going to see what the House does. Hopefully, it’ll get passed out of the House and it’ll come over here and then, we’ll have a vote on it. But the right thing to do is you ought to bring it up. Look, I think it ought to be part of the CR, but just bring it up by itself. The bill’s already passed the House, just bring it up by itself and you get it behind us.

(24:41)
Yes?

Do you support shutting down the government over this issue?

Of course not. There’s nobody up here that wants to shut down the government. I don’t know one person, I don’t know a Republican in the country that wants to shut down the government.

Senator, after the debate last night, sticking to immigration, a lot of chatter online has been about the whole idea that Haitian immigrants are eating pets. So my question to you three, one is do you believe that is happening? And two, given that immigration is an issue that Republicans consistently outpull Democrats on, was that the right strategy to bring on the debate stage yesterday?

Well, I’ve read some of the articles about Springfield, Ohio, so I have no idea what’s happening there just other than what I’ve read, so I have no idea. I know in Florida we have a big Haitian community, and they’re hardworking people. They’re business owners. They go to church. I spend a lot of time going to Haitian churches, and so it’s a wonderful group of people. But what begs your question is, we’re only having this issue because the border is open. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the border wasn’t open. Harris and Biden intentionally opened the border and that’s why we’re even having these issues. So every candidate has an opportunity to decide how they’re going to do their debates. But I can just tell you, we’re only having this conversation because the border is open.

Let me quickly take a crack at this. It doesn’t surprise me, but it’s absurd that this is the question we’ve been asked in the hallways. We have been asked by the media about the rapes and the murders and all the migrant crimes that are being created by this. We’re not being asked about that. This is what the press is fixated on. The fact of the matter is we have an enormous problem in this nation because of the Democrats’ open border process. Again, it’s a clear and present danger as I described previously. What Senator Lee is trying to accomplish with this bill that he introduced in the senate is what should be completely bipartisan, non-partisan. Senator Tuberville is talking about every American should have confidence in the result of the election. There’s nothing partisan about that.

(26:45)
The fact that in 2016, half of America didn’t acknowledge that as a legitimate result. Fast-forward to 2020, the other half of America is not accepting that as a result. Now, the election deniers from 2016, not a problem, not at all you want. 2020, it’s the end of the republic. Okay?It’s an unsustainable state of affairs. So all we’re trying to do is what I think the vast majority of Americans want. I mean 80% support voter ID because they only want people eligible to vote to vote. So again, it is absurd to be focusing on one issue as it comes to migrant issues, as opposed to ignoring again the rapes, the murders, the Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes, all of a sudden lawless sections in different parts of our states. This is a huge concern. We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg of this, and we’re going to be living with the negative consequences of Biden and Harris’ open border for decades.

But Senator, President Trump brought this issue into the debate yesterday. He could have talked about all of those issues as well. So the reason that we’re asking this question-

And he did, and all you’re focusing is on this. Again, I think we’ve all seen the reports. I can’t verify all of them. We’ve seen the reports, but the main point are the rapes, the murders, the clear and present danger that the Biden-Harris open border policy is creating for this country.

All right, we’ll take one more question.

But I can just tell you, I’ve done every county in my state and I can’t think of many speeches I’ve given where they didn’t ask me about election security. People are really mad, people are scared to death about… It’s the thing about, when I grew up, no one worried about whether it was going to be a free and fair election. Whether it was or not, we didn’t think that way. People really believe these elections are unfair. How is that good for us? Whether Republican win or Democrat win, it’s not good for the country. Every Republican, every Democrat ought to do everything they can to make people feel more comfortable that these elections are fair. It makes no sense not to.

(29:05)
I went through a recount, three recounts, I think it was in 2018. The Democrats tried to steal the election. I won. I went by 57,000 votes. Right? They tried to steal the election, created ballots after election night. They did everything. It was completely illegal what they did. And I can just tell you how many people, they said, just like my daughter, she said, “Look, I want you to win. But it makes me mad when they either are going to steal an election.” That’s going on all across the country right now. We need to wake up and understand that people are scared that this country is going away, not because of how the public votes, but because of how non-citizens vote.

(29:44)
Yes?

President Trump wrote in through social yesterday to close it down if Republicans don’t have election assurance, election security assurances. What’s your response saying no Republican wants to shut down the government over this to President Trump saying close it down?

Well, I think what he’s saying is, well, you can ask him what he’s saying, I don’t know anybody that wants to shut down the government. Now, I think what we’d all like to do is have a responsible government. Do the logical stuff. I balanced the budget when I was governor. We don’t go waste money. I think the numbers are, we are spending 40% more than we take in now. That is not sustainable. You can’t keep doing that. We have to understand this cannot last what we’re doing. Think about this, we have a 100 million people working age not working in this country. Tell me how that’s sustainable. Any of you? Did any of your parents, or if you have kids or you’re telling your kids you don’t want them to work? That’s what your government is doing. People aren’t working. We’re spending more money than we take in. People are worried about our elections. This is a problem. We got to start solving these problems.

(30:56)
Thanks, everybody.