“The Republican bill makes it harder to commit fraud. The Democrat bill makes it easier to commit fraud.”
Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s remarks.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) spoke on the Senate floor about the House Democrats’ liberal election reform bill, House Bill Number One.
Excerpts of Senator Barrasso’s remarks:
“I come to the floor today to talk about the need for integrity in our elections.
“In 2020, the American people voted for a fifty-fifty Senate, we’re in that body today, and gave Republicans nearly a dozen more seats in the House of Representatives.
“In the presidential election, 37 electoral votes were decided by less than one percent in those states. Without those 37 electoral votes, President Biden would have failed to achieve a majority in the Electoral College.
“This was a close election. The reason it’s a close election is that it’s a closely divided country.
“I’m home every weekend in Wyoming and the two things I hear about is: one, this massive bill in front of the Senate right now, $1.9 trillion amount of money that is all going to be added to the debt and the concern for that spending, and the other issues is the integrity of our elections.
“We have a close election. We have a closely divided country. If you would think anything, that should be a mandate to move to the middle, to find common ground, to work for solutions. It’s the kind of things the President talked about in his Inaugural Address on January 20th.
“At a time like this, Americans want to make sure that our own elections are safe and secure and fair.
“I think voters, no matter what their political party or predisposition is, I think all voters deserve that, and they want it. But when Republicans raise questions about the integrity of the election, well, we are attacked, and we’ve seen that now.
“In fact, earlier this very week the Majority Leader of the United States Senate spoke of ‘the pernicious and nasty guise of election integrity.’
“He attacked the motives of millions of Americans who want to be confident in our elections. Every American ought to want to be confident in our elections.
“But it looks like some Democrats share our concerns.
“I hear that both sides of the aisle.
“Democrats in Iowa, right now, are contesting a Congressional race.
“As I stand here, Democrats in the House are considering the most sweeping changes to election laws in decades.
“Their bill is nearly 800 pages long. It’s called House Bill Number One. To me, that means it’s their number one priority. Otherwise, why would they introduce it as their first bill and label it as House Bill Number One?
“House Bill Number One for the Democrats in the House is not coronavirus. It’s not jobs. It’s not schools. It’s a change in the election process for the American people and a big mandate coming out of Washington.
“So the number one priority of House Democrats is not those key issues, but their number one issue is elections and changing elections in our country.
“The bill, interestingly, didn’t go through a normal committee process as bills are supposed to do in the House and the Senate. It went straight to the floor. It went from Nancy Pelosi’s desk to the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
“Hundreds of pages are in there of new mandates, and it tells each of our states how to hold elections.
“These aren’t just any mandates. These are radical left-wing mandates that people in my home state of Wyoming view as scary and say would make the elections less secure.
“This bill is so radical that an earlier version of it was felt to be too liberal even for the ACLU, and the latest version is even more liberal than that.
“I’m just going to mention a few of the mandates in this bill.
“House Bill Number One would force every state to give the vote to convicted felons.
“One group of Democrats even tried to give the vote to felons who are still in prison right now. That amendment failed.
“House Bill Number One would force every state to allow same-day voter registration, online voter registration, and even automatic voter registration.
“If the bill became law, you would be registered to vote automatically, without even knowing it.
“And when the states automatically register you, you’re not allowed to find out how they got your information.
“In effect, voter registration would be a thing of the past.
“House Bill Number One forces states to count provisional ballots statewide. So if you vote Democrat in one district and you’re from another district, they’ll count it as a vote for the Democrat in your district. Mistakes like this shouldn’t happen, let alone should your vote be able to be changed from the vote you actually cast.
“The bill also doubles down on mail-in voting. The problems with that, I think people would agree, are obvious.
“Amazon recently tried to restrict mail-in voting for a union election at one of its facilities. That’s not because Amazon has conservative leadership. It’s because they say it is harder to secure mail-in voting than it is to secure in-person voting. If you want an accurate vote, in-person voting is more accurate.
“The reason mail-in voting was expanded last year was because of the pandemic. Now Democrats want to carve into stone forever.
“H.R. 1 would also take government funding and give it to political campaigns. American people have some thoughts on that.
“The bill actually has a 6-to-1 match for campaign donations under $200.
“If you donate $100 to your favorite candidate, the federal government would take taxpayers dollars and give an additional $600 of taxpayer money to that candidate who just got $100 check.
“Hard-working people would pay their taxes knowing that their hard-earned dollars are going to fund political activity, even activity that they don’t necessarily agree with.
“Like so many liberal government programs, this is a system that could easily be defrauded. We see that now with the coronavirus bill as well.
“Democrats know that they would still get their big corporate donations in New York and in San Francisco, but now they’d get an added bonus, 6-to-1 match from taxpayers.
“H.R.1 would also give government-funded vouchers for people to donate to political campaigns. Political campaigns do not need taxpayer subsidies. People can decide how they want to spend their own money.
“The government shouldn’t be redirecting it for a party in power.
“Democrats complain about money in politics all of the time. The solution seen in House Bill Number One apparently is more money in politics as long as it’s the taxpayer money.
“H.R.1 ends the equal balance between the Republican and Democrats on the Federal Election Commission. Ends it.
“Democrats want to politicize the commission that enforces our election laws. They want to make it a partisan organization. It’s just another idea that would make it easier to commit fraud.
“H.R.1 doesn’t just politicize the Federal Election Commission, it politicizes the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS. Democrats want to break down the guardrails that currently keep the IRS out of politics. H.R.1 gets rid of any of the limits on the IRS when giving tax exemptions to nonprofits.
“Now think about this. Remember the scandal that the IRS, under the Obama-Biden administration, the scandal headlines, people were well aware, H.R.1 enshrines that into law.
“H.R.1 gives a big stamp of approval to Lois Lerner and her behavior and the way she worked the IRS. Every Democrat who votes for the bill is saying that they will endorse what happened to the IRS under President Obama.
“And there’s more, a lot more. The bill goes on and on. It’s 800 pages. Hard to believe too many Democrats have actually read it.
“The bottom line is this, H.R.1 would not reform our elections, it would deform our elections, change them dramatically. H.R.1 makes our elections harder to secure, easier to defraud and casts doubt on every election in the future. That’s the last thing that we need in this country.
“This is no time to sow doubt about our elections. People want confidence in the elections. That’s why I join with Senator Scott of Florida and Senator Hyde-Smith and Senator Lummis to introduce a better proposal.
“Our bill would make our elections safe and secure and fair. It would give people more confidence in our elections. Our bill says no automatic registration.
“The House bill repeals all voter I.D. Laws. Our bill says if you want to register to vote, let’s make sure you’re a citizen. We need to make sure of your identification. Let’s make sure you have a social security number.
“Those are the sorts of things to provide integrity in the election process.
“Under our bill, states can’t just send out ballots in the mail based on old information. And that happened all around the country this year.
“You can still vote by mail, you just need to request a ballot so your information is up to date.
“That’s the way we’ve done it in Wyoming. We sent out requests to say if you’d like a ballot, apply for your absentee ballot and people did. There was no question about the integrity of that system.
“It’s in a number of states where ballots were mailed out based on old information, without a request by a voter for that ballot that led to so many concerns about abuse and fraud.
“Our bill bans vote harvesting. It means you can’t drop off somebody else’s ballot. You want to make sure that the collection boxes that they have are monitored. Let’s see you turn in your ballot. If you turn in your ballot to a ballot box, that ought to be monitored.
“When votes are being counted our bill makes sure that both sides are watching. Our bill prohibits delays or pauses in ballot counting. We require an audit of ballot counting system within 30 days after the election. These are basic, commonsense measures to protect against fraud and error.
“You want it to be accurate, you want it to be fair. So the differences between our bill and the House 800-page bill could not be more clear.
“The Republican bill makes it harder to commit fraud. The Democrat bill makes it easier to commit fraud. The Republican bill costs almost nothing. The Democrat bill costs billions.
“The Republican bill strengthens the protections of our elections. The Democrat bill weakens those protections and even gets rid of some of them.
“This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. We should all be against voter fraud. We should make it as hard to commit fraud as we possibly can.
“So I urge my colleagues to join me with Senators Scott and Lummis and Hyde-Smith. Let us stand for integrity of our elections. Let us give every American citizen confidence and peace of mind that our system works.”
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