Source: United States Senator for Nebraska Deb Fischer
Watch Video Here from today’s presser.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – At a press conference today, U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, spoke out against S.1, legislation her Democratic colleagues have introduced to change federal election administration. Earlier this week, Senator Fischer shared her concerns about this bill in a speech on the Senate floor. The Senate is expected to consider this bill on the floor next week.
Watch Senator Fischer’s floor speech on S.1 here.
Remarks as Prepared for Senator Fischer’s floor speech:
Mr. President, I would like to speak for a moment about S. 1.
This bill says that politicians and unelected bureaucrats who spend their entire careers in the same few square miles in Washington, D.C., know how to run Nebraska’s elections better than Nebraskans.
I was glad to see the senior senator from West Virginia come out against S. 1 and provide some much-needed honesty about what some Democrats’ true intentions are with this bill.
I think he summed this issue up well when he wrote in his op-ed that “today’s debate about how to best protect our right to vote and to hold elections, however, is not about finding common ground, but seeking partisan advantage.”
And as I said at the Rules Committee markup for S. 1 a few weeks ago, I simply cannot understand why so many of my Democratic colleagues would like to hand control of our elections over to the federal government.
To take one example, this bill would allow candidates for the Senate to receive federal funding for their campaigns through a new program supported by federal dollars.
That would include a 6-to-1 match for contributions of up to $200, meaning that if a donor gives $100, federal dollars would match that with $600 more.
During the bill’s markup, I offered an amendment to prevent sitting members of the Senate from benefiting from this windfall, but it was rejected by all of my Democratic colleagues on the committee.
This does not help voters make informed decisions.
This only helps those of us who are already in Congress.
The changes S. 1 proposes only get more radical from there.
This bill would effectively turn the bipartisan, six-member Federal Election Commission, the agency that oversees the financing of federal elections, into a five-person panel subject to partisan control by giving the president the power to appoint an “independent” fifth commissioner to the agency.
Because only a slim majority would then be needed to make a decision, this commissioner could act as the deciding vote on issues that have historically been bipartisan.
If Senate Republicans were still in the majority and I told you that the Leader wanted to pass a bill that would tip the balance of the FEC toward our party, the other side would object, and they would be right to do so.
This commission must remain truly bipartisan, and that is done by having equal Democratic and Republican membership.
Mr. President, S. 1 would also repeal an appropriations amendment that helps ensure the IRS does not infringe on the First Amendment rights of taxpayers who contribute to nonprofits.
Allowing the IRS to possess this information when it is not a campaign finance enforcement agency only empowers bad actors at the agency to target groups they dislike.
This is especially problematic given the recent leak of sensitive taxpayer information, and the IRS’s history of targeting tax-exempt applicants solely based on their political leanings.
Also, this bill would not only allow people to register to vote at a polling place on Election Day without presenting any form of identification – it would tell the 36 states that have some form of voter ID laws on the books that those laws are now illegal.
That is despite the fact that a majority of Americans support requiring a photo ID to vote.
And it flies in the face of the practices of other democracies like Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, and France, which all require voters to verify their identity before casting their ballot.
But Mr. President, despite all of the revolutionary changes this bill proposes, the most disheartening thing might be that it was introduced to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.
More people voted in last year’s election than ever before, including a record 76% of voters in my state of Nebraska.
In the middle of a pandemic, Americans turned out in historic numbers to make their voices heard.
Defenders of this bill can’t say that turnout was an issue, so they have tried to scapegoat states like Georgia and Florida that have recently passed new election laws.
President Biden went as far as to call Georgia’s bill “Jim Crow in the 21st century” before admitting that he was speaking about a very early draft, not the bill that actually became law.
Reality gets in the way of that narrative, too: Georgia’s bill is less restrictive than the laws of more liberal states like New York and Delaware.
Reasonable people can disagree about the best way to conduct elections, but it is disingenuous to say that something is “voter suppression” or “undemocratic” just because you may not agree with it.
Mr. President, I hope we can agree that we all want to make sure every American voter is able to make their voice heard in our elections.
To see that in action, you only have to look at states like Nebraska.
We have been a no-excuse state for absentee and early voting for years, which means that anyone who has already provided an ID when they registered to vote can vote by mail for any reason whatsoever.
In fact, a bill that originally allowed for mail-in voting in Nebraska was the first bill I introduced and passed as a state legislator in 2005.
Many other states go out of their way to make it easy to vote, regardless of which party is in power, and regardless of whether they are red states or blue states.
That is the beauty of the American system: Each state can do as it sees fit and respond to events like the COVID-19 pandemic while still producing positive reforms.
By keeping states free from federal mandates, we are allowing them to innovate and introduce the changes that work best for them.
Mr. President, Washington, D.C. isn’t what makes America great.
Our 50 states, each with its own history and its own needs, are what make this country so unique.
This bill jeopardizes that diversity, and it would do away with a system that works well and replace it with one that would be partisan, divisive, and frankly chaotic.
I think we would be making a terrible mistake if we pass S. 1 as it is currently written.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.