On Monday, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) delivered remarks on proposed eletion safety legislation during a House Rules Committee hearing.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. Morelle, Ranking Member Morelle, you are recognized.
00:06Thank you, Chairman Burgess.
00:08And can I just say it's good to have you back here in the Rules Committee.
00:10We spent a lot of hours up here together in years past.
00:15Welcome back.
00:16Thank you.
00:17We kept your place for you.
00:18Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member McGovern, and thank you to all the members
00:24of the committee, and I do want to express as well my sympathies to the Massey family
00:29for this tragedy, and our prayers are certainly with them.
00:34Thanks for allowing me time.
00:35It is great to be back here.
00:36I had the great privilege of serving for four years on the Rules Committee.
00:40I think I sat where Mr. Norman, my good friend on the fifth floor of Cannon, serves and sits,
00:45and enjoyed immensely the four years I was here.
00:48I wish today I was here under different circumstances.
00:52I am grateful for the work you do, and thank you for having me, but I must strongly object
00:58to the bill before us this afternoon.
01:03Every American should be absolutely clear about why Speaker Johnson and the House of
01:08Republicans are advancing this bill.
01:10For all the hysterical rhetoric surrounding the SAVE Act, Republicans have one real purpose
01:15here, to continue to erode the confidence of Americans in our election systems, to destroy
01:20in fact our faith in our democracy itself, and I cannot imagine a more disgraceful exercise.
01:26As members of Congress, we are obligated, we are duty-bound, we swore oaths to defend
01:32the republic, not disfigure it.
01:34This bill is a vehicle for lies, plain and simple.
01:37The sole objective is to convince Americans, to scare them into believing that non-citizens,
01:42without a shred of evidence, are going to steal the election from Donald Trump.
01:47But Americans are not as naive as many of my colleagues think they are.
01:53Republicans know, they know, that non-citizen registration and voting in federal elections
01:58is already illegal.
02:00To register is illegal.
02:01To vote is illegal.
02:02It leads to deportation.
02:05They know this simply does not happen.
02:07The Committee on House Administration has held several hearings on non-citizen voting,
02:11and my colleagues could not produce any evidence to back up their claims.
02:15In fact, Speaker Johnson admitted he had absolutely no proof of non-citizen voting in federal
02:20elections.
02:21But this is not a new project.
02:24As the Ranking Member has articulated, in 2020, Donald Trump and his allies, many of
02:29them in Congress, tried to deceive Americans about the security of our elections.
02:34They claimed that absentee ballots would lead to voter fraud.
02:37They claimed that extended early voting would lead to voter fraud.
02:40None of these claims ended up being true.
02:43Everyone in this room knows those claims were false, even if they will not admit as much.
02:48The stop-the-steal claims were lies, as history has shown, but led to one of the most shameful
02:52days in American history.
02:55The deadly, violent attack on this building on January 6, 2021, should never have happened,
03:01should never, of course, be repeated.
03:05But as the Ranking Member has stated, the SAVE Act is a purposeful way to lay the groundwork
03:09to begin the conspiracy for another insurrection.
03:13The former President and his allies thought Americans were gullible enough to believe
03:16the lies of 2020.
03:18They hope Americans are gullible enough to believe those lies today.
03:21Americans, however, are smarter than you think.
03:25This bill will not solve any problems American elections do face, from chronic underfunding
03:30to constant violent threats against election administrators.
03:34What will the SAVE Act do?
03:36It will, quite simply, disenfranchise millions of eligible American citizens.
03:41It will greatly increase the burden, increase the cost, in both time and money, for any
03:46American citizen that wants their voice to be heard.
03:49The bill would especially burden military voters, tribal voters, rural voters, survivors
03:55of natural disasters, many of which we are experiencing throughout the country today,
04:00and the tens of millions of married women in America who have changed their names.
04:04The fact that, by advancing the SAVE Act, Republicans will make it harder for men and
04:08women in uniform to register to vote shows how misguided this legislation is.
04:14Republicans are clearly telling the American people they believe that no barrier is too
04:18high to place in the way of the ballot, no burden too heavy for Americans to bear if
04:24they wish to vote.
04:26The SAVE Act is the most extreme, most radical election bill in living memory.
04:30It will, quite literally, disenfranchise millions of Americans.
04:35Republicans are doing this all damage just to help Donald Trump undermine American faith
04:39in our democracy.
04:41As I said before, the American people are not as naive as Speaker Johnson and House
04:45Republicans think they are.
04:47They proved that in 2020, and they will prove it again this November.
04:51The tragedy here is that the Republican backers of this bill have such a poor view of their
04:55constituents, they are willing to lie to them in ways that they have already done irreparable
05:00damage to our nation, in ways that will continue to do untold damage to our nation's core identity,
05:07our elections, our democracy.
05:10I wish House Republicans had the courage to stand up and say enough is enough.
05:13I wish they had the courage to openly debate this damaging bill.
05:17Instead, the majority wants to move this legislation under a closed rule, blocking any amendments
05:22that could improve this fatally flawed SAVE Act.
05:24Sadly, I fear they don't.
05:26With that, Mr. Speaker, or Mr. Chairman, I yield back.