Murkowski Speaks Out Against SAVE America Act on Senate Floor
Washington, DC—Today, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) delivered a speech on the Senate floor highlighting the challenges the SAVE America Act would pose for Alaskans and the state’s election processes if enacted.
The speech as delivered below:
Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to speak about the SAVE America Act. Before I do that, though, I want to take a pause for maybe a little break in the conversation about elections to update people on Alaska’s greatest sport, and that is the Iditarod. So just a moment here to update folks.
Yesterday, Jessie Holmes came into Nome after 9 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes, and 51 seconds on the trail. This is a 975-mile trail that he accomplished with his extraordinary team, led by Zeus and Polar, taking him all the way to Nome. He ended up with 12 dogs in the harness that were happy and barking and hungry and still ready to go. Truly an amazing feat.
Jessie—this is not his first winning the Iditarod. This is actually his second in a row. He is actually the fifth person in Iditarod history to win 2 years in a row.
I visited with him at the ceremonial start, and we talked about his focus on the race and how much it meant to those in rural Alaska and the culture of rural Alaska and how as someone originally from Alabama, he had embraced that with an enthusiasm that is really infectious.
So I am honored to be able to acknowledge his success and that of his team. I called him a couple times already—first to congratulate him just after he won, and then I called him again today because I read in the news that after this arduous 9 days on the trail, he was at the end of the Iditarod under the Burled Arch to greet every musher who was coming in. He has that much love for the Iditarod, that much love for his fellow mushers, and that much admiration for the teams that are on the road.
There are still 24 mushers that are out there on the trail. We are wishing them the best and safety along the way. The weather there is not good, but these are men and women and canine athletes that will take the toughest test.
Mr. President, it kind of segues a little bit into some of the points that I want to make here this evening about my State particularly. We all come to these debates about policy with the background and the unique circumstances from the places we call home.
I want to begin my comments this evening about the SAVE America Act and why I have spoken out in opposition to this measure—not because I disagree with what my colleague from Utah has shared—that it should be a privilege allowed to U.S. citizens, this privilege of the vote. I also would agree that asking for valid ID in order to participate in voting is not an unreasonable thing. In fact, my State certainly requires that, and I think most others do. But, as with so much that we deal with, it is not just in the headline; it is not just in the top line; it is, how would this apply in your given situation?
As a Senator that comes from a big State and some would say a very unique State, a very complicated State—I don’t think there are too many where you have dog races that go just about 1,000 miles. And we celebrate them. And the fact that the trail these animals and their mushers took goes through an area where, yes, people live but is not connected by any roads—the way we get around is just a little bit different from other folks.
So recognizing and appreciating the distinctions that come to bear when you take a measure that is good in purpose—citizens should be allowed to vote; valid ID should be required—but you have to peel back the cover here and see, how is this going to be implemented?
So I want to focus—I know there are multiple versions of the bill. The Senator from Utah just pointed to that. I want to speak to the substitute amendment to S. 1383, which we have now, and focus on the particular challenges and the practical challenges that it creates for a State like Alaska that is one-fifth the size of the United States, with a population of just over 700,000 people.
So it is the challenges we have specifically with registration, with the requirements for photo ID, and then I will speak a little bit to the mail-in voting limitation.
One of the first places to start is you are saying: All right. If you said, LISA, you don’t oppose the intent of this, and you come from a big State, and there may be logistical challenges in implementing it, when does all this come into play?
Well, that is an important consideration because, as the bill is drafted right now, these provisions are effective upon passage of the bill. So that means that Alaska and every other State is going to have to comply with a new set of laws that, in my State’s situation, contradict our State laws, and we are in the midst of an election cycle. We are less than 8 months away from our general election.
In addition to immediate implementation of the provisions under this bill, there is no support that comes to the State. When I say support, there are no Federal resources that come and say: All right, you need to figure out how you can get more photo identification mobile units out to remote areas where it is hard to do. You need resources. You need people in order to absorb this. The numbers that you will see when people come to your division of elections or your public assistance office with original documents—you need more folks. Well, here is the money.
Well, we are not helping with that, so the States would be forced to bear the entire cost of implementation right away—just right away. So this is a tall order. Again, you are trying to stand all of this up while we are in the midst of an active election year.
Certainly in my State, we would be redirecting—if we had to comply with the Federal law, we would redirect funds from elsewhere. But this is just— OK. It is a logistical challenge. Is it insurmountable? Maybe not. Is it going to be really hard to do in certain places? I think that is fair to say.
So maybe I am starting with the easiest point here, which is the implementation on the timeline that this bill outlines is pretty near impossible in a State like Alaska right now given the lack of infrastructure that we currently have.
So let me move to the next point, and this is with regard to the registration to vote. Requiring proof of citizenship—OK. We can figure this out.
I listened carefully to the Senator from Utah when he said: You know, when you have a name change, it may be complicated to get your documents, but ultimately you are going to figure out a way to get your documents.
But I am going to walk you through the challenge of what it means to meet a requirement that says you have to provide your proof of citizenship—you have to provide your documentation in person in order to register to vote.
Don’t get confused. That is not when you are actually voting. That is where the voter ID comes into place. What we are talking about right now is just the registration to vote.
This would be a major, major departure from how most Alaskans currently register to vote. Just setting the scene here, in 2024, over 80 percent of applicants registered by mail, they registered online, or they registered through our permanent fund dividend application. This is a process that every eligible Alaskan will go through each year at just about this time, and so we have set up a process that allows you to register when you are applying for your permanent fund dividend application.
In 2023, that number in terms of the applicants who used that process—either by mail, online, or through PFD— was more than 90 percent. So this is where people are going right now to register.
So what this would require is—you might be able to start the process online, but the requirement to present the documentation in person is still there. There were about 29,000 new voter registrations in 2024, and under the SAVE America Act, it would have effectively forced about 25,000 of these Alaskans to go to the Alaska Division of Elections offices to provide the documentation in order to certify their citizenship.
Now, people have said: Well, wait a minute, it is not just the division of elections that you can go to. There are potentially other agencies that you can take documentation to, whether it is State public assistance agency, the department of motor vehicles, or other locations that the State has designated as voter registration agencies.
Let me just walk you through. Again, I should have my map of Alaska overlaid on the continental United States. But we are one-fifth the size of the United States. These stars here are the six divisions of elections that we have in Alaska. We have six divisions of elections.
So, again, if you had my other big map, Alaska stretches from Florida to just about California, down from the southwest, practically up to the Canadian border. So it would be like, you know, going from Washington, DC, to Ohio to go—my map is probably off on that, so maybe I shouldn’t be using those States.
My point is that you have six divisions of elections that are throughout the State—Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Nome, Wasilla, and Kenai. So it is clear through the SAVE America Act that this is where Alaskans can present their documentary proof of citizenship. What is less clear is whether or not you can present that documentary proof if you go to a division of motor vehicles, if you go to a State public assistance office, or if you go to other locations that currently provide voter registration services, although pretty low levels.
But, again, don’t get excited to think that now we have stars all over the map in terms of where you can go to actually present your documentation because there are only 10 other locations around the State that then fall into this bucket of places that have a DMV, State public assistance offices. So what you are seeing here is a logistical reality in terms of how you would meet the requirement for production of your documents.
The SAVE America Act doesn’t change the Federal law that mandates that States designate public assistance and disability offices as what they are calling voter registration agencies. That might extend voter registration beyond, again, these six election regional offices, but the law is not consistently enforced. So that is an issue here.
For instance, down here in the southeast, in an unstarred area, the Sitka office is an area where public assistance is provided for, but that office is currently limited to what they call general inquiries only. So if that changes, it is unlikely to be feasible that you could actually present your documentations there.
In addition, none of these offices are equipped to handle in-person voter registration that the SAVE Act could force upon them. Again, you are talking about the need for additional resources. Most of these offices are places where you have one or two folks, oftentimes with limited hours, and quite honestly, they are trying to get out SNAP benefits, LIHEAP benefits. Now you are going to task them with not only registering somebody to vote, but now it is this confirmation of official documents that, again—you have a new private right of action and criminal penalties that could be imposed if you are not doing this right.
So States can also continue to designate other nongovernment offices as voter registration offices, but only—so you have to agree to do that. And, again, you have got resource challenges. OK.
But this issue that then comes with this new private right of action to a low-level employee who may be working in a one-person office, handling State public assistance—it is a concern that you have the ability to not only put an additional requirement to them, an additional responsibility that comes with certain liability. Also, the State is looking to, how are we training these folks, or are we going to hire new folks to help facilitate at any of these Agencies?
So I show you the stars. In most other States, you would be looking at how all these stars connect through a road. These three here are connected by a road. This one connects to this one by a road. That is it. That is it.
So I have got 83 percent—83 percent— of Alaska’s communities. This is 20 percent of our total population. So, again, there is not a lot of people out here, but you know what?—these folks, these folks have been here for a long time. Many of them Indigenous people in Native villages that have been there for generations, millennia they say.
So getting to the practical realities of forcing Alaskans to present documentation in order to vote, and the requirement that you have to present in one of six regional locations, possibly another location in the State. This is not only a logistical challenge, but it presents a fiscal challenge.
And I heard again the argument by my colleague from Utah, that we are not asking for fees to vote, but in order to get me to go, like, let’s start: I am 18 years old, I want to register to vote, how am I going to do that?
I was born down here in Ketchikan. There is no star in Ketchikan. Now there is a DMV in Ketchikan, so maybe I could start my application there in Ketchikan, but I am still going to have to go to Juneau to go present my documentation.
All of the southeast, there is no roads down there. There is a ferry. It is 20 hours from Ketchikan up to Juneau there. Or I take the Alaska Airlines jet. It is only an hour, but—I don’t know—it is $420 to get me from here to there.
If I am in Fairbanks, where I went to school, OK, I have got the ability to present my documentation there; but if I am in any of these North Slope communities here, this is where I have to fly to present my original documentation.
If I happen to live here in Kotzebue, big town, I have got to fly here to Nome to present my documentation. If I live here in this Bethel community over here, I am going all way to Anchorage to present my documentation.
So you are moving around. You are flying. You are flying to all these places. So this is going to be hard. This is going to be costly on Alaskans.
And, again, these are people who are eligible to vote. They are citizens of our country, but if they are looking at a situation where I am going to have to spend $1,000 to get me to where I can present my documentation to vote, they are not going to do it. They may do it. There will be many who will do it.
Let me say that. There will be many who will do it because these are proud Alaskans. These are proud Americans, and they want to vote.
But this is hard. This is hard. And so I fear that they won’t register because financially they won’t be able to register. And if they are not able to register, they can’t vote. And while disenfranchisement may not be the intent of the SAVE America Act—and I don’t think that it is—I think we will see that. In fact, I fully expect it to be an outcome of this.
So I am going to give you some specific examples. This is St. Lawrence Island. It is a little bit closer to Russia than it is to mainland Alaska, but there is great Alaskans that live out there. I have been out there many times.
So if you are a 17-year-old girl who lives in Savoonga, you are turning 18 in October. Super excited because you are going to be able to vote for the first time ever. So what is this young person going to have to do in order to register to vote?
She is going to have to book a flight to Nome—so it is not that far, but it is all across water. There is no boats that take you there. But that flight—that flight—we don’t have jets out of St. Lawrence Island, so it is a propjet. It is going to cost you $720 just to start. The flights, if there is one a day, you are lucky; that is good. But you are going to have to stay overnight because you can’t return on the same day.
There aren’t a lot of hotels in Nome. A night at the Aurora Inn is $310, but I would guess that since the Iditarod is going on right now and there is a lot of excitement there, it is probably a little over $310. Then you add in food for the day, cab fare. You are probably looking at, at least $1,000—at least $1,000—for a quick day trip to go to Nome to register so that you can present your documentation so that you have the privilege to vote.
And keep in mind, in my example, I am a 17-year-old girl, super excited about turning 18 and being able to vote, but I don’t have a $1,000. And the people in the village, fishing village of Savoogna or in the other community of Gambell, they don’t make this kind of money.
So this is probably the best case scenario for flying in and out of Savoogna because you have got weather that hits all the time. And, again, you are not in a jet; you are taking a prop. You can get weathered in or out. Your trip can last several days. Storms blow in; you are stuck there; you can’t move for a week or so.
This is not—this is not uncommon. And so it just, it adds—and I feel like these stories are important because, well, my example of a young 17-yearold who is excited to vote, there is no name. I haven’t talked to such a person, but these are the scenarios that people live with when your State is geographically blessed. I was going to say challenged, but I think we are blessed with our geography.
So you are saying: OK, Lisa, that is an extreme example because that is a big island out in the middle of the big ocean, but other places that are more connected, it is not that bad.
Let’s go to the largest fishing community in Alaska and the fishing community that brings in more fish per volume than any place else, Unalaska.
So we are sitting out here. We are right—actually we are right at the end here because, once again, we are so geographically blessed, we can’t have a map that actually shows that the Aleutians go all the way out here.
So you are in Unalaska. Say you are a fisherman or a teacher. The flight to Anchorage—because this is where you are going to have to go. You are going to have to go into Anchorage, 800 air miles. 800 air miles. The cost one way right now, if you can get a seat, is somewhere between $1,100 per seat, if you can maybe get on a charter, to possibly as much as $1,300. This is one way. This is one way to get you from here to there.
Now, granted, this is crab season going on, and so the tickets—you are not able to get many seats. But that is what we are talking about. So you have got—you have got over $1,000 just to get you there. Then you get to Anchorage, and you are not home free. It is not like the division of elections is sitting there at the Ted Stevens International Airport. You have a 5-mile drive to get into town. Maybe you rent a car. You probably don’t rent a car; you get a cab. But surprise, again, there is no return flight home to Dutch Harbor, Unalaska on the same day. This is not a one-and-done, in-andout. I have got to overnight. That means I have got to get a hotel. I am probably going to need to have something to eat.
So, again, the reality that we are looking at is it is costing thousands of dollars to just get me to the place so that I can register to vote. I have been spending a lot of time with the folks in the southwest region of the State that were impacted by ex-typhoon Halong in October.
It is a thousand-mile storm that just blasted through these communities, and the small village of Kipnuk was devastated. Homes literally floated off of their pilings and floated as many as 3 to 5 miles away. The homes are not—it is not possible to go back to those homes. So I have been talking to residents from Kipnuk who have said: I lost everything, and there is no way I can go back there. These villagers who, no doubt that they are U.S. citizens—no doubt that they are U.S. citizens—they no longer have the documentation to prove their citizenship. It is lost.
Now, it can be recreated, but it is going to take time. And, again, I take it back to my first point, which is all of this happens now when the bill is signed into law.
So another example. Lots of folks who have been in the State for a while are elders, lived in a time, were born in a time when being born in a hospital was not the norm. We didn’t become a State until 1959.
So say you are an 85- year-old man from Selawik. Selawik is right up here in the interior. He spent his entire life there. In Selawik there is no need for a driver’s license. You can’t get one in Selawik. You were born in your parents’ house. He certainly doesn’t have a passport.
Getting a certified copy of your birth certificate can be really, really difficult if you have never had one before. And we know because these are certain examples of some of the things that we do with casework in my office. It is not easy. It can be done, but it is not something that you can just say: Here is a copy of my passport. I have got a certified copy of my birth certificate.
I have mentioned just the logistics, the sheer logistics of trying to satisfy the requirements of the law when it comes to registration. It is so costly to get yourself there, and it is costly to secure the documents that you need to prove citizenship in the first place. It has been mentioned that passports are $130; applications take 4 to 6 weeks, unless you are paying an expedite fee.
We have got pretty good statistics in Alaska when it comes to those who actually have a passport, about 50 percent of Alaskans have one. Getting a certified copy of your birth certificate or marriage certificate, it is not free; that is $30. One of the problems that we found out in Alaska right now is our vital records department for the whole State has a notice on their website that says that there is a processing time of 1 to 2 months.
So, for instance, if I am coming out of Ketchikan here and I want to go to Juneau—fly to Juneau—so I can present my documentation, if I have got a copy of my birth certificate but it is not certified, I am either going to have to fly back to Ketchikan to see if it is possible to get one there or I can go to vital statistics. But then I am told you have got to wait a couple of months, perhaps. So now I have spent $420, and I am still not registered to vote.
I have shared how challenging it is to meet the requirements with, really, no advanced lead time to transition to allow for States to stand these up.
It has been mentioned before the challenges that women have with name changes. I have talked to women in domestic violence shelters who have shared with me that one of the scary things about their situations is knowing that the abuser in a domestic violence situation continues to hold the papers that will allow them to move about.
So whether it is a birth certificate, whether it is a passport, whether it is a Tribal ID card, in Alaska, we have got an estimated 155,000 female citizens, aged 15 years and older, who have names that don’t match their birth certificates due to a host of different reasons. It has been fascinating, with this whole discussion, the number of conversations that I have had with women, including myself, where we talk about how hard it was to get REAL IDs because of a name change or there has been a hyphen, and you can’t match up all of the documentation.
Again, is it impossible? No. Is it going to be really challenging? Absolutely, yes.
So I have talked about the registration part of that. Let’s assume now you are registered to vote. Now the SAVE Act is going to require a new photo ID with specifics attached to it.
So it is not only a photo ID. It has to have an expiration date on it. You have got to have this to vote. I have said I support voter ID. Alaska requires ID to vote, as I think they should. But I think what we have here is a very prescriptive approach to it.
Again, my fear is that it would result in disenfranchising voters who have been voting for decades simply because they can’t produce a piece of ID with a photo on it. There has been a lot of discussion about Tribal IDs, and don’t they qualify? They qualify for you to go through the TSA, but the act requires that you have a photo ID that has an expiration to it. Most Tribal IDs do not have expiration dates to them, and some of them do not have photos.
So it would be a significant challenge to so many not only in Alaska but within the lower 48 as well. Others are saying: Well, if what you need is just a photo ID, you can have a State ID. You can have your driver’s license. Keep in mind, in most of these communities—the 20 percent of Alaskans who do not live on the road system, the 83 percent of our communities that are not connected by the road—if you are not really connected by the road, that means we don’t really have a lot of roads in a lot of these place.
So why do you need a driver’s license? You don’t. You might live in a boardwalk community, where you really don’t have any roads, and you don’t have the ability, again, to provide for a department of motor vehicles in these communities.
So there is an exception, and I want to acknowledge that that recognizes that voters would be able to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number and an affidavit attesting that they are unable to obtain a copy of a valid photo ID, but it says, ‘‘after making reasonable efforts to obtain a copy.’’
So I want to know: What does that mean? What does ‘‘reasonable efforts’’ really mean? Because I worry that it might open the voter up to potential liability and result in different standards around the States.
So it matters when we say: Well, you can make ‘‘reasonable efforts.’’ But what does that really mean? What do I tell that person who comes from the boardwalk community that doesn’t have a driver’s license, who doesn’t have a State ID, or whose Tribal ID doesn’t include an expiration date? Does ‘‘reasonable efforts’’ mean that you have got to fly to Anchorage in order to get that? I don’t know. I don’t know.
This version also goes further and sets a new default rule for Federal elections of in-person voting. This contradicts Alaska’s long-allowed, no-excuse absentee voting by mail. In the way the amendment is drafted, absentee ballots would only be allowed if the voter were a member of the armed services or is stationed abroad or out of State, unable to vote in person due to illness, infirmity, hospitalization, or physical disability, is the primary caregiver of an individual who is medically incapacitated, or will be absent from the State due to verified travel.
Now, there is a fifth ‘‘hardship’’ category, but we understand that the drafters are pretty clear that this is meant to be construed narrowly. The bill then goes on to describe very different and specific chain-of-custody rules for a State’s handling of absentee ballots, on top of the other changes that SAVE America would mandate be implemented immediately.
In addition to the geography, I am going to introduce you to the climate and to the weather because, in November, when we hold our elections—along with everybody else in a Presidential year—the weather is notoriously not good in Alaska. I don’t care what part of the State you are in.
So what has happened is Alaskans have taken their voting responsibility very seriously, and they are, like, I am not going to be shut down by the weather because remember, a few years ago, we had that bad storm, and we weren’t even able to get out of the driveway to go to town.
So I am going to vote absentee. We have allowed no-excuse voting for a long time for lots of good reasons. Most notably, people want to make sure that they are able to participate in the vote, and when your conditions are shut in, you can’t do it, and you might not feel safe in doing it. So you are securing it early by being responsible.
One of the things that we have done in the State of Alaska is to make sure that the absentee process is very secure. We have got an ability to track your ballot once you have cast it. So we have worked this long and hard and well to accommodate the many, many tens of thousands of Alaskans who will vote by mail. In the 2024 general election, over 50,000 Alaskans voted by mail.
So believe me, when you tell Alaskans that you might not be able to do this, that is not something that sits very well. I will restate again that the goals of what we are talking about with the SAVE America Act I support. Only U.S. citizens should vote in our elections, and Federal law already—already—makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections. Voters should be required to present identification, which State law requires, and list specific forms of ID that work to provide that identification in the State.
But as I tried to share by way of a map and by way of some stories here, there are significant impediments that I see in the implementation of this act in my State. I do have additional issues with the reforms that the legislation would impose on States, including the federalization of the election process, as opposed to the State-driven process that is contemplated by the Constitution.
And one example is the requirement for States to run their voter rolls through a Federal database that was not designed for this. We have already had some legitimate issues in multiple States with regard to that.
So I have asked: Do we see evidence for the need of these sweeping changes, given the lack of credible evidence of noncitizens voting at a significant level, certainly, in my State? I have asked specifically, and we have had that review.
Over a 10-year period, there have been 70 instances that were flagged in terms of actually following through to determine whether or not it was illegal. But that is, basically, seven a year. So you look at what we are trying to chase here with this and balance it with disenfranchising so many who would be faced with almost insurmountable challenges in order to register and/or to vote.
So I look at this, and on balance, it doesn’t have weight. I am also not happy to see some provisions tucked into the substitute that target transgender individuals simply because there is, apparently, an opening to do so. I don’t know that that has anything to do with voting, but these provisions add to the opposition that I have.
Really, the practical impacts on Alaskan voters are the easiest things to express here. They have not been solved by the updated text. I have introduced over a dozen amendments— germane amendments—to make what, I think, would allow this bill to work better. But I think they are just kind of the tip of the iceberg of changes that need to be made.
Again, the SAVE America Act may be well-intended, but how its goals are achieved matters, and the implementation matters. We cannot create a situation that doesn’t work for Alaska, where so many who should be able to vote and who may have been voting for years—lawfully voting for years—are suddenly unable to do so.
The States should remain in charge of their own elections. They should set their own requirements based on what works for them because we can’t shift to a system that works for many rightful voters but not all, and particularly so close to election day and with no funding for the States to implement the new mandates.
I know Alaska is always a little bit unique, and you all know that Alaska is a little bit unique because I tell you so. But I appreciate the recognition of the distinctions that we have among our many amazing 50 States.
I yield the floor.
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