Kit Bond

Mr. BOND

Mr. BOND. I will be happy to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

Mr. BOND. We will offer 2\1/2\ minutes. I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

Mr. BOND. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Daily News article, the Wall Street Journal editorial, the Washington Post editorial, and a New York Times editorial which says Americans should be willing to verify their identity in order to exercise the right to vote, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the famous dog Ritzy Mekler, whose owner says she, Ritzy, does not want any other dogs voting, be printed in the Record.

Mr. BOND

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I make a friendly wager that maybe quite a few of those people voted twice. I think the Senator from New York has raised a point we did not adequately address. It was a point raised by the Senator from Montana who said there has to be a more effective way of getting those voters no longer living in the State off the rolls. That causes confusion. In Montana they have many people who come in and register while they are at college, then move away. If we are going to go back and compromise again, I told some people yesterday this compromise on election reform is like loading frogs in a wheelbarrow: I keep thinking I have a half wheelbarrow full, and I come back with the frogs and the wheelbarrow is empty. We need to be able to clean up those rolls. Eight years means there is a lot of confusion and a lot of opportunity. We will be happy to work on that. The second point the Senator from New York has pointed out is there may well be voters in New York who do not have a driver's license. Granted. When I lived in New York, I was scared to death to drive. I was scared to death of taxicabs, but I sure wouldn't take a bike. I did not keep a car in New York City when I lived there. They may not have a paycheck. Some of them don't even get a government check of any kind.

Mr. BOND. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I do not need an additional 10 minutes. I have said all the things I need to say. It is not just my view that signature affirmation or verification does not work. Professor Melody Rose of Portland State University in Oregon has pointed out the significant numbers, 60,000 to 80,000, perhaps, who signed someone else's ballot or had someone else mark it for them. There were problems in Oregon. The Carter-Ford commission said signature verification and affirmation is not adequate, it is inaccurate. Check page 31 of the report. Why? You sign a mail-in registration which cannot be checked under motor voter; you put a signature on it--it could be a dog, a dead alderman, a neighbor, a fictitious brother--and every time you vote as that person, your signature will match the signature that you put on fraudulently when you registered that person. I knew when we took on fraud, fraud would fight back. I want to make sure everybody understands that the deal we worked out was widely praised. The Senator from New York said we ought to come together because we have a good bill. I agree. I thought we had a good bill. We made a lot of compromises. There is money there to improve the voting system and get statewide registration to make it easier for those with disabilities to vote, to cut down on fraud, to have provisional voting. That is a reasonable, rational system. I believe this body cannot go down the road saying we are making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. They blow a huge hole in the voter fraud section by saying all you have to do is sign your name or sign a dog's name or sign a dead person's name or sign a fictitious brother or sister's name. That is what this is all about. I am not the one trying to torpedo this bill. We had a torpedo in midship, yesterday, from people who had been part of the compromise on grounds I do not think were legitimate. I think there was some misunderstanding by many. We talked to staff people who did not realize the aspects I just pointed out, the fact that it is a one-time registration, only for people who register after this goes into effect. They said, maybe people will be disenfranchised. We will do everything in our power to make sure that does not happen. Fraud has been proven. Fraud is alive and well in Missouri. There is a whole list of other places where fraud exists.

Mr. BOND. I am happy to yield the floor, and I am happy to respond to any of my colleagues.

Mr. BOND. Just a further question. I stated very clearly that I applaud and support the Senator's premise that we ought to make sure the registration the first time is legitimate because that is where the problem begins. I will ask the Senator a two-part question: Does he understand that existing motor voter law does not permit effective ascertainment of the legitimacy of a registration upon registration, No. 1? And, No. 2, that the bill before us would not apply to anybody who is already registered? We had set up these requirements. Is the Senator aware we set up these requirements only for people registering after the date of the act, and they only have to meet the requirements to prove they are a live, qualified human being, one time--either upon registration or upon the first vote? Is the Senator aware of those two things?

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I am very pleased to hear that fraud does not exist in New York. That is reassuring. I pointed out yesterday that 14,000 New York City residents were also registered to vote in south Florida. Would the Senator care to make a friendly wager that none of them voted twice?

Mr. BOND. Some of them don't even have a bank account. I think that is a rather small universe. But I am willing to make explicit what I believe is already in the law--staff on the majority side has assured us it is already in the law--that money can be used. But I will be happy to make it explicit. If you have Joe or Jane Doe, who do not have any of those things, we should be providing the money to the registration authority to give them a card or to ascertain their registration and get them registered. If they don't have any of those items, they ought to have a chance to be registered. We ought to identify them. The Carter-Ford commission says one should have an identifying number. That would help us a lot. Carter-Ford pointed out that, No. 1, signature verification doesn't work--and I can assure you, it doesn't work from our side, from what we have seen in Missouri. Those are the outlines that I think would work.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, my chief of staff and my counsel negotiated 4 to 5 hours a day for 6 months, and they thought they had reached the end. If the Senator from Oregon and I are now talking about different things than what he has outlined, it would seem to make very good sense. No. 1, he says make sure there is a real, live person qualified to vote when they register. Hallelujah. If we can do that, then I agree that they sign a registration, and any time they go to vote, all they have to do is sign, whether it is a mail-in or whether it is voting in person. But what I want to make sure of is when that first registration comes in, there is something to identify it. It is not a gauntlet. It is picking one of the pieces of evidence that shows they are a real, live human being, or, if we can find a better way, that we can even task the local election authorities to use money we provide them to verify. If they confirm that the registrations are legitimate, and if they deal with the problem that the Senator from New York and the Senator from Connecticut laid out about the 8 years full of clogged rolls, there is no problem that I have with letting people vote by signature once it is proven they are real, live human beings at the beginning of the registration process. If that is the basis, we can start over again, and see all of you in July, maybe. But the Senator from Connecticut is good humored, equally determined, and is willing to go at it again. If what the Senator from Oregon laid out is what I said, then I think there is some good possibility that we can get agreement. But sending in a signature alone is not going to cut the mustard. We will get back to the Senator from New York on the number of people doubledipping. The December 19th issue of the New York Post reports on doubledippers. We will get back with the information on that. That is a good reason to clean up the registration rolls. I hope we can do that as well. I thank the Chair. I thank particularly my colleague from Connecticut for his good humor throughout this. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BOND. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BOND. First, the Senator is aware that we did take care of one of the Oregon problems. When he pointed out we could not send a second ballot, he is aware that we did agree to change the requirement in the underlying law. I understood it was at the request of the Senators from Oregon and Washington. We made the change. Your staff asked for it and we did make the change.

Mr. BOND

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I just happened to catch the last of the remarks of my very good friend, the distinguished majority whip, about what has happened with this election reform bill. We ought to get the record straight. My good friend mentioned the fact that we seem to be holding this up over one little amendment. I will tell you what this is all about, Mr. President. We worked long and hard to come to a reasonable, responsible compromise because the Senator from Connecticut very eloquently made the case that we need to make it easier to vote, and I agree with that. We worked on his portion of the bill. He made some compromises that took care of some of our concerns, but at the same time I tried to testify before the Rules Committee, and I came to the floor and made the case that there is another problem that is as serious a problem as making it difficult for somebody to vote, and that is diluting their vote with fraudulent, improper votes. I have laid out for this body a number of times the fact that vote fraud continues to exist in Missouri and too many other States. So I proposed some solutions to give us some minimal protection against vote fraud in the future. As part of the compromise, it was pointed out by my colleagues on the other side that requiring the photo ID may be too difficult, or requiring them to vote in person may be too difficult, although seven States do it, and I think that makes a lot of sense. St. Louis, MO, after we called attention to the vote fraud committed in November of 2000, decided to require photo IDs at the poll in the mayoral primary. Do you know something. It worked. We did not hear any complaints that people could not vote. They had an honest election in St. Louis. I was willing to compromise with my colleagues, the Senator from Connecticut, the Senator from New York, and the Senator from New Jersey, and say if it is too burdensome to require a photo ID, let us go down the list and see what other things could be done. That is why we added that a bank statement with one's name and address can be used, or a utility bill, a government check, a paycheck, to try to make it possible so that one time in the process they would have to have proof that they were a real live human being. Now our friends on the other side made fun of the fact that we had dogs registered to vote in Missouri and in Maryland. Well, that sounds kind of crazy, but the system is so sloppy, the motor voter law has made it possible for people to register dogs. I will guarantee there are a lot more fraudulent votes than just the dogs. Some have objected and said we have not shown widespread fraud in St. Louis. Oh, yes, we have. Wherever we have looked, we have found fraud. Wherever we have looked, we have found ineligible people voting, dead people voting, felons voting--in Virginia, Wisconsin, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, and Texas. What we found that in Missouri they had judges ordering people to be registered to vote. They went before a judge, and he said: Why are you not registered? One said: I am a Democrat. Another one said: I want to vote for Gore. Another one said: I have been a felon and forgot to reregister. Thirteen hundred people were registered by judge order. The secretary of state went back and did an exhaustive search on those 1,300 and found 97 percent of them were not lawful votes. In the mayoral primary in 2001, 3,000 postcard registrations were dumped on the election board on the last day. At that point, my colleagues in the other party in St. Louis, who were a lot more concerned about stealing a mayor's race than they were about stealing a Governor's race or President's race or a Senate race, raised cane. When those postcard registrations were looked at, they were all found to have had the same handwriting--many of them had the same handwriting. They were on one or two blocks. Those have all been turned over to the prosecuting authorities. We have not gotten any convictions yet. We also know that right before the general election in November of 2000, 30,000 postcard registrations were dumped on the St. Louis city election board. Nobody has gone back and reviewed them, but the guess is that at least 15,000 of them were fraudulent. Is it not a little bit beyond credibility that St. Louis, which had 200,000 registered voters, would on the last 2 days of registration register 30,000 people, equal to 15 percent? That is one of the reasons St. Louis has almost as many registered voters as it has adults. It would be truly remarkable if each one of those registrations equaled a registration of somebody who was an adult human being entitled to vote in Missouri. I do not believe it. We have not had the resources to go back and check. Frankly, as the Senator from Pennsylvania pointed out yesterday, it is very difficult, particularly under motor voter, to prosecute people who register illegally. Why? Because there is nobody there. You sign somebody else's name, send it in, and say I promise to, with a signature affirmation and verification. I could register all my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in a Republican area of Missouri, and we would have signatures on their mail-in ballots every time. This time they might be voting our way rather than the other way. I believe some of the people arguing against the bill yesterday were woefully uninformed about what this bill requires. I say to my friend from Oregon, this only applies to people registering after the bill becomes law. It only applies one time, either when you register or when you vote for the first time. You have to show something that would tend to prove you are a live human being, living where you said you were, entitled to vote. Concern was expressed over provisional voting, and the registration-- the identification goes into effect immediately. Right now, 39 States have either provisional voting or same-day registration. I did not draft that part of the bill that says provisional voting would only go into effect in 2004. We would be happy to move it up for the other 11 States so it takes effect immediately. The Senator from Oregon made a very good point in his discussions yesterday: When a person registers, we ought to make sure when they register that they are legitimate voters. I agree 100 percent. Do you know what. Motor voter prevents verification of the registration, as it now stands. That is why we had to amend it. There was a lot of discussion yesterday about how many people we would disenfranchise, and they postulated hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people would be disenfranchised because they would not have a photo ID, a utility bill, a bank statement, a government check, that shows their address. I think that is hogwash. There may be a handful of people who do not have that, but we have money in the bill for the States to go out and affirmatively identify and provide registration for people who fall through the cracks. I am happy to put a provision in there saying the States--if on application by somebody who is entitled to vote, who does not have any of these documents, they can get a State or an election board identification card. Put the burden on the States when somebody shows they have none of these articles or identifiers. I think that might be one-hundredth of a percent at the maximum.

Mr. BOND

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I rise to thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for giving us some very practical insights on the difficulties a prosecutor faces in prosecuting a phony mail-in registration. It seems to be an almost impossible task, unless you are fortunate enough to get somebody's fingerprints or have some way- beyond-the-normal way of identifying who sent it in. Obviously, everybody laughs about dead people being registered and Ritzy Mekler, the dog, being registered. We know they did not register, but finding out who registered them is a problem. Ritzy Mekler's owner claims he did not register her. Somebody else may have done so. But there is a real problem with the phony registrations piled on to our voter rolls in Missouri, for sure--I know in St. Louis, and I would imagine in most parts of the country. So since we have undone the compromise that we worked 6 months to achieve, I express, again, my willingness to come to a bipartisan compromise on how we make sure, A, that everybody who is entitled to vote gets registered, and, B, gets to vote. But also how do we get those phony people off of the rolls? I mentioned, in my earlier debate on this amendment, we know that 3,000 registration cards dumped on the St. Louis City Election Board prior to the mayoral primary in 2001 were mostly phony--most of them in the same handwriting, most of them with addresses from one or two blocks of the city. So we actually got on those, and those have been turned over to the prosecuting authorities. But there is a little matter of 30,000 voters who were added to the rolls in St. Louis City, MO, just prior to the November 2000 general election. Nobody knows for sure who they came from. But let me tell you, I have some suspicions. I have some suspicions that we are seeing people who might benefit from those registrations opposing efforts to purge. So I would like to see if we can't work out a way to change some of the onerous provisions that the motor voter bill puts on States in trying to ascertain whether the voters who have been registered by mail are legitimate. I voted against an amendment offered by my good friend and colleague from Montana, Senator Burns. It was going to give some power to purge. I told him at the time I thought it was a good idea. I think it is an even better idea now. So we would like to work on finding a way to make sure we can make it easier to vote but tougher to cheat. As I said, if the Schumer-Biden amendment goes through as is, it makes it easier to cheat, not tougher to cheat. I started, in my remarks prior to the vote on the tabling motion, to share with some of my colleagues the wisdom from the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. They were talking about accountability. And they said: The question is whether to require voters to display some proof of identification at the polls. This is on page 31: All states hope that precinct officials and poll watchers will have at least some familiarity with the residents of their precincts. Seven states, all but one of them rural, do nothing more. In the rest, the most common practice now is to require voters to sign their names in an official registry or on a ballot application. About a third of the states require poll workers to check signatures against those provided at registration. Fourteen states insist that voters produce some form of identification. Most states that have histories of strong party rivalry or election fraud require signature verification or voter identification at the polls. This is the key part: Signature verification puts an extra burden upon administrators, and especially on often ill-trained poll workers practicing a very subjective, often impossible, task while voter lines lengthen. Also, many polling places lack the means to provide poll workers with accurate copies of the voter's actual signature (the one the voter used in order to register) and a signature may change over time. One alternative, favored by several Commissioners, is to require those who are registering to vote and those who are casting their ballot to provide some form of official identification, such as a photo ID issued by a government agency, (e.g., a driver's license). A photo ID is already required in many other transactions, such as check-cashing and using airline tickets. These Commissioners point out that those who register and vote should expect to identify themselves. If they do not have photo identification, then they should be issued such cards from the government or have available alternative forms of official ID. They believe this burden is reasonable, that voters will understand it, and that most democratic nations recognize this act as a valid means of protecting the sanctity of the franchise. They then go on to talk about striking the right balance, and they conclude talking about whether a photo ID is too much. They talk about alternative forms. But they said on page 32: We do believe, however, that States should be able to verify a voter's identity. That goes to the sum and substance of the Schumer amendment. The Schumer amendment is flatly contradicted by the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. That is why I have offered a modest amendment to say that verification and affirmation will only go into effect when and if the Attorney General of the United States certifies that a State has had less than half a percent of illegal ballots cast in the last two Federal elections. Frankly, I don't believe that signature affirmation or verification works as well as my colleagues claim. There are not hundreds of thousands of people denied an opportunity to register because they don't have any kind of photo ID or government check or bank statement or utility bill or any other kind of paycheck stubs with their name and address on it. Any of those people who do exist can vote provisionally, and they should be able to vote provisionally. I think there is a handful at most, and we will accommodate them through provisional voting. But I am most worried, for future elections, that there were 30,000 names that came in out of the blue, mail-in registrations that had not been checked in the city of St. Louis. I would like to believe they are all legitimate voters who all of a sudden got the real view that they ought to register in one two-day period. But 15 percent of the electorate? I don't think so. Mr. President, I am not willing to give up on this process. But I am not willing to see a bill go through that makes it easier to vote and easier to cheat. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I am not here to cross-examine. I am just here to ask some experience from a Senator who is distinguished by his career as a prosecutor previously. Many people have said that if anybody votes fraudulently, they will be prosecuted. I have looked long, far, and wide to see any consistent pattern of prosecution of vote fraud. I just do not know that there has been any significant effort. I wonder if the Senator from Pennsylvania can inform me to what extent vote fraud is even prosecuted and what are some of the problems that are entailed in a prosecution for vote fraud?

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, the Senator from Pennsylvania pointed out precisely the problem with motor voter making it impossible for States to require a positive identification with the registration. As the Senator from Oregon I think wisely said in his debate, we ought to be making sure the registration is legitimate and that there is a real person behind it. Right now you can't do that under motor voter. The underlying bill, section 103(b) provides that. But the Senator from Pennsylvania is saying that if somebody registers the name of a dead person, a non-existent person, or even a dog, sends in that registration, writes the name on a card, gets the absentee ballot, and sends it back in, it is next to impossible from the prosecutor's standpoint to prosecute the unknown person who has done the registration and cast the vote. Is that a fair assessment?

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, this amendment undoes a carefully crafted compromise and opens wide the door to fraud. Therefore, I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I send to the desk a second degree amendment to the Schumer amendment and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BOND. I rest my case. Signature verification does not work. I urge people to support the motion I will offer.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, as I think the Senator from Kentucky indicated, we were very disappointed that after working 6 months to establish a very modified, watered-down provision to help prevent fraud, the other side chose, without objection, on a party line vote, to refuse to table a motion to strike an amendment that really guts the compromise. When we began this debate, I said I thought every American understood the importance of the vote. There are two aspects to that which are involved in this bill. One is making it easier to vote for those who may have had difficulty in the past. We worked on those items and many of them went further than I and some of my colleagues would like. Coming from Missouri where we have seen significant vote fraud, which we believe may have affected close elections in our State, I said we needed to change some of the provisions of the motor voter law which permits mail-in registration and prevents the States from verifying the bone fides of the registrant. As a part of the compromise we reached over 6 months, we said one does not have to show up with a photo ID with their address on it the first time they vote after they have registered by mail; we will let them bring in or send in either a photo ID or any of a number of documents which would tend to show that they are a real person, such as a utility bill, a government check, a paycheck, bank statements. That would be supplanted under this amendment, if unamended, to say you can sign your name. We have seen the wholesale fraud that signing one's name can bring in Missouri: Drop houses, 3,000 almost assuredly phony registrations before a mayoral primary in 2001 in St. Louis; 30,000 last-minute mail-in registrations prior to the November 2000 general election in St. Louis. The guess is at least 15,000 of them were phony. That was followed by an effort by the Gore-Lieberman team in St. Louis and Kansas City to continue fraudulent voting by getting courts to keep open the ballot boxes in both cities on the theory--and I have to say the laughable theory--that the Democratically-controlled election boards in St. Louis City and Kansas City were conspiring to keep the Democratic voters in Kansas City and St. Louis from casting their votes in a general election for the Democratic candidates. Now that does not compute. So we are saying, number one, we stopped the effort to keep the polls open in the Missouri Court of Appeals, pointing out that it is just as much a denial of civil rights to have one's vote deluded by an illegal vote as it is to be denied the opportunity to cast a vote yourself. This amendment I proposed is the starting point to continue and reopen the negotiations. As I said, it is important that we balance this bill, make it easier to vote but make it tougher to cheat. This is one minor suggestion I am offering to avoid wholesale fraud through signature verification and affirmation. Frankly, I think we have seen enough to know that signature verification and affirmation does not work. I ask my colleagues from New York if they know how many of the New York City voters, 14,000 of them who are registered in South Florida, voted only in one place in the 2000 election? I think that is something we need to find out. There are real problems with the amendment that is now pending. I urge my colleagues to consider my second degree amendment favorably. We will look forward to continuing negotiations but, frankly, unless and until this is resolved this bill is a significant step in the wrong direction. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I am glad we can begin this debate because there is much to be said, but let me go to the heart of the matter. This amendment simply guts the compromise, the key antifraud provision that was carefully negotiated over 6 months as a part of the bipartisan compromise. We asked for some protection against the widespread practice of loading up voter rolls with phony names and then voting those names. It is something that every voter can comply with. It has been negotiated to make sure it did not have any unfavorable impact on people we are trying to get to the polls. After 6 months of negotiations, I feel like we are playing rope-a- dope. The Senator from Oregon gets up and says, why, this is a photo ID requirement. Everybody knows a photo ID requirement is discriminatory. Then the Senator from New York gets up and says these antifraud provisions really do not prevent fraud absolutely either way. I said we devised a compromise that recognized the concerns that their side had about making sure we did not impose any unreasonable restrictions on voters who might not have a driver's license, for example. That is why we said voters can use a bank statement, a government check, utility bill, anything that has your name and address on it, the first time you register. No, it is not as strong as I would like, but that was part of the compromise. No, it does not limit the identification that must be shown to a driver's license photo ID--which my colleagues on the other side and some of the groups that were supporting this compromise and are now against it are saying would be unfair. So we compromised. And now the people who worked on the compromise say the compromise is not a good one. I have seen that game before. But the people of America are tired of having their votes diluted because someone in a drop house registers 8, 10 people. Yes, we have had dogs registered. We have had dead aldermen registered, mothers of dead aldermen registered, and dead neighbors registered. Under the current Federal motor-voter registration law it is very difficult to stop the mail-in registration fraud. We talked yesterday about 3,000 ballots being dropped off before the mayoral primary in St. Louis in 2001. Because of the attention we have brought to this problem, they were reviewed. It was found that most of those 3,000 were in the same handwriting and were for new registrants on one or two city blocks. St. Louis did not have time to check thoroughly before the November 2000 election. There was a registration of 200,000 people, with 30,000 post card registrations that were dropped off in the final days, a more than 15 percent increase. Nobody checked these, but initial suggestions are at least 15,000, half of them, were phony. One can conjure up all kinds of scenarios where maybe one person will not have the kind of ID needed to vote under the provisions in the underlying bill. We allow provisional voting; 39 States already provide it. We will take care of those people. One thing we have seen for sure--not just in Missouri, but across the country--is fraudulent votes, by nonexistent people. They are diluting the votes of legitimate voters. I yield the floor and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, does the Senator from Pennsylvania yield for a question?

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, we have just heard some inaccurate statements about the underlying amendment. Nobody says you have to go to a copy center. Any antifraud provisions do not hold off in this bill until 2004. They are effective upon the signing of the bill. The provisional voting provision in this bill that says it will not take effect until 2004 was not something I wrote. I will be happy to take an amendment to say it is effective right away as well, because 39 States have provisional voting and we need to clean it up so it works for all 50 States. It is important to note that, believe it or not, the current system offers few protections to States that want to maintain clean rolls. The Senator from Oregon said we need to make sure registrations are accurate at the beginning. Believe it or not, motor voter actually prohibits States from requiring verification of the cards. Registration by mail makes it much easier to put fake names on voter lists and then voting by mail makes it very easy to vote these names illegally. The opponents of my anti-fraud provision claim the bill will disenfranchise millions. At the same time, several States, including West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, Nevada, and Louisiana, have tougher standards--tougher than in this bill. I would like to see them as tough as these States'. No one has come forward and shown that these States actually deprive voters of the right to vote on any level, much less on the level claimed here. Furthermore, the way the amendment is drafted, the steps taken by these States to protect themselves from fraud will be undercut. We will be here, making it easier to cheat. This amendment makes it easier to cheat, not just easier to vote. There are those who said recently that this will create an administrative problem. Nonsense. The States I just named already keep track of first-time voters. The State of Michigan has offered to provide its software to do this for free to any State that has a problem. If free is not cheap enough, we provide funds in this bill to buy the systems you want, to track the voters. This will not threaten mail-in States. It will actually make it better for them. As I pointed out last night, when we hear about Oregon, the great State that has no problem with mail-in registration and balloting, Portland State Professor Melody Rose studied the Oregon system and determined that 5 percent of voters had someone else mark their ballot, 2.5 percent had someone else sign their ballot, 4 percent had someone else either sign or mark their ballot. In States with 1.6 million cast, close to 200,000 of them could have had some sort of irregularity. Carter-Ford noted that signature verification does not work. This is the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, page 31: Signature verification puts an extra burden upon administrators, especially on often ill-trained poll workers practicing a very subjective, often impossible task.