For the People Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, next week looks like a busy week. That is fine. We have a lot of things we need to be able to cover and to be able to walk through as the Senate.
Next week will be particularly divisive, though, in some of the issues that are coming up. Let me give you two examples that I hear are on the docket for next week. One of them deals with how we vote in America.
In Oklahoma, we know how we vote. Each State determines its own structure of how they vote. In Oklahoma, you can do absentee mail-in voting, with no excuses. If for any reason you want to be able to mail in a ballot, you can do that. You can do in-person voting early. In fact, this year, our State legislature met, and they added another day of in-person voting. So there are lots of days of in-person voting in Oklahoma. You could actually go to the poll the day of the election and be able to vote then. It is up to you.
We have very straightforward voter ID laws. We have a system set up that if you do early voting or absentee voting, all the disputes on those are handled before election day itself, so that on election day, when the polls close at 7 p.m., we then finish all the voting--or the counting, I should say, on early absentee, on early in-person, and then we are counting the day of. Usually by about 10:30 at night on election day, we are done voting and everyone is watching all the final results in from the entire State.
It is a pretty straightforward, clean process that we have seen that is exceptionally reliable. In fact, it is so tough, in 2016, when the Russians were probing different systems to try to get into it, our State was one of the States the Russians tried to get into, couldn't get into our system, and they moved on to other States to try to get into those.
We have a secure system. We have a reliable system. But that is apparently not enough because S. 1 that is coming to the floor next week would say: Oklahoma, we are going to completely change your system. People in Washington, DC, don't like how you vote, don't like your clean, reliable efficiency. Regardless of complaints, we think we want to change it here in Washington, DC.
Interestingly enough, we have a system that can also verify if someone voted twice. In fact, in this past election, 57 people in Oklahoma voted twice. We could verify that after the fact based on all the records, and we can go back and be able to actually prosecute those individuals who chose to vote twice because that is not legal.
Here is what happens when S. 1 comes to the floor. The debate here on S. 1 will begin with no voter ID. Take away your voter ID in Oklahoma. Change the way you do early voting. In fact, change the way the ballots are actually collected entirely. No longer in Oklahoma will we know the winner of our election at 10:30 on election night. S. 1 changes that and said that ballots have to be able to be allowed to trickle in for 10 more days after the election is over. So we won't know at 10:30 at night on election night; we will know 2 weeks later who actually won the elections.
As far as a reliable system that we can all verify and check--oh, no, it changes that dramatically. It now opens up what is called ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting would allow political operatives to go door-to-door to be able to engage with people who had mail-in ballots and to say to them ``Have you mailed your ballot in?'' If they say ``No,'' they can say ``Well, let's just fill it out right here on the porch, and then you can hand it to me, and I will take it in.''
So on election day, what happens is, political operatives show up with boxes full of ballots and turn in boxes full of ballots with the words ``Trust me; these are all good.''
I would tell you, in Oklahoma, we like it better when the postman carries that ballot or when you actually turn it in to that county or precinct official so we know where it has been, that there has been an accurate chain of custody, not someone showing up with a box full of ballots saying ``Trust me; I collected all of these'' because when that happens and someone is just collecting ballots, you have no idea if the person voting voted for one person and left the rest of them blank and the person carrying them just filled out the rest of the ballot for them. You have no chain of custody at all on it. That is why I say S. 1 makes voting easy, cheating easy, and verifying elections impossible.
This is not the direction we should go. If we want to build trust in our election system in America, let's let each State build trust in their election system for each State, like we do in Oklahoma, where we work together to make sure we can make it as easy as possible for every person to be able to vote and to encourage every person to vote, but when it is over, to verify that election and to be able to know that we can check it all off and to go, regardless of the outcome, we can trust the outcome because we know we can verify it.
Let's make it easy to vote, hard to cheat, and easy to verify--not having Washington, DC, folks here say DC is righteous and States are wrong. I think there are lots of great people all over the country who want to do their elections right and who aren't Republicans or Democrats; they are just people protecting democracies in the States. Let's keep that system.
That is the first of two divisive bills that are coming up next week, which will absolutely fail in this body and should fail in this body. There is a second bill that I understand is coming up next week, as well, and it is called the Equality Act.
Now, I will tell you that it is a great name, and I don't know of anyone on my side of the aisle or on the other side of the aisle who opposes equality. I will state frankly that no person should be discriminated against in America--no person. It is a basic constitutional principle: We are all equal under the law--all of us. We have different ideas about music and food. We have different ideas about sexuality. We have different ideas about occupations. We have different skin colors. We have different faiths. We are a tapestry, and that is one of the things that makes us strong in such a perfect way as to build a more perfect Union. I believe that every person should be protected from discrimination in America, but that does mean every person.
Today, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0--9 to 0 in the Supreme Court-- that Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia was being discriminated against by the city of Philadelphia because the city of Philadelphia said to Catholic Social Services: You cannot practice your Catholic faith in foster services.
Now, what is the story?
There have been Catholic services in Philadelphia since the 1700s. For the last 50 years, Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia, this particular organization, has served the neediest children in that area by providing foster services and placement for them. They are a religious organization, a faith-based organization--a Catholic organization--and they believe that God created man and woman and that this is God's design for marriage. So, in their placement of foster children, they place children in homes where there is a man and a woman who are present in marriage because of their profound belief.
There are 20 other foster services in Philadelphia that place foster children in any family situation: husband and wife or two men or two women. There are 20 of those services in Philadelphia, but the city of Philadelphia went to Catholic Social Services and said: You have to be like the other 20. You cannot practice your faith.
Even though, literally, Catholic Social Services had never had a gay family reach out to them for an adoption placement--they had gone to other places--the city of Philadelphia said: No, you have to change your practice.
Unfortunately, Catholic Social Services had to argue for their religious freedom all the way to the Supreme Court, and, today, they ruled 9 to 0 that a faith-based institution cannot be discriminated against because of their faith. They should be able to live out the tenets of their faith and be able to practice them. To me, that is a great decision to make--to say: Why can't we coexist? Why can't we honor everyone in their differences of opinion?
Even the Supreme Court stated today, in its opinion, that there was no work from Catholic Social Services to stop gay marriages in Philadelphia or to stop couples from fostering children who are gay couples there. They just chose not to do it based on their faith. So they were not working against individuals. They were practicing their faith.
Now comes the Equality Act vote next week. The Equality Act would, for the first time ever in this Congress, take away the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in statute--it would remove it--and say there could be no protection for religious institutions. This is a direct shot against the Supreme Court, in its 9 to 0 decision today, which said: No, religious institutions have to be protected in their decisions.
Why can't both exist? Why do we have to get into a situation, as the Equality Act does, that says, if you don't agree with one particular expression, then you have to be canceled? that you have to be silenced? Why has it come to this in America?
The way the Equality Act is written is, with regard to any faith- based institution, if they did any public, outward-facing work at all-- if they fed the homeless, which many do; if they provided clothing; if they took care of individuals with food who needed it--that was considered to be of public accommodation, their labor laws, even if they were religious institutions, had to be exactly like large corporate labor rules as well. It literally imposes on religious institutions that you can be a private entity and be inward facing, but if you are going to do your mission to actually serve the needy, then you have to actually shift to be like corporate America. That is not providing opportunities for people of faith to live their faiths.
I have to tell you that I honor people of faith--people of different faiths, people of faiths that I disagree with. The nature of religious liberty in our country is to be able to honor people of different faiths. That is also what the Supreme Court reaffirmed today directly in contradiction to the Equality Act. Clearly, if this were to pass-- and I do not believe it will--the Supreme Court would hear it immediately, would align with this case from today, and would say: We have already ruled on these issues 9 to 0--that is, against not allowing people to be able to live their faiths.
Unfortunately, there are some in this body who not only vehemently disagree with the Supreme Court and with the opportunity for people to be able to live their faiths, but they are willing to do it in the most pejorative of terms.
When I spoke against the Equality Act in the Judiciary Committee, just weeks ago, and shared the issues that I had that were pragmatic labor issues and set those in front of it and also did a challenge on a religious liberty issue and said, ``Here are the obvious issues of religious liberty where I think it is unconstitutional,'' the response I got from a member of the Judiciary Committee was, This reminds me of the Ku Klux Klan, who burned crosses and used religious symbols to hide behind their bigotry.
The Supreme Court disagreed with that today and said: We are the United States of America. We honor people of faith to be able to live their faiths. We honor people who don't have faith or have differences in their faiths and choose to be able to live that out. This body should not try to cancel out every group of faith in the country that disagrees with people in this body who say: You cannot practice your faith if we tell you no. That is not who we are.
The Equality Act is not about equality. It is about imposing and prohibiting disagreements. We are Americans. We can respect each other and disagree. We can live next-door to each other and disagree. Let's prove it in this body by not passing the poorly named Equality Act but by actually demonstrating what this act says it wants to demonstrate. Let's treat each other with respect in our differences and honor us in that.
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