On the recordJune 27, 2019
I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I very strongly support the SAFE Act. This is something that the Democrats have been focused on from day one. Day one meaning, the day after the 2016 election, when we saw the attacks that had come in against our democracy, we realized we were very exposed, and we needed to take action. This is our chance to stand up against interference from foreign adversaries who are trying to hack in, sow discord, undermine our elections, and create havoc here in our own country. This is fundamental to protecting our democracy. So we were on the case from the beginning. We convened the Election Security Task Force, which was led by Zoe Lofgren, Bob Brady, Bennie Thompson and others. They looked at all of the best practices that we need to put in place to make sure that our elections are strong and sturdy, and how do we fortify them, and they produced those recommendations. We then took those recommendations and we put them into H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and we passed those on March 8 of this year, because we knew that this was a priority and that there is no time to waste. Now, our Republican colleagues, unfortunately, did not want to go along with those broad, sweeping reforms that were contained in H.R. 1, including election security measures. So we made it easy for them, we said, ``Okay. We will start to break those things out.…





