Oregonians know Ron as a senator who listens and innovates. For example, Ron has secured landmark health care and economic wins for our workers and retirees. Always citing the need to "throw open the doors of government for Oregonians," he holds an open-to-all town hall meeting in each of Oregon's 36 counties each year. Thus far he has held more than 970 meetings, as well as several virtual town hall meetings sponsored by the nonpartisan Town Hall Project. Wyden's dedication to hearing all sides of an issue and looking for common sense, nonpartisan solutions has won him trust on both sides of the aisle and put him at the heart of so many of the Senate's most important debates. In 2011, the Almanac of American Politics described Wyden as having "displayed a genius for coming up with sensible-sounding ideas no one else had thought of and making the counter-intuitive political alliances that prove helpful in passing bills." The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote: "The country has problems. And Ron Wyden has comprehensive, bipartisan proposals for fixing them."
When the 2016 election spotlighted vulnerabilities in the American election system, Senator Wyden did the hard work of finding exactly how foreign hackers could attack our system, then came up with a plan to fix it: the Protecting American Votes and Elections (PAVE) Act.
The PAVE Act was the strongest-ever election security bill introduced, requiring every American have the option to vote on hand-marked paper ballots, with stringent post-election audits. An updated version of Senator Wyden's bill passed the House, but Mitch McConnell refused to bring it to a vote.
Over fifty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Americans are facing new barriers to exercising their fundamental right to vote. Across the country, there are stories of long lines, inexplicable purges of voter rolls and new requirements that make it harder for citizens to vote. There is no excuse for accepting this state of affairs.
Thankfully there is a solution. Oregon has been voting by mail since Senator Wyden was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, and went to all vote-by-mail in 2000. Since then Oregon has consistently had voter turnout rates that are among the highest in the country. Outdated voting systems are vulnerable to cyber-attack, foreign interference and even run-of-the-mill counting errors. That is why a paper ballot is so essential – it is an “un-hackable” backup to verify election outcomes. And as an added benefit, studies have shown it saved taxpayers money to boot.
That is why Senator Wyden introduced his plan for national vote-by-mail. The Vote by Mail Act builds on Oregon’s system and bills he introduced in 2007 and 2010. It would allow every registered voter to receive a ballot in the mail. The federal government, through the Postal Service, would assist states with the costs of mailing ballots to registered voters. States can keep their current polling practices if they wish, but those states that choose a full vote-by-mail system will see their election costs significantly drop.
Senator Wyden is taking other steps to make it easier for all Americans to vote. He worked with his colleagues to introduce the Voting Rights Advancement Act that would restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013. He also helped to introduce the Voter Empowerment Act that would modernize voter registration and increase access and accountability in our elections. Further, Senator Wyden cosponsored legislation that would end Donald Trump’s sham “election integrity” commission, the Anti-Voter Suppression Act, and he cosponsored the Democracy Restoration Act that would restore voting rights to people who did their time and were released from incarceration.
Senator Wyden has also been outspoken on the issue of campaign finance reform. Following the Supreme Court’s unfortunate decisions in Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC, he joined with many of his colleagues to introduce a constitutional amendment that would strengthen Congress’s ability to regulate campaign finance. This amendment would allow for the regulation of the raising and spending of money for federal political campaign contributions and expenditures and would help to limit the increasingly significant role well-funded special interests are playing in our political process.
In 2013, Wyden and Senator Murkowski introduced the Follow the Money Act- the first bipartisan campaign finance reform in over a decade- to increase transparency in campaign spending.