[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 172 (Thursday, December 1, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6638-S6640]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     APPOINTMENTS AND VOTER RIGHTS

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, it has now been 23 days since the 
election--3 weeks and 2 days. Certainly it has been a time of great 
frustration and anxiety for Americans across the board, anticipating 
what our government will look like, what our executive branch will look 
like under the leadership of President-Elect Donald Trump.
  The early signs have been ones that have indeed given a great deal of 
concern to many groups across America, beginning with the appointment 
by Mr. Trump of a White nationalist as his Chief Strategist, an 
individual, Steve Bannon, who has run a Web site, Breitbart, that 
specialized in hate, specialized in division.
  It certainly reverberated in the campaign, but to bring that into the 
White House was something very few people anticipated would occur. It 
has been followed up by other appointments that were certainly a cause 
of deep concern. Just yesterday, there was the nomination of Steve 
Mnuchin, a Wall Street banker being assigned to the key post in our 
economy, the Treasury Secretary post--a post that will come before this 
Chamber for confirmation.
  This is not just someone from Wall Street but someone who specialized 
in acquiring a bank that had been deeply involved in predatory lending, 
proceeded to foreclosure on thousands and thousands of families, was 
using robo-signing to accelerate that in violation of the law, was a 
specialist in turning people out of their homes, profited enormously in 
the strategy at the expense of working Americans seeking to have the 
fundamental comfort of owning their own home.
  There is a list of other appointments, nominees who have certainly 
more than raised eyebrows, raised anxiety, other individuals who have 
specialized in hate and division, and other incidents such as the 
attack on the cast of ``Hamilton'' for proposing that individuals with 
a background of hate and division not be put into the Cabinet
  Then we have this from our President-elect. I quote his tweet: ``In 
addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the 
popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted 
illegally.''
  It is a straight falsehood. It has been debunked by every major 
analytical group, news organization in America. It is a complete 
fiction created in the middle of the night by our President-elect, but 
why? I think most people conclude that the fact he lost the popular 
vote is so disturbing to the President-elect because he wants to claim 
a mandate, but he cannot claim a mandate because the majority of 
Americans voted against him. They have voted against his strategy of 
division. They have voted against his strategy of incurring hate 
against Muslims, against immigrants, against women, against Hispanics, 
against African Americans.
  No, Donald Trump, you did not get the popular vote, you lost it. You 
lost it straight out by more than 2 million votes and perhaps a great 
deal more.
  No fiction you can stir up in the middle of the night can change that 
fundamental fact that you have no mandate in America for these politics 
of hate and division.
  The fact is, the citizens' vote against Donald Trump would have been 
far larger except for a strategy of voter suppression. Voter 
suppression is a crime against the Constitution. Our Nation was founded 
on the vision of citizens being empowered to have a direct voice.
  President Jefferson wrote a letter in which he referred to the mother 
principle of our democracy. He described the mother principle as we can 
only claim to be a democratic republic to the degree that our decisions 
reflect the will of the people. Then he went on and said and that will 
only happen if the people, each person, has an equal voice. Then he 
went on to say that the biggest factor in equal voice is the power to 
vote.
  We know the original Constitution was incomplete in this vision, that 
it did not provide that full empowerment to women or to minorities--
flaws that we have addressed over time in this vision and understanding 
that the power to vote is fundamental to a democracy.
  Indeed, President after President over the course of our Nation has 
recognized the power of the individual to vote as fundamental to our 
democratic Republic.
  LBJ said: ``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by 
man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which 
imprison men because they are different from other men.''
  Of course, he was referring to race and the battle over the Voting 
Rights Act in 1965.
  FDR said: ``The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President 
and Senators and Congressmen and Government officials but the voters of 
this country.''

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  Robert Kennedy put it this way: ``Each citizen's right to vote is 
fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship.''
  These are not simply ideas that Democrats put forward, these are not 
simply ideas that our Founders put forward, these are ideas that 
Republican Presidents have put forward.
  Let's turn to Ronald Reagan, who said: ``For this Nation to remain 
true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be 
denied, diluted, or defiled.''
  Ronald Reagan was right and that is why voter suppression is wrong. 
It is an attack on the vision of our Nation in which citizens are in 
charge, not powerful elites, powerful special interests. Citizens are 
in charge. When you deliberately set out to take away the vote from 
citizens, you really are trying to shred the Constitution.
  So those in this Chamber who have been so engaged in promoting voter 
suppression and your attack on our Constitution--because it is simply 
wrong. As Ronald Reagan put it, it takes away the power of the 
individual, it denies, it dilutes, and it defiles. Quit denying, quit 
diluting, and quit defiling. Honor the vision of this Nation in which 
citizens are in charge.
  Unfortunately, we have seen quite the opposite. We have seen a 
systematic Republican strategy to tear down the power to vote in our 
Nation, and this must end.
  The Supreme Court set the stage for this by saying enough years have 
passed that the Voting Rights Act, which required areas and counties 
that had been active in voter suppression in the past, to get 
preapproval for changes in their law so they wouldn't go back to 
defiling and denying the right to vote, said: Enough time has passed. 
We can now trust them.
  That Supreme Court decision was clearly a mistake because, 
immediately, jurisdiction after jurisdiction proceeded to enact voter 
suppression laws, often carrying out a debate deliberately about how to 
keep minorities from voting. This wasn't something hidden. This wasn't 
sneaky. This was straight out: We don't want those people to vote who 
might vote against us.
  I tell you what I believe in. I believe in our Constitution. I 
believe in the power of citizens to vote, to be the rulemakers in our 
country, to have Jefferson's vision, his mother principle of a 
democratic republic to make decisions in accordance with the will of 
the people, not the will of the powerful, special interests who are 
driving this voter suppression attack on Americans' right to vote.
  A study of nearly 400 counties in Alabama, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi found more than 860 
polling places were eliminated in those counties. In Arizona, almost 
every single county shut down voting locations. More than half the 
counties in Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama did so. They provided data to 
the researchers.
  Let's take a look at North Carolina, a State that passed a voter 
suppression law which included restrictive voter ID, ending same-day 
registration, requiring votes cast at the wrong polling location to be 
thrown out, and shrinking the time for early voting a week--and which 
did these things after debating directly how to suppress the right of 
minorities to vote. That is an evil crime against our Constitution and 
against citizens of the United States of America. The law targeted 
African-American voters with what the Fourth Circuit of Appeals 
described as almost surgical precision.
  The law was overturned by the court, but that didn't stop the North 
Carolina Republican Party's very direct efforts to suppress the vote, 
to eliminate early voting days--especially on Sunday, to severely 
curtail the number and hours of voting places, of closing all but one 
early voting location in largely African-American counties, and leaving 
27 fewer polling locations than in 2012.
  This strategy, successful in Mecklenburg County, which includes 
Charlotte and has more than 15 percent of the State's Black voters. The 
State reduced early voting sites from 22 to 4. In three North Carolina 
counties with large African-American populations, the Republican Party 
put out a piece of mail and challenged thousands of voter registrations 
and tried to get them stripped from the rolls until the Federal court 
ordered them to stop.
  Long lines were the result at polling places that ``put early voting 
totally out of reach for people without the time or resources to travel 
long distances to vote.''
  It is a crime against the Constitution, it is a crime against the 
citizens, and it significantly reduced turnout. It was successful.
  In 2008, 70 percent of African-American voters in North Carolina 
voted early. The rough estimates are that about 10 percent fewer 
ballots were cast in North Carolina in 2016, and at least a substantial 
share of that change has to be attributed to these voter suppression 
efforts that produced those long lines and made it so hard for 
individuals to vote.
  We saw glaring examples of voter suppression in Wisconsin, which has 
one of the strictest voter photo ID laws in the country. It is a law 
that by lower courts was ruled to serve no legitimate purpose, to make 
it unnecessarily harder to vote, and designed to disenfranchise African 
Americans, Latino students, the elderly people with disabilities, and 
low-income residents. It is a pure, partisan crime against the 
Constitution, a partisan crime against the citizens of Wisconsin.
  As a result of this law, Wisconsin saw its lowest voter turnout in 
two decades for an election decided by fewer than 30,000 votes in the 
Presidential election.
  Neil Albrecht, executive director of the Milwaukee Election 
Commission, said: ``Some of the greatest declines were in districts we 
projected would have the most trouble with voter ID requirements.''
  That is not all. There were online voter suppression strategies. In 
the final days before the election, there were a series of ads put out 
that were claiming to be from Secretary Clinton's campaign and 
basically said to folks ``vote from home'' by text message or online.
  Well, of course, the law doesn't allow people to vote by text 
message. It doesn't allow people to vote online, although there may be 
a few exceptions around the country, the vast majority of places you 
cannot vote online.
  We have come a long way technologically in this country, but by and 
large you still have to show up in person. You still have to vote your 
ballot. In Oregon, you have to fill out your ballot, drop it off or 
mail it in. In other places around the country, you have to show up in 
that voting booth, whether it be early voting or day-of voting.
  An effort to mislead people is akin to the other voting suppression 
tactics where we have seen people put out messages that tell people the 
voting location has changed. People put out messages that the voting 
hours have changed. This--a new clever strategy--is saying: Don't 
bother to go to the voting place, you can vote by text or you can vote 
online, encouraging people not to go to the polls.
  When somebody does something like that, it should be a crime that 
puts them in jail for years, misleading voters about where to vote, the 
times to vote, or how you can legally vote. It should be a crime that 
puts people in jail for years. Why is that? Because it is an attack on 
the foundation of our democratic Republic, the right to vote.
  It is this voter suppression strategy, a tactic which is completely 
at odds with the vision of a nation in which citizens are in charge--
not powerful special interests, not powerful special interests like the 
Koch brothers who promised, in January of 2015, to put nearly a billion 
dollars into the 2016 election. The Koch brothers take credit for 
essentially controlling this Chamber. Indeed, their money played a key 
role in race after race after race. We saw it in 2014. We saw it this 
year in 2016.
  What kind of Nation do we want? A nation where oil-and-coal 
billionaires control this Chamber, the Senate, or a nation in which the 
citizens control this Chamber, a nation in which we honor Jefferson's 
mother principle or a nation in which we have handed over the keys to a 
few powerful special interests and billionaires.
  Do we want a nation of, by, and for the people or a nation of, by, 
and for the powerful and the privileged? That is what is at stake here. 
A senior member of the Trump campaign publicly said: ``We have three 
major voter suppression operations under way.''
  One of those was Operation Project Alamo, the campaign's custom 
online

[[Page S6640]]

database that contained detailed identity profiles on 220-million 
Americans. The point is, they used this information on more than 200 
million Americans to target Secretary Clinton supporters with negative 
and misleading Facebook ads, the goal being voter suppression, as 
clearly stated by a senior member of the Trump campaign.

  Well, let's go back to the principle laid out by President Ronald 
Reagan, and again I quote him: ``For this Nation to be true to its 
principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted 
or defiled.''
  So I call on my colleagues who have been the proponents of voter 
suppression, who have been the proponents of attacking the 
Constitution, who have been the proponents of government of, by, and 
for the most powerful and the most privileged rather than the people, 
to listen.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I didn't hear how long.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Two minutes.
  Mr. CORNYN. No objection here.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Chair.
  Those words should continue to reverberate in this Chamber. 
Colleagues, set your sights on the vision of ending your denying, 
diluting, and defiling of the most fundamental right close to the 
hearts of Americans and the foundation of a government of, by, and for 
the people. Only then will we have a government that responds to the 
real issues Americans face rather than the special goals of the most 
powerful and the most privileged.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.

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