[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 36 (Thursday, February 25, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               ELECTIONS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, next week, House Democrats say they 
will try to recycle failed legislation that would have Washington 
Democrats grab unprecedented power over how America conducts its 
elections and how American citizens can engage in political speech.
  For several years now, we have seen the political left grow less 
interested in having normal policy debates within our governing 
institutions and more interested in attacking the institutions 
themselves to tilt the playing field in their side's favor.
  When their side loses a Presidential election, it is not their fault; 
it is the electoral college's. When they don't like a Supreme Court's 
decision, it is time to threaten the Justices or pack the Court. When 
longstanding Senate rules threaten to frustrate far-left proposals, it 
is the Senate rules they want to change. And now House Democrats want 
to try to use their slim majority to unilaterally rewrite and 
nationalize election law itself. They want to use the temporary power 
the voters have granted them to try to ensure they will never have to 
relinquish it.
  This year's version of the House Democrats' legislation contains the 
same bad ideas as their efforts 2 years ago. For example, when the 
Federal Election Commission was created after Watergate with the 
sensitive job of regulating American politics, it was designed to 
require bipartisan consensus. House Democrats want to scrap those rules 
and turn the FEC from an even-numbered body, bipartisan body, to an 
odd-numbered partisan body so Democrats can dominate it. Then they want 
to hand the newly partisan FEC new authorities to scrutinize and 
regulate an even wider share of political speech and private citizens' 
activities. Or take election law itself--House Democrats have looked at 
the division and the disunity of the last several months and decided 
that what American elections really need is a one-size-fits-all 
partisan rewrite by one side here in Washington.
  In our country, States and localities run elections. Those of us in 
the Federal Government do not get a stranglehold over the ways in which 
voters decide our fates. But House Democrats want to change that. Their 
bill would take prudential questions about early voting, registration, 
and no-excuse absentee balloting and resolve them one way for the 
entire Nation. They want to force all 50 States to allow the absurd 
practice of ballot harvesting, where paid operatives can show up at 
polling places carrying a thick stack of filled-out ballots with other 
people's names on them. They want to forbid States from implementing 
voter ID or doing simple things like checking their voter rolls against 
change-of-address submissions. They want to mandate no-excuse mail-in 
balloting as a permanent norm, post-pandemic. And--I promise I am not 
making this up--their bill proposes to directly fund political 
campaigns with Federal tax dollars. They want to raise money through 
new financial penalties, which the government would then use to fund 
campaigns and consultants. It is a strange idea. It takes a minute to 
kind of wrap your head around it. They want the Federal Government 
itself to send money for things like political ads that half the 
country disagrees with. What a bizarre concept that nobody is asking 
for.
  This sweeping Federal takeover would be exactly the wrong response to 
the distressing lack of faith in our elections that we have recently 
seen from both political sides.
  After both 2016 and 2020, we saw significant numbers of Americans on 
the losing side express doubt in the validity of the result. As 
recently as late last September, fewer than half of Democrats said they 
were confident the 2020 election would be free and fair. Just weeks 
later, however, by mid-November, once things had gone the way they 
wanted, Democrats' confidence in the election magically skyrocketed up 
to 90 percent. We cannot keep trending toward a future where Americans' 
confidence in elections is purely a function of which side won.
  A sweeping power grab by House Democrats, forcibly rewriting 50 
States' election laws, would shove us further and faster down that 
path. In this country, if the people who win elections want to hold on 
to power, they need to perform well, pass sound policies, and earn the 
support of the voters again. House Democrats do not get to take their 
razor-thin majority, which voters just shrunk, and use it to steamroll 
States and localities to try to prevent themselves from losing even 
more seats the next time. Protecting democracy cannot be a partisan 
issue

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