[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 38 (Monday, March 1, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S908-S909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             VOTING RIGHTS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on another matter entirely, voting 
rights, the story of American democracy is a long and messy one, full 
of contradictions and halting progress. It was a century and a half 
after our founding before women got the right to vote, another half 
century before African Americans could enjoy the full rights of 
citizenship. It took mighty movements and decades of fraught political 
conflicts to achieve even those basic dignities and establish the 
United States as a full democracy worthy of the title.
  But any American who thinks that today, in 2021, that fight is over--
that the fight for voting rights is over--is sorely and, unfortunately, 
sadly mistaken.
  In the wake of the most recent election, an election that the former 
President has repeatedly lied about and claimed was stolen, more than 
253 bills in 43 States have been introduced to tighten voting rules 
under the pernicious, nasty guise of election integrity.
  In Iowa, the State legislature voted to cut early voting by 9 days. 
Polls will close an hour earlier. And they voted to tighten the rules 
on absentee voting, which so many--the elderly, the disabled, the 
frail--depend on.
  In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers have proposed limiting ballot drop 
boxes to one per municipality--a municipality of hundreds of thousands, 
and a tiny one gets the small one. I wonder why. I wonder why.
  In Arizona, one Republican legislator wants to pass a law allowing 
the State legislators--listen to this--to ignore the results of the 
Presidential election and determine their own slate of electors. One 
legislator in Arizona wants to pass a law allowing State legislators to 
ignore the results of the Presidential election and determine their own 
slate of electors. That doesn't sound like democracy. That sounds like 
dictatorship.

  The most reprehensible of all efforts might be found in Georgia, 
where Republicans have introduced a bill to eliminate all early voting 
on Sundays, a day when Black churches sponsor get-out-the-vote drives 
known as ``souls to the polls.''
  We have, supposedly--supposedly--come a long way since African 
Americans in the South were forced to guess the number of jelly beans 
in a jar in order to be allowed to vote. But it is very difficult to 
look at the specific laws proposed by Republican legislatures around 
the country, designed to limit voter participation in heavily African-
American and Hispanic areas, to lower turnout and frustrate election 
administration in urban districts and near college campuses, to 
gerrymander districts to limit minority representation ``with almost 
surgical precision,'' to specifically target and thwart Black churches 
from organizing voting drives--it is difficult, very difficult not to 
see the tentacles of America's generations-old caste system, typically 
associated with slavery and Jim Crow, stretching into the 21st century 
and poisoning the wellspring of any true democracy--free and fair 
elections.
  We see a lot of despicable things these days, but nothing that seems 
to be more despicable than this. When you lose an election in a 
democratic society, you update your party platform and appeal to more 
voters. You don't change the rules to make it harder for your opponents 
to vote, especially not African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, 
and other voters who have

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been historically disenfranchised. That response is toxic to democracy 
and, indeed, is the very opposite of democracy.
  Make no mistake, these despicable, discriminatory, anti-democratic 
proposals are on the move in State legislatures throughout America. 
They must be opposed by every American--Democrat, Republican, 
Independent; liberal, conservative, moderate--who cherishes our 
democracy.
  This is just incredible what they are trying to do--incredible. We 
must do everything we can to stop it.

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