[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 106 (Thursday, June 17, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4599-S4600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             VOTING RIGHTS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on voting rights, now we are here on 
the precipice of a momentous debate here in the Senate. Last night, I 
began the

[[Page S4600]]

process to consider voting rights legislation here on the floor of the 
Senate next week. The process I used will allow the Senate to consider 
S. 1 or compromise legislation that is currently being discussed. In 
either case, our goal remains crystal clear: protect the right to vote, 
strengthen our democracy, and put a stop to the tide of voter 
suppression flooding across our country. We will not consider 
legislation that does not achieve those objectives. The issue is too 
important.
  Republican State legislatures are conducting the most sweeping attack 
on the right to vote since the beginning of Jim Crow. What is their 
stated reason for vicious assaults on voting rights? They say it is 
election integrity
  But listen to these policies and tell me if you think they are about 
election integrity:
  Reducing polling hours and polling places. What does that have to do 
with election integrity?
  Mandating that every precinct, no matter how large or how small, have 
the same number of ballot drop boxes. What does that have to do with 
election integrity?
  It is saying urban areas should have less ability to vote than rural 
areas.
  No after-hours voting, no 24-hours voting, no drive-through voting.
  Requiring absentee ballots to be approved by a notary public.
  Making it a crime to give food and water to voters waiting in long 
lines at the polls.
  Allowing a judge or panel of judges to overturn an election.
  Allowing a partisan State election board to replace a duly elected 
county election board if they are ``underperforming.''
  Removing student IDs from the list of valid forms of ID.
  Moving the hours of Sunday voting into the evening--which, 
coincidentally, makes it harder for Black churches to sponsor voter 
drives after services.
  Are any of these policies--I would ask a single Republican on this 
Senate floor to get up and say any of these policies are dealing with 
election integrity.
  We know what they are doing. They are making it harder for people to 
vote. And if this so-called voter fraud--election fraud--which we have 
seen none of in 2020, if they cared about that across the board, why 
did they aim almost all of their proposals at people of color, at poor 
people, at young people, at urban people?
  We know why. This is not about voter fraud. It is about suppressing 
the vote, particularly of Democratic-leaning voters. It is despicable. 
It is anti-democratic. It is what they do in dictatorships--manipulate 
the vote, instead of counting it accurately.
  Georgia, Iowa, Montana, Florida, Alabama, Utah, Arizona, Nebraska, 
Oklahoma, Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas--this is where some of these 
policies that I just mentioned are now law. They would also be in 
effect in Texas had Democratic lawmakers not walked out of the chamber 
in protest. Since the beginning of the year, 14 States have enacted 22 
laws--22 laws--to make it harder to vote.
  Now, I know what the Republicans are saying. They are saying: Oh, 
well, we are making it easier to vote but harder to cheat.
  But when you look at what they are actually doing, it is perfectly 
clear that Republicans across the country are making it harder to vote 
and making it easier to steal an election. They are targeting all the 
ways that poorer, younger, non-White and typically Democratic voters 
access the ballot, and they are giving new tools to partisan election 
boards and unelected judges to interfere with the results of a 
democratic election--interfere with the results of a democratic 
election. Does that sound like a democracy? No, it sounds like an 
autocracy, a dictatorship.
  When you lose an election, you are supposed try to win over more 
voters, not try to stop the other side from voting. These laws are un-
American, autocratic, and against the very, very grain of our grand 
democracy, which, for immediate partisan advantage, our Republican 
friends are trying to undermine.
  So the Senate is going to debate what to do about these laws at the 
Federal level next week. In an ideal world, this debate would be 
bipartisan. Voting rights shouldn't be a Democratic issue or a 
Republican issue, and in the early days of the second-half of the last 
century, that is just what it was--bipartisan. But, unfortunately, now 
it has become totally partisan.
  Donald Trump and his Big Lie have enveloped the Republican Party, and 
they run away from truth and honesty and fairness to just appease 
someone with authoritarian instincts, Donald J. Trump.
  And for all the shame that Republican State legislators have brought 
upon themselves, Washington Republicans have not covered themselves in 
glory either. Here in Washington, Republicans have failed to forcefully 
and repeatedly stand up to the Big Lie that the last election was 
stolen from Donald Trump. That same Big Lie is fueling these voter 
suppression laws from one end of the country to the other. House 
Republicans are comparing January 6 to a tourist visit.
  I was within 20 feet of these awful insurrectionists. They were not 
tourists. They were brandishing sticks and guns and this and that.
  House Republicans also fired Congresswoman Cheney. For what? Telling 
the truth that Joe Biden is President.
  Just yesterday, 21 House Republicans voted against awarding the 
Congressional Gold Medal to the police officers who withstood the 
attack on the 6th. Are Republicans becoming antipolice? Some of the 
same Republicans who falsely accuse Democrats of wanting to defund the 
police are actively refusing to defend the police.
  I wish I could say the Senate was totally different than the House--
the Republican House--but here we have a Senate Republican saying that 
it really wasn't a violent insurrection. We have Senate Republicans 
refusing to include any mention of the causes for January 6 in 
committee reports, and the Republican minority mounted a partisan 
filibuster against an independent, bipartisan Commission.
  That is what is happening in the present-day Republican Party: a 
hornet's nest of conspiracy theories and voter suppression in the 
States and a Washington Republican establishment that is too afraid of 
Donald Trump to stand up for our democracy with conviction.
  So look, we Democrats wish the voting bill would be bipartisan. By 
all rights, it should be. But the actions in State legislatures like 
Georgia, Iowa, and Florida were totally partisan. None of these voter 
suppression laws were passed with bipartisan support--not 
one. Washington Republicans seem dead set against all remedies, whether 
it is S. 1, some modified version, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, 
which Senator McConnell has recently opposed. So the idea that we can 
have some kind of bipartisan solution to this partisan attack on 
democracy befuddles me. Regrettably, the Democratic Party is the only 
party standing up for democracy right now.

  Next week, the Senate will have this debate. Democrats will bring 
forward legislation to protect voting rights and safeguard our 
democracy, and we are going to see where everyone stands--everyone.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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