[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 159 (Wednesday, September 15, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6519-S6524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Freedom to Vote Act

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak in support 
of very important new legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act, that I 
introduced yesterday with the members of the Voting Rights Working 
Group assembled by Leader Schumer, which includes Senator Manchin; 
Senator Merkley, who is here with us today on the floor and who has 
been such a leader on voting issues, including the For the People Act; 
Senator Padilla; and Senators King, Kaine, Tester, and Warnock.
  The freedom to vote is fundamental to all of our freedoms. Following 
the 2020 elections in which more Americans voted than ever before, in 
the middle of a public health crisis, we have seen unprecedented 
attacks on our democracy in States across the country. These attacks 
demand an immediate Federal response.
  The Freedom to Vote Act will set basic national standards to make 
sure all Americans can cast their ballots in the way that works best 
for them, regardless of what ZIP Code they live in.
  I want to thank Senator Schumer for his leadership in pulling 
together our working group that got this legislation across the finish 
line and, as I mentioned, Senators Merkley and Manchin for their work 
on this crucial bill.
  It has been over 8 months since that violent mob of insurrectionists 
stormed through this very spot and desecrated our Capitol, the temple 
of our democracy. They opened the desks in this Chamber. They got up 
and sat at that desk where you are sitting now, Mr. President. It was 
an attack on our Republic.
  And as I said from the inaugural stage just 2 weeks later under that 
beautiful blue sky, at the very place where you could still see the 
spray paint at the bottom of the columns and the makeshift windows 
behind us, ``This is the day our democracy picks itself up, brushes off 
the dust, and does what America always does: goes forward as a nation, 
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.''
  We took back our democracy that day with Democrats, Republicans, and 
Independents all sitting at that platform, seeing a new President and 
Vice President be inaugurated. We took back our democracy that day, and 
we will take it back this day with this new bill, with the support of 
78 percent of Americans who favor 2 weeks of early voting, a very 
important provision in this bill, and 83 percent of voters who support 
public disclosures of all contributions. We will take it back again 
from those who are trying to take away people's constitutional right to 
vote.
  With over 400 bills introduced in nearly every State to limit the 
freedom to vote, we can't simply sit back and watch our democracy be 
threatened again. Whether it is threatened with bear spray and crowbars 
and axes or long lines or the elimination of ballot boxes or the secret 
money, it is still under siege. When we are faced with a coordinated 
effort across the country to limit the freedom to vote, we must stand 
up and do what is right.
  Sometimes people say: What is going on? It worked so well during the 
pandemic, during a public health crisis. More people voted than ever 
before.
  Well, that is because they voted by mail. That is because some 
States, both blue States and red States, changed their laws to make it 
easier to vote, while still protecting the sanctity of the vote.
  So why is this happening? Well, I think our colleague Senator Rev. 
Raphael Warnock put it best when he said: ``Some people don't want some 
people to vote.'' We will not stand for that because that is not how a 
democracy works.
  Leader Schumer has said he will bring this new bill to a vote as soon 
as next week because we know our democracy cannot wait. This bill 
builds on the framework put forward by Senator Manchin in June and 
includes many of the key reforms in the For the People Act, 
guaranteeing all Americans, as I noted, access to at least 15 days of 
early voting, including weekends.

  Look at what just happened in Georgia. We just had a field hearing 
down there with the Rules Committee. In Georgia, all of a sudden they 
passed a law that says, yeah, you can vote on weekends early on, but 
when it counts in a runoff period, in those last 28 days, you can't 
vote on weekends anymore. That is only done for one reason: to make it 
harder for people to vote. That is why this bill is so important.
  What else does it do? It ensures that all voters can cast a mail-in 
ballot and makes it easier to register to vote. That is pretty 
important as we see Republican, Democrat, and Independent voters all 
across this country wanting to be able to cast mail-in ballots. It is 
the safest way for so many of them to vote, even today.
  Some States even required them to get a notary signature in the 
middle of a pandemic, through a glass window, when they were in the 
hospital. You wonder why we want to have some Federal minimum standards 
in place.
  What else? Increased transparency through the DISCLOSE Act. I already 
noted that over 80 percent of people in this country want to see that, 
whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. It would 
require super-PACs and issue advocacy groups to disclose donors who 
contribute more than $10,000 and stop the use of transfers between 
organizations to cloak the identity, to hide the identity of the source 
of those contributions.
  It would counter partisan interference in election administration and 
protect election officials because not only do we need to make sure 
people can vote, we need to make sure their vote is counted.
  It would prevent voter purges by requiring States to use objective 
and reliable evidence to remove voters and prohibit the targeting of 
voters solely because they haven't voted recently, while giving 
election administrators flexibility to remove voters based on State 
records.
  As Stacey Abrams has said, if you don't go to a meeting for a while, 
do you lose your right to assemble? No, you don't. If you don't go to a 
church or a synagogue or a mosque for a while, do you lose your right 
to exercise your right to religion? No, you don't. You shouldn't lose 
your right to vote.
  It would also prohibit partisan gerrymandering, this bill will, so 
that voters choose their elected officials, not the other way around.
  Now, my home State of Minnesota is a great example of how this can 
all work. When you make it easier for people to vote, they will vote. I 
never see this as a partisan issue.

[[Page S6520]]

  In election after election, our State leads the Nation in voter 
turnout because we have things like, now, no-excuse voting by mail or 
46 days of early voting. Our bill doesn't go that far because we are 
setting minimum standards, but that is what we have in our State--and 
same-day voter registration.
  And what has happened as a result? High voter turnout every time. 
Whom have we elected? Well, we have elected Democratic Governors like 
our Governor, Tim Walz; we have elected Republican Governors like Tim 
Pawlenty; and we have elected Independents like Jesse Ventura. But what 
have I noticed? People feel like they are part of the democracy because 
we make it easier for them to vote.
  These policies that ensure Minnesotans continue to hold the coveted 
title of first in voter turnout--very close to the Presiding Officer's 
State of Colorado--are overseen by our secretary of state, Steve Simon, 
who continues to push for improvements in our elections.
  The freedom to vote is fundamental to all our freedoms. Protecting it 
has not always been easy. Throughout our country's 245-year history, we 
have had to course correct and take action to ensure that our democracy 
for the people, by the people actually lives up to its ideals.
  Voting is how Americans control their government and hold elected 
officials accountable. It was the founding principle of our country, 
and it has stood the test of wars, economic strife, and a global 
pandemic. But as we have seen in States like Georgia, Florida, Iowa, 
Montana, and most recently Texas, we are up against a coordinated 
attack aimed at limiting the freedom to vote. This demands a Federal 
response.
  And the Constitution could not be clearer. It says right there that 
Congress can make or alter laws regarding Federal elections.
  Just last week, legislation in Texas was signed into law that makes 
it harder to vote, and many States already are underway drawing new 
congressional maps. Without this bill, there will be nothing to limit 
many States from drawing gerrymandered maps that will distort the 
voices of Americans not just for 1 year but for the next decade.
  The urgency for a Federal response is why, as chairwoman of the 
Senate Rules Committee, I have worked to ensure that voting rights are 
a priority. It is why one of our first hearings this year was on the 
For the People Act and why--and I see Reverend Warnock here--we took 
the Rules Committee on the road to Georgia in its first field hearing 
in 20 years.
  And just last month, Senator Baldwin and I held a roundtable 
discussion in Wisconsin on what has been happening in that State and 
what would have been put into law, including only having one ballot 
dropoff box in the entire city of Milwaukee if the Governor hadn't 
stood in and vetoed it.
  And we are not done yet because these discussions with voters are the 
most pressing testament that the threat to the freedom to vote is very 
real and affecting people of all walks of life across the country. We 
can't sit back idly and watch our democracy be threatened. As President 
Biden said in Philadelphia, the fight to protect the right to vote is 
the ``test of our time.''
  Americans have fought and died to protect this freedom, and 56 years 
after the Voting Rights Act was passed by this Chamber and signed into 
law, we are still continuing this fight.
  We have asked our colleagues from the other side of the aisle to join 
us on this bill. We have made many, many, many changes to this 
legislation in response to concerns they have raised, in response to 
concerns Senator Manchin raised, in response to concerns that 
secretaries of state have made across the country. We have adapted this 
bill to make it much easier to implement in rural areas, in small 
towns.
  We are proud of this legislation. Yet what do we hear from the other 
side of the aisle? Well, over the last few months, one of their 
refrains which I find so amusing is they say this will somehow result 
in chaos. Truly?
  Chaos is a 5-hour wait to vote in the Sun in Georgia without food or 
water. Chaos is purging eligible voters from voter rolls and 
prohibiting mail-in ballot drop boxes and having only one in the 
entirety of Harris County in Texas for 5 million people. Chaos is 
voters in Wisconsin waiting in line to vote for hours in the rain, 
wearing homemade face masks and plastic garbage bags. That angry mob on 
January 6 that came right into this Chamber, that was chaos.
  You want to stop the chaos: Federal minimum voting standards. Telling 
extremists they can't spend millions on sham audits, that stops the 
chaos. Getting dark money out of our politics, that stops the chaos. 
And making sure that people have a voice by ending partisan 
gerrymandering, that stops the chaos.
  So, once again, I urge my Republican colleagues to recognize the work 
being done in many of their own States to restrict the freedom of 
Americans to exercise their sacred right to vote. Our Nation was 
founded on the ideals of democracy, and as we have seen for ourselves 
in this very building, we cannot afford to take it for granted.
  We have so much work to do. Voting rights reform, this bill, 
guaranteeing the freedom to vote, is about the salvation of our very 
democracy. I urge my colleagues to join us in supporting the Freedom to 
Vote Act.
  Mr. President, I see my colleagues. Senator Merkley, such a great 
leader on the For the People bill, and Senator Warnock, such a great 
leader, new in the Senate but already establishing himself across the 
country and in Georgia as a leader on voting rights, are both here.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I so much appreciate the words of my 
colleague from Minnesota, who has brought the Rules Committee to bear 
in a maximum capacity to fight to defend the freedom to vote for all 
Americans.
  When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to live in West 
Africa under a dictatorship as an exchange student. And in that 
country, the military dictatorship would exist until there was a new 
military coup, and then there would be another military dictatorship. 
And that happened time after time after time.
  So, as a 16-year-old, I saw the contrast between a nation where 
citizens had no voice in the future of their country versus the United 
States of America, where the foundation of our Republic, the core 
vision of our Nation is that each citizen has the opportunity to 
participate, to fight to help shape the American dream, the path into 
the future, to the benefit of a better nation.
  President Johnson noted that the ballot box is so essential that 
``the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised . . . for 
breaking down injustice.'' Really, that ballot box is the pulsating 
heart of our democracy.
  President Lincoln, when he was speaking at Gettysburg--speaking that 
the soldiers who died there did not die in vain because they fought to 
preserve the vision of government of, by, and for the people, that it 
shall not perish from this Earth. Well, it is the vote that preserves 
the vision of government of, by, and for the people. It is free access 
to the ballot box.
  Over the course of our history, we have sought to fulfill that vision 
through the 13th and 14th Amendments, through the 15th Amendment, 
through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But here we find, at this moment 
in our history, the right to vote is under attack once again. Some 18 
States have passed some 30 laws trying to target specific groups of 
individuals and prevent them from being able to vote. These strategies 
in State after State are to make it harder to vote and easier to cheat.
  Well, I will tell you what this bill does that we are talking about 
today, the Freedom to Vote bill. It makes it easier to vote and harder 
to cheat. It takes on three key forms of corruption that are haunting 
our election system.
  First, it takes on dark money--dark money unleashed by Citizens 
United that allows billionaires to buy elections around this country.
  Do a poll of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents and ask 
``Should we have this dark money, source unknown, haunting our election 
system, producing all of those attack ads, and you have no idea where 
they came from?'' and citizens of every political stripe will say 
``Absolutely not.''

[[Page S6521]]

  Dark money, the hidden manipulation of the elections by the 
powerful--buying these vast sets of television ads, trying to destroy 
the character of candidates in order to manipulate the outcome--should 
not exist. It is in the DNA of Americans that this is a corrupting 
force. Well, this bill takes on the dark money.
  The second thing that it takes on is gerrymandering. Gerrymandering 
is where districts are drawn to favor one political party over the 
other. Ask Americans across this country ``Is it right that politicians 
should choose their voters rather than voters choosing their 
politicians?'' and they will say ``No.'' Ask if they believe in the 
vision of equal representation as a key to a just society, and they 
will say yes. They want equal representation. Republicans say yes. 
Democrats say yes. Independents say yes.
  This bill takes on gerrymandering and puts an end to it with national 
standards for redistricting.
  Now, let's turn to the ballot box. I never thought I would live to 
see the day that we go into a time machine and return to before 1965, 
in which one of the two parties is determined to block targeted groups 
from voting--to target Black Americans from voting, Hispanic Americans 
from voting, low-income Americans from voting, college students from 
voting. This is completely un-American. This is racist. It is a past 
that we had proudly put behind us, but this bigoted past has arisen to 
haunt us once again in these some 30 laws in some 18 States, targeting 
specific groups of Americans.
  This bill says that strategy of cheating on election day by trying to 
block targeted groups from voting will not stand. We will make it 
easier to register. That is what this bill does. We will make it easier 
to vote before election day to undermine those election-day 
shenanigans. We will have 15 days of early voting. We will have the 
opportunity for voting by mail. We will make sure that our I.D. laws 
are not used in a fashion to favor one party over the other. These are 
core protections against these strategies designed to disenfranchise 
Americans and manipulate the outcome of elections.
  I will tell you what else this law does. It takes on election 
subversion. We have seen strategies of election subversion in many of 
those State laws. So this bill says: You know what. No, you cannot have 
frivolous challenges where one person stands at a poll and challenges 
the legitimacy of every single person who comes into that poll place in 
order to make it hard for people in a certain location to vote.
  It protects election officials from improper removal. It protects 
election workers from intimidation and harassment. It preserves 
election records so they cannot be manipulated. It guarantees that we 
have paper ballots that can be recounted. It prevents observer 
interference in the elections. It makes sure that people in line, if 
something terrible should happen and those lines are long, will still 
be able to have access to water and food, which is a strategy that has 
been now employed by several States, to say: You know what. On election 
day, we are going to make sure targeted precincts have long lines, and 
then we are going to say you can't even get a sip of water from a 
friend in that line, in order to try to stop people from voting.
  Wow--the lengths these Republican house, statehouse, and State 
senators and Governors are going to stop people from voting. We have 
seen the strategies in the past. We have seen eliminating the number of 
precinct voting locations to make it harder for targeted areas to vote. 
We have seen locating them in new locations to confuse people. We have 
seen false information put out about where the locations are to make it 
harder to vote. We have seen the understaffing of key places to create 
long lines. Well, early voting, vote-by-mail, and protections in this 
bill stop these efforts to cheat in elections across our country.
  So we are defending that most powerful instrument ever devised by 
human beings for breaking down injustice with this Freedom to Vote 
bill. We are defending the right of every American to cast a ballot. We 
are fighting against the big three corruptions infesting, if you will, 
our election system across the country. This should be passed 100 to 0.
  I invite my Republican colleagues to remember the oath they took to 
the Constitution and to remember that the right to vote is at the very 
heart of that Constitution and join us in these core protections and to 
pass the Freedom to Vote Act on the floor of the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I am proud to stand on the Senate floor 
today with my colleagues Senator Klobuchar and Senator Merkley in 
support of the new Freedom to Vote Act that we just introduced. I want 
to talk about why it is so important, so urgent that Congress act right 
now to protect the sacred right to vote that is under assault across 
our Nation, but first I want to thank my friends who worked with me to 
get us to this point: Senator Klobuchar, who has worked on this issue 
for so long; Senator Merkley also; Senator Manchin; and Senators 
Schumer, Padilla, Kaine, King, and Tester. Our work is a testament to 
Democrats' commitment to protecting access to the ballot box for every 
eligible voter.
  I think it is important to remind us that we were blocked from 
debating this issue in June. It bears repeating so that the American 
people understand that that is what got stopped in June--not the actual 
bill but the ability to debate the bill on the Senate floor. But I am 
proud that our group was able to come together. We decided that we were 
not about to let this fight to protect voting rights die in this 
Congress.
  Passing voting rights is the most important thing we can do in this 
Congress because if we are going to lengthen and strengthen the cords 
of our democracy, that won't just happen. We will have to work for it. 
We will have to fight for it. We will have to stand up for it. And that 
is what we intend to do.
  That is why we worked on this bill through the negotiations on the 
bipartisan infrastructure deal. That work is very important. I have 
often said regarding our infrastructure work that America needs a home 
improvement project; that that work is not only an infrastructure bill, 
it is a jobs bill desperately needed. We have to build back better and 
create infrastructure so that families can thrive, so that workers can 
be engaged in the work that grows our economy, creates more jobs. But 
even while that work was going forward during the August recess, we 
were focused on writing this bill.
  The Freedom to Vote Act will improve access to the ballot for all 
eligible Americans by setting national standards for absentee voting, 
early voting, and in-person voting. It will make sure that the drop box 
is available for workers. It will enable the work that is so necessary 
to strengthen our democracy.
  This bill will end partisan gerrymandering--yet another way in which 
the voices of ordinary people are squeezed out of their democracy--and 
it will advance commonsense reforms to secure our elections.
  I am especially proud that this bill specifically addresses the wave 
of voter suppression laws we have seen take root in my home State of 
Georgia and all across this country since January. What kind of 
Congress would we be if we did not respond to all of these voter 
suppression bills that are mushrooming all over the country; a violent 
insurrection on this very Capitol, driven by the Big Lie, metastasized 
into a kind of voter suppression cancer all across the body politic?
  This is our moment, and this is the work that we must do. So I am 
proud that this bill includes provisions from my Preventing Election 
Subversion Act that will prevent what we are seeing in places like 
Fulton County, GA, right now, where partisan actors will interfere with 
the work of local officials, taking over the election, subverting the 
will of the people even while the votes are still being cast.
  It will also prevent a neighbor from leveraging baseless challenges 
to a voter's ability to cast a ballot and have it counted. Imagine 
that. And that is one of the provisions in SB 202 down in Georgia. Your 
neighbor can decide to challenge countless numbers of people and their 
right and legitimacy in casting their ballots--tie up the whole system 
with these kinds of baseless accusations. How will it be possible to 
certify any election?
  Simply put, the Freedom to Vote Act is all about securing our 
elections and

[[Page S6522]]

making the ballot box accessible so that every eligible American can 
exercise that basic right, the right to vote, no matter where they 
live.
  As we do this work, as challenging as it is, as disappointing as it 
was to have our beloved colleagues on the other side of the aisle block 
debate, I am not discouraged in this moment. I am encouraged by the 
voices and the legacy of those who committed to the idea of freedom.
  John Lewis was my parishioner, and although he has transitioned to 
eternity, his advice still echoes in the Halls of this Congress.
  Every Member of this Chamber ought to be able to get behind voting 
rights. It is the only reason we are here in the first place. I hope my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle will cosponsor and support the 
Freedom to Vote Act.
  I look forward to talking with Democrats and Republicans about how we 
can get this done while we continue working on economic and 
infrastructure packages, because we have to walk and chew gum at the 
same time. We have to repair our country's infrastructure, but we also 
have to protect and repair the infrastructure of our democracy. It is 
not either/or; it is both/and.
  We have always had infrastructure. We have always had roads and 
streets--important. We have always had bridges. John Lewis walked 
across a bridge in order to repair the infrastructure of our democracy, 
a bridge to the future.
  I know that some of my friends on the other side of the aisle are 
already saying that they are not going to support this bill, but in the 
past, I remind them, voting rights legislation has passed out of this 
Chamber with strong bipartisan support.
  I hope that this day will be no different. I say, at least give this 
bill a chance. Come, let us reason together. Let's talk about it. Let's 
have the voting rights discussion that we didn't have in June. It is 
not too late. Let's have the discussion that the American people 
deserve. Let's have an open debate and input from both sides here on 
the floor of the U.S. Senate. That is why we were sent here.
  There is a lot for my Republican friends to like in this bill. My 
Democratic colleagues and I stand ready to hear what you don't like. 
Together, we can try to find common ground. I hope my Republican 
friends will give this bill fair consideration and that we can get 
bipartisan support to get it over the finish line.
  Mr. President, as I close, I want to remind all of us that the only 
reason we are here in this Chamber at all is because somebody voted for 
us. Voting rights is not just some other issue alongside other issues. 
It gets to the heart of who we are in the first place--a democracy. We 
will always disagree about a whole range of issues, but after 
politicians have argued their case about infrastructure, about taxes, 
about healthcare, about national security, the most powerful words ever 
uttered in a democracy are ``the people have spoken.'' Shame on us if 
we allow the people's voices to be silenced in this Chamber.
  Voting rights are preservative of all other rights, and right now the 
right to vote is under attack. Our democracy is in a 9-1-1 emergency, 
and we must act now.
  I know that for those who have been in this body for a while, there 
is a sense in which you know you offer up proposals and they don't 
always make it and you live and you fight another day.
  When I look at what is going on across our country, I think that if 
we don't address what is happening right now, we will cross a Rubicon 
that imperils our democracy for years to come.
  I am not about to sit here silently and allow that to happen. Too 
many people died. Too much blood was shed. Too many sacrifices were 
made. Too much is at stake, and it is beneath the legacy of the 
greatest deliberative body on the planet to refuse to even have a 
debate about voting rights.
  I hope that my beloved colleagues on the other side of the aisle will 
come and reason together. Let's pass this out of this Chamber with 
strong support. We got some things done this year, but I believe that 
if we don't pass voting rights, history will rightly judge us harshly.
  Folks who sent us here are counting on us. History is waiting on us. 
Our children are watching us. And the great cloud of witnesses--John 
Lewis; a white woman named Viola Liuzzo, who died fighting for voting 
rights; Abraham Joshua Heschel; Medgar Evers--a great cloud of 
witnesses are urging us on to march toward the mark of the High 
Calling, the High Calling about our democratic ideals, a nation where 
every voice is heard and every vote counts.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am very proud to stand with my colleagues 
on the floor to talk about the Freedom to Vote Act. I was proud to work 
with my colleagues over many months--really, my purpose beginning in 
May--to help negotiate the bill to a place where it could do what needs 
to be done to accomplish the objectives my colleagues have described so 
well.
  I want to offer just a few words from the heart about why I am so 
impassioned about getting this bill done. By my count, there have been 
1,994 people who have served in the U.S. Senate--1,994.
  One hundred of us share a unique experience. One hundred of us were 
here on the only day in the history of this body when we were attacked 
by violent insurrectionists attempting to disrupt the peaceful transfer 
of power. So from whatever State we represent or whatever our 
background, we are unified in having shared an experience never to be 
imagined, never to be forgotten, and never to be repeated.
  I believe the fact that we shared this experience together with the 
Senate staff who were here with us, this puts a unique responsibility 
on our shoulders.
  First, let's understand what that day was about, that there are some 
who are trying to kind of downplay it--it was tourists visiting. We can 
laugh that off because we know that wasn't the case. There are others 
who are trying to downplay it in other ways--it was a riot, it was a 
protest, even that it was a violent protest. That is not what it was.
  If it had happened on January 5, it would have been a violent 
protest. If it had happened on January 7, it would have been a violent 
protest. But it didn't happen on January 5. It didn't happen on January 
7. It happened on a day established by law, at a time established by 
law, for a purpose established by law to disrupt that purpose.
  It was a violent protest organized and inflamed by a President to 
occur at precisely the moment that the Congress of the United States 
was carrying out the constitutional duty to certify the election of Joe 
Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President of the United 
States.
  It was designed to disrupt that certification, and it succeeded. For 
5 or 6 hours, we were locked out of the Chamber while the rampagers 
tried to stop the certification of the election. We were barricaded in 
the midst of the peak of the COVID pandemic side by side with staff in 
a room as the insurrectionists tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer 
of power.
  Those words ``peaceful transfer of power,'' ``disrupting,'' what does 
that mean?
  Let's unpack it further. It was an effort to disenfranchise more than 
80 million people in this country who had voted for Joe Biden and 
Kamala Harris. It was the single largest effort to disenfranchise 
voters in the history of the United States. That is what happened as we 
were barricaded first in this building.
  And how glad I am that you pages were not here. How glad I am I told 
my staff not to come to work that day. No one should have had to 
experience that. But it was an effort that succeeded for a period of 
hours to disenfranchise more than 80 million people.
  Here is a powerful story. On that day, we knew who had been elected 
President and Vice President. We knew what the House majority would be, 
but we did not know what the Senate majority would be. The Senate 
majority wasn't clear in November, and it wasn't clear in December, and 
it wasn't even clear on January 5, when my colleague who just spoke, 
from Georgia, had his race called that he had won a special election in 
Georgia. As we were under attack, it was still in doubt as to who would 
be the majority party in the U.S. Senate.
  As we were barricaded for hours in the midst of COVID in a room, side 
by

[[Page S6523]]

side with television monitors showing us what was happening at the 
Capitol, there then came a breaking news report that the last Senate 
race had been called in Georgia for Jon Ossoff, and so Democrats would 
now have a Senate majority.
  I am a religious person. Things happen for a reason. It was unclear 
who would be the leadership in the Senate. But in the midst of a 
pandemic that had unnecessarily killed 600,000 Americans, and now with 
an ongoing attack against the Capitol of the United States--unique in 
American history--by people trying to disenfranchise 80 million people, 
the news suddenly came: We want new leadership. We need new leadership.
  There is a reason for that. There is a reason that it happened in the 
middle of this attack. We have a burden on our shoulders to live up to 
the responsibility that we--100--uniquely share. That responsibility is 
to make sure that no voter--not 80 million, not 10 million, not a 
million, not 10, not 1--that no voter is disenfranchised in this 
country.
  That is why we have been given this unique opportunity to lead at 
this moment in time. That is what being victimized by that attack means 
in terms of our responsibility to this country and to our history. We 
have to carry out that responsibility.
  Now, if this were a Hollywood film, what would happen is the 
Democrats get the majority, and then all of a sudden we put to rest 
disenfranchisement--Democratic majority, we can stop the 
disenfranchisement of voters.
  But, no, the Big Lie didn't stop. The Big Lie didn't stop when we 
found out we had the majority. And this is often the case in powerful 
stories in human history. Like, you know, when Moses leads folks 
through the Red Sea to the other side, it is not all great as soon as 
they get there. They still have work to do.
  We got the majority, but we have work to do because in State after 
State after State, as my colleagues indicated, legislators in States 
where there are Republican Governors and Republican legislative Houses 
have thrown up one burden after the next to disenfranchise people, just 
as there was an effort to disenfranchise 80 million on January 6.
  Let me be clear. These State legislators, they may not be wearing 
``Camp Auschwitz'' T-shirts. They may not be carrying Confederate flags 
around. They may not be beating up police officers with flag poles or 
fence rails, but they are acting out of the same Big Lie that President 
Trump repeated ad nauseam when he encouraged people to come and be wild 
at the U.S. Capitol to overturn the peaceful transfer of power.
  And so the States are embracing these strategies so well described by 
my colleagues to make it harder for people to vote, to enable partisan 
politicians to take the power to count votes away from electoral 
officials if they don't like what that count would show, to even 
criminalize people who are trying to help their neighbors vote.
  Imagine this: making it a crime to give somebody water as they are 
waiting to vote, a crime punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, by up to a 
year in jail. This is the same Big Lie tactic that led to the attack on 
this body, and it is happening all over this country. There is a burden 
uniquely on our shoulders, if we were paying attention on January 6, to 
stand boldly to stop it and to stop it once and for all.
  That is what the Freedom to Vote Act is about. It is about ensuring 
that these mass efforts of disenfranchisement, which reached their most 
vivid and flowering in the violent attack on our Capitol, don't occur 
and that people have the ability to get access to a ballot and to have 
confidence that their ballots will be counted with integrity and that 
weird schemes and stunts and penalties and criminal punishment won't be 
thrown in their paths by one high hurdle after the next to keep them 
from participating in a democracy that we proudly proclaim ourselves to 
be. That is why I am so proud to be one of the cosponsors of this bill 
with my colleagues.
  I was a civil rights lawyer for 17 years. You might think that is why 
I like this bill. No. The thing that makes me passionate about the bill 
is I was an eyewitness to the biggest disenfranchisement effort in the 
history of the United States, and I don't think we can say: Yes, we 
were here, and we were eyewitnesses to it. It happened to us and the 
people we care about, but there is nothing we can do.
  We can't say, after having seen what we have seen and done what we 
have done and been where we have been, that there is nothing we can do. 
We can't. We have to act.
  Let me just conclude and say this: I have been on 10 ballots and been 
sworn into office many times as a city councilman, as a mayor, as a 
Lieutenant Governor, as a Governor, and as a U.S. Senator. When you get 
sworn in, you always say some version of this--it varies slightly in 
local and State office, as the Presiding Officer knows, who was also a 
mayor and a Governor, and it also has some version of this within it--a 
pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States 
against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
  I had an epiphany in the days after January 6, and the epiphany was 
this: When I would take that oath of office, it was just kind of like 
the thing you would say so you could do your job. If you had asked me, 
``Hey, Senator Kaine,'' or ``Hey, Governor Kaine,'' or ``Hey, 
Councilman Kaine, what is your job?'' I would have given you a job 
description, and the job description would have been that I want to 
build schools; that I want to make sure that our troops have the 
resources they need to keep our country safe. I mean, I always had a 
job description in my mind. I have been in elected office for 27 years 
now. I have always had a job description in my mind: education, 
healthcare, defense--the next thing on my ``to do'' list. I always had 
a job description in my mind.
  Never did I think, until after January 6, that my oath of office was 
my job description. We say that oath of office, and we sometimes don't 
think about it. No. That oath of office is my job description, and I am 
kind of sorry that it took me 27 years to figure that out: to support 
and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, 
foreign and domestic. Those who would disenfranchise 80 million or 
those who would disenfranchise 1 are domestic enemies of the 
Constitution of the United States.
  I have pledged to support and defend that Constitution. This bill--
the debate that we will have and the vote that we will have--is a test 
of whether we mean what we say. I so look forward to engaging in this 
most important debate with my colleagues in the days to come.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, before I begin, I ask unanimous consent 
to deliver a portion of my remarks in Spanish.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, in Spanish, we say ``en Espanol,'' but I 
know the Presiding Officer knew that from Colorado.
  I rise today, as we mark the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, to 
reflect on a historic leader whose work inspires me in this fight for 
voting rights and the work that we have before us.
  Willie Velasquez, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 
dedicated his life to improving the freedom to vote in Latino 
communities.
  Everywhere he went, he brought a simple motto. You might have heard 
it.
  (English translation of the statement made in Spanish is as follows:)

       ``Your vote is your voice.''

  Willie Velasquez was born in 1944 and grew up in a Latino community 
in Texas which suffered from the harms of segregation, redlining, and 
government neglect. He understood that the path to greater recognition 
for Latinos was through participation in our democracy. So Willie set 
out to make sure Latinos across the Southwest could participate.
  In 1974, Willie Velasquez founded his groundbreaking organization, 
the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. Through his 
efforts, Willie helped bring the vote--and a powerful voice--to many 
Latino communities.
  Now, Willie's successes were built on the hard-earned victories of 
those of past civil rights leaders. Especially critical was Congress's 
1975 extension

[[Page S6524]]

of the Voting Rights Act--yes, a bipartisan reauthorization of the 
Federal Voting Rights Act--which established protections for language 
minorities, like Spanish speakers. In just 10 years, with Willie's and 
other activists' hard work on the ground, the number of Latinos 
registered to vote nearly doubled, and in the same 10 years, the number 
of Latinos holding elected office also nearly doubled.
  That is the power of the freedom to vote and the power of what we can 
do here in the Senate and here in Congress--give every American a voice 
in our democracy.
  Now, in his time, Willie fought to do exactly this, like the 
generations of Americans of all ages, colors, creeds, and genders who 
came before him. Their efforts reflect a fundamental truth about our 
country: We are stronger when more Americans can vote, and we are 
stronger when all communities have a say in government. But the path to 
realizing our highest ideals has never been easy. From a convention 
hall in Seneca Falls to a bridge in Selma, from Willie's home in San 
Antonio, TX, to this very Chamber, the voting rights' victories of each 
generation have been hard-fought and hard-won, and it is no different 
today.
  In recent months, we have seen the latest challenge to the core of 
our democracy: scores of new laws proposed by Republican State 
legislatures to target the past five decades of gains in voting rights; 
cynical politicians, spreading false claims of voter fraud because they 
fear losing in a fair election. You can see the danger of it even in my 
home State of California where, just yesterday, we held a recall 
election. Republicans ran a campaign of disinformation, spreading 
baseless claims of massive voter fraud before the polls even closed, 
before they even opened, and long before a single ballot was even 
counted. It is straight out of Donald Trump's playbook--the same 
playbook that perpetuated the Big Lie and fueled the domestic terrorism 
that the world witnessed on January 6.
  It is no coincidence that the cynical claims of voter fraud are often 
targeted at communities of color. In the face of these challenges, we 
must overcome, together, again. We must renew our collective fight for 
our democracy. It is up to us. The time is now to get the job done.
  It is an honor to lead the Freedom to Vote Act alongside my 
colleagues Senators Klobuchar, Merkley, Warnock, Manchin, King, Tester, 
and Kaine.
  The Freedom to Vote Act will make it easier for all eligible citizens 
to register to vote and to cast their ballots. This bill will set a 
baseline of protections for voters across the country, with 
commonsense, proven reforms that have already been successfully 
implemented in blue and red States across the country. I urge all of my 
colleagues to join us and vote to strengthen our democracy.
  As the first Latino to represent California in this body, in the U.S. 
Senate, I am proud to be spending this Hispanic Heritage Month fighting 
for voting rights because so many of our community's gains have been 
achieved through political participation and representation. The fight 
to expand voting rights is, indeed, part of our heritage. It is also a 
tradition that unites Americans because we have come together, 
generation after generation, to expand the promise of our democracy for 
all. Yes, we are strongest when every eligible voter can make their 
voice heard.
  ``Your vote is your voice.
  (English translation of the statement made in Spanish is as follows:)
  Your vote is your voice.''
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues: Senator Padilla, 
with your great experience as secretary of state and how that has 
assisted us in coming together on this bill; Senator Warnock, with the 
passion and firsthand experience you have in Georgia; Senator Kaine, 
for an extraordinary speech, wherein we all had to step back and think 
about our job description: to protect and defend the Constitution. It 
is not just ours on this side of the aisle; it is also our colleagues' 
on the other side of the aisle.
  We have this special obligation to protect this democracy and to 
cherish it and to pass it on to the next generation. The way you do 
that fundamentally is by guaranteeing Americans the freedom to vote. 
That is all this bill is about--putting in place minimum national 
standards that we see in so many of our States but that, sadly, right 
now, are threatened in a number of those States for no other reason 
except--to quote Reverend Warnock--that some people don't want some 
people to vote. Our democracy is too important to let that happen.
  With that, we are going to end our segment here, and we will be back 
to discuss this bill more next week.

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