[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 183 (Tuesday, October 19, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7082-S7084]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ELECTION SECURITY

  Mr. KING. Madam President, the United States of America is an anomaly 
in world history. We are a 245-year experiment in self-government, 
which is based upon an idea that was radical in 1776. It was tested at 
Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, and the Wilderness. It was defended at 
Anzio, Iwo Jima, and Normandy, and was reaffirmed in 1965. It is an 
idea that the people--all the people--are the ultimate source of power 
and can govern themselves through their elected representatives. That 
was a radical notion in 1776.
  The historical norm is just the opposite--kings; pharaohs; dictators; 
czars; warlords; emperors; and, more recently, presidents for life. 
Throughout most of human history, and right up to the present day, in 
most countries, the people have little or no say in the decisions that 
determine their fate. And these rulers are rarely, if ever, beneficent. 
In fact, again, the historical norm is just the opposite--pervasive 
corruption, the pursuit of power for its own sake, the crushing of 
dissent, sham elections, and the abuse or even elimination of anyone 
not sufficiently loyal or useful to the leader. That is the historical 
norm.
  There is nothing surprising about this because it reflects human 
nature. History fairly shouts at us that power corrupts, and absolute 
power corrupts absolutely.
  Given the consistent history of this experience--of warlords, 
dictators, czars, and the abuse of their authority--it is clear that 
what we are doing, this experiment, is fragile. It is not the norm. It 
is an anomaly. What we have and take for granted is in no way 
guaranteed. As has been the case for democratic experiments throughout 
history, it can fail. Rarely can it fail from external attack. Almost 
always, democratic experiments fail from erosion from within.
  On the surface, our democratic system protects us by resting upon our 
ingenuous Constitution, the primary purpose of which is to establish an 
effective government while at the same time dividing and dispersing 
power, and in Madison's evocative phrase: Obliging the government to 
control itself.
  And of all the safeguards built into the Constitution--and there are 
many; two Houses of Congress, vetoes, division of the war power, advise 
and consent, enumerated powers, Federalism, the Bill of Rights--of all 
of those protections, the most fundamental and essential is regular 
elections, the clearest expression of the people's will.
  For most of my life, I have not really thought much about how 
elections actually work. You go to the town office or the school gym, 
they cross your name off on a list, hand you a ballot, and you go into 
a booth and make your

[[Page S7083]]

choice. You then put the marked ballot into a box or hand it to a 
clerk--usually it is a volunteer doing their civic duty in my 
hometown--and then they run it through a counter. Or you can get a 
mail-in ballot from your town clerk, mark it at home and send it in. Or 
in my town you can drop it in a drop box anytime of the night or day. 
It is out in the front of the town office.
  That is it until later that night, when the results--either from 
automatic counters or from hand counting the ballots themselves--are 
announced, precinct by precinct, town by town, city by city, and State 
by State.
  And then you go to bed, happy or unhappy, energized or discouraged, 
either reveling in the victory of your preferred candidates or 
determined to work harder next time. And thanks to the Framers, there 
always is a next time, usually in 2 years hence.
  The next day, you go about your business trusting--trusting--that the 
system was operating according to the rules and that the announced vote 
count accurately reflects the preference of you and your fellow 
citizens. The key word is ``trust.''
  The miraculous result of this entire process is something we 
completely take for granted but is exceedingly rare--exceedingly rare--
in human history: the peaceful transfer of power, whether it is the 
city council, the Congress, or the Presidency itself.
  But two interrelated things are happening right now with regard to 
this system that are unprecedented in my lifetime and have caused me to 
worry as I never have before about the future of my country. These two 
things are profoundly dangerous to our fragile Republic.
  One is the breakdown of trust in the system itself and the other is 
an overtly partisan attempt to use this loss of trust as a pretext to 
change the results of future elections by limiting the participation of 
voters deemed unworthy--although that is rarely said out loud--or 
unlikely to vote for your particular political party.
  This discussion is usually framed in terms of election integrity--the 
prevention of widespread voter fraud--which it is argued is tainting 
the outcome of our elections.
  Unfortunately, these so-called election integrity measures almost 
invariably end up limiting the participation of a substantial number of 
voters, many of whom have historically been denied the right to vote by 
one device or another for over 100 years. It is limiting that 
participation either as inadvertent collateral damage or, more likely, 
as stone-cold partisan voter suppression.
  When I used to interact with the main legislature either as a private 
citizen for many years or as Governor, the inevitable first question 
from the chair of the committee was: What is the problem we are trying 
to solve here? You want to change the law; what is the problem we are 
trying to solve? In this case, is the problem really voter fraud, or is 
it election results the party in power in a particular State doesn't 
like?

  The implicit burden that this question puts upon those who would 
change a law is to demonstrate by some reasonable and credible evidence 
that there is a problem in the first place. And simply saying--or 
endlessly repeating--that there is a problem doesn't make it so. To put 
it another way, repeating a lie doesn't make it true.
  Every objective study to try to detect widespread voter fraud in this 
country has failed to produce credible evidence of anything but 
scattered and vanishingly rare cases. I am not saying it doesn't exist, 
but they are scattered and vanishingly rare cases.
  Even the overtly partisan so-called ``audit'' of the votes in 
Maricopa County, AZ, failed to find what they were so desperately 
looking for--failed to find what they were so desperately looking for.
  The key question is not whether such fraud exists at all but whether 
it is so widespread as to change the results of an election involving a 
substantial number of voters.
  In the wake of the 2016 election, the President convened a commission 
to assess this very question, but the commission was disbanded within 8 
months with no published finding of significant election fraud 
whatsoever. That was their mission--to find fraud--and they couldn't 
find it.
  Further, as I mentioned, I know of no objective study that has ever 
concluded that such widespread fraud exists anywhere in our country.
  Even more compelling is that in spite of Herculean efforts by the 
former President and his supporters over the course of the months 
following the 2020 election, no credible evidence has yet been produced 
to support his allegations, and all of the allegations have been 
rejected by every court--more than 60. They have been rejected by every 
court that has considered it. The only fraud here is the allegations 
themselves.
  In other words, not only is there no evidence of substantial fraud, 
what evidence there is reaches the opposite conclusion. But here is the 
problem; here is what is chilling. Fully, one-third of Americans and 
two-thirds of members of the Republican Party now believe that the 2020 
Presidential election was not legitimate, that there was widespread 
fraud, and that the election was somehow stolen--not based upon 
evidence, because there isn't any, but based upon the repeated 
assertions of the former President and his supporters.
  The problem with this goes well beyond the wave of voter suppression 
legislation that is sweeping the country. The deeper problem is the 
massive and unprecedented erosion of trust in the electoral system 
itself, the beating heart of our democracy. Of all the depravations of 
the former President, this is by far the worst.
  In relentlessly pursuing his narrow self-interest, he has grievously 
wounded democracy itself. And, by the way, I mean ``narrow self-
interest'' quite literally. He doesn't give the slightest damn about 
any of us, about any of us in this body. He will cast any or all of us 
aside whenever it suits his needs of the moment. Everyone in this room 
knows this to be true.
  The reason this is so destructive is that if you can't trust 
elections, what are your options? What are your options for making the 
transcendent decisions upon which our society is based?
  One is to change the rules to discourage your perceived enemies from 
voting. Check--that is in the works.
  Another is to change the rules to give partisan legislators the power 
to override election results they don't like. Check--also in the works.
  Another is to contrive pseudo legal arguments to justify the 
corruption of the counting of electoral votes and then to pressure the 
Vice President, who presides over the counting of the electoral votes, 
to join in the scheme. Check--we now know this was very much in the 
works in the days leading up to January 6.
  Or, finally, tragically, try to change the results if you don't trust 
elections through violence or threats of violence. Check--January 6 and 
death threats to election officials of both parties across the country.
  January 6 was not a random day on the calendar. It was the day 
appointed by law to finalize the results of the November election. Many 
of those who came to Washington that day were not there to protest but 
were there with the explicit purpose of disrupting and stopping this 
crucial final step in our democratic process.
  The rallying cry that day was not ``protest the steal.'' It was 
``stop the steal.'' And that is exactly what was attempted in this room 
on January 6.
  It is important to remember that most failures of democracy, as we 
look at history, started with legitimate elections. But once in office, 
the leader manipulated the electoral process to consolidate their hold 
on power, just as was attempted last winter. And once power is seized, 
the control and reach of the modern surveillance state is truly 
terrifying, truly terrifying. Ask the Uighurs in China or members of 
the opposition in Russia, if you can find any alive.
  Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Hungary are all examples of the slide 
from democracy into authoritarianism that has happened just in our 
living memory, just in our lifetimes. This is not a theoretical threat. 
We have seen it already happen in our lifetimes. Those countries still 
have elections, but they don't mean much.
  And what if the current wave of voter suppression legislation 
succeeds and keeps tens or hundreds of thousands of

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people from voting in 2022 or 2024? Or what if in 2024 a partisan 
legislature in a swing State--and they are giving themselves this power 
right now--votes to override the election results in their State and 
send their own preferred set of electors to Washington? Then it won't 
just be Republicans who distrust elections, and we will be left with a 
downward spiral toward a hollow shell of democracy, where only raw 
power prevails and a peaceful transfer becomes a distant memory.

  There has been a great deal of talk in recent weeks and months of a 
possible constitutional crisis in 2022 or 2024. We don't have to wait 
that long. We are in the midst of such a crisis right now. One of our 
great political parties has embraced the idea that our last election 
was fraudulent, that our current President is illegitimate, that they 
must move legislatures across the country to ``fix'' the results--to 
``fix'' the results--of future elections.
  Here is the part that I think is the most tragic. A substantial 
portion of our population has lost faith in our democratic system 
because they have been repeatedly told that something important was 
stolen from them, even though that is untrue. And that portion of our 
population seems prepared to accept some version of authoritarianism. 
All but the most extreme sources of information have been devalued, and 
violence bubbles just below the surface.
  But it doesn't have to be this way. We in this body, perhaps more 
than anyone else in this country, have the power to change direction, 
to pull our country back from the brink, and to begin the work of 
restoring our democracy, as we did in the Revolution, as we did in the 
Civil War, and as we did in the civil rights struggles of 60 years 
ago--first, by simply telling the truth and then by enacting a set of 
basic protections of the sacred right to vote.
  It won't be easy, and it will involve risk. I am aware of that. I 
understand that. It will be particularly difficult when we are asked to 
speak hard truths that many of our most ardent supporters don't want to 
hear. But the alternative is worse, worse even than losing your job in 
this body. The alternative is the loss of our identity as a people, the 
loss of the miracle of self-government, the loss of the idea of 
America.
  I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that we are at a hinge of 
history, that circumstances have thrust us--those of us in this body--
into a moment when the fate of the American experiment hangs in the 
balance.
  We are the heirs and trustees--I emphasize ``trustees''--of a 
tradition that goes back to Jefferson and Lincoln, to Webster, Madison, 
Margaret Chase Smith, and, yes, our friend John McCain. All of them 
were partisans in one way or another, but all shared an overriding 
commitment to the idea that animates the American experiment, the idea 
that our government is of, by, and for the people--all the people.
  Lincoln thought that the most important word in the Declaration of 
Independence was ``all.'' ``All men are created equal''--all, all the 
people.
  Now is the moment that we are called upon to reach beyond our region, 
our State, our party, ourselves to save and reinvigorate the sputtering 
flame of the American idea.
  Yes, democracy is an anomaly in world history. We have to remember 
that what we have is unusual. It is rare, and it is fragile. It rests 
upon the Constitution and laws, to be sure, but it also rests even more 
on the trust our people place in our democratic system and in us.
  Deliberately undermining that trust for short-term political 
advantage, which is exactly what is happening right now--undermining 
that trust for political advantage in the short term is exactly what is 
happening right now--is a tragic and dangerous game.
  No election, no endorsement, no Senate seat, no Presidency is worth 
it. Nothing is worth destroying what our forebears fought and died 
for--nothing.
  Several weeks ago, a bipartisan group of us went to Gettysburg and 
walked the battlefield with two leaders from the Army War College. I 
have been there before but have never been so moved by the experience 
as I was on this trip. The stories of valor and supreme sacrifice--the 
20th Maine on Little Round Top, you know that I would mention that; the 
1st Minnesota at the exposed center of the Union line; the Iron Brigade 
on the first day; the colossal losses on both sides, unimaginable 
losses on both sides in a matter of 3 days--were a sobering reminder of 
what it took to preserve this country.
  But we learned something else that day--that it was a near thing. If 
a Union officer named Strong Vincent had hesitated in moving those 
three regiments to the top of Little Round Top, or if an officer from 
Minnesota named William Colvill had hesitated in leading the 1st 
Minnesota on a suicidal charge--82-percent casualties, a suicidal 
charge--into the teeth of the Confederate advance, our country would 
have been lost. It was a near thing. It never had struck me so hard as 
it did at Gettysburg several weeks ago.
  And so it is today--a near thing--only, the test is not on the 
battlefield, and no one here is being asked to give up their lives. We 
are simply being asked to tell the truth, to recommit to the ideal of 
democracy, to keep faith with our history and our inheritance. And if 
we hesitate, all could be lost. This is not speculation. All could be 
lost.
  And we now know from the events of January 6 and the relentless 
attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election in the last days 
of the prior administration, it was and still is a near thing.
  That is what is so chilling and frightening. As it is in the old 
Protestant hymn I remember from my youth, so it is today:

       Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.

  I believe that this is that moment for each of us. The concluding 
words of Lincoln in his message to Congress in the dark winter of 1862 
have never been more apt. They are eerily applicable to us today. Here 
is what Abraham Lincoln said:

       Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this 
     Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite 
     of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, 
     can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which 
     we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the 
     latest generation.

  In honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. Indeed, destiny has 
placed us here at one of history's fateful moments. Our response to it 
will be our most important legacy. Of all the other things that we have 
done, this moment will be our most important legacy.
  I believe we all know our responsibility. And whether we like it or 
not, history will record whether we--each one of us--meets that 
responsibility. Madam President, may God, working through each of us, 
save the United States of America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.

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