[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 193 (Wednesday, November 3, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7692-S7695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Election Security

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today is the 1-year anniversary of an 
election that was judged the most secure in the history of America. Let 
me say that again. The election that ended November 3, 2020, 1 year 
ago, was judged the most secure in American history. That is not my 
opinion; that is the official conclusion, under the Trump 
administration, of his Department of Homeland Security, which 
coordinates with the Nation's top cyber security and voting 
infrastructure experts to protect our elections. They released that 
assessment 10 days after last year's election, and they did it in the 
face of a dangerous and unprecedented avalanche of attacks and tweets 
from the enraged President Donald Trump, who claimed falsely that the 
election had been stolen from him.
  Those election security experts were not alone. President Trump and 
his loyalists filed more than 50 lawsuits in State and Federal courts, 
repeating their false claims of voter fraud and stolen votes--50. Every 
crackpot theory that Rudy Giuliani could glean or spawn on the internet 
was tested in court. How did they do? Fifty lawsuits. No evidence to 
back their claims in the courts; only bizarre conspiracy theories and 
far-right internet gossip, which they accepted as gospel. Well, the 
lawsuits were all dismissed, some even by judges President Trump had 
nominated. It was not a great day for the theory of a stolen election 
in the courts of America.
  What happened next? What happened was documented by the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, which I chair. We brought witnesses before us to 
really explore stage 2 of President Trump's effort to overturn the last 
election.
  When he couldn't win in the courts, he decided to go to the 
Department of Justice. William Barr, his honored, loyal Attorney 
General, resigned after announcing he could find nothing wrong with the 
election, and then President Trump took it in his own hands. With a few 
of his allies, one of them Jeffrey Clark in the Department of Justice, 
they tried to pressure the Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, to 
send a letter out to the attorneys general and other State authorities 
across the Nation to tell them to suspend reporting the electoral 
college vote count.
  Well, Jeffrey Rosen and others stood up to the President even when he 
threatened to dismiss him and replace him. In fact, when that happened, 
a number of people in the Department of Justice, many of whom were 
appointees by President Trump, said that they would resign en mass if 
that happened.
  So the Trump approach to take this to the Department of Justice and 
to railroad his way through there failed, but the Big Lie continued. We 
all know about the death and destruction of the Big Lie in this Capitol 
Building, in this Senate Chamber, on January 6. In this Capitol 
Building, 5 people lost their lives, and over 100 law enforcement were 
attacked by the mob that descended on this building. The entire world 
looked on in disbelief to think that a President would send a mob up to 
overrun the Capitol and to stop the electoral college vote count.
  The Big Lie is also corroding America's faith in our electoral 
system. A new poll released this week disclosed that only one in three 
Republican voters trusts that the 2024 elections will be fair--only one 
in three.
  One year ago, Americans braved a lethal pandemic to cast their 
ballots. Many stood in line, some for hours. The 2020 general election 
saw the highest voter turnout in more than a century, according to the 
Brennan Center. And as I said, it was our most secure election ever, as 
judged by President Trump's Department of Homeland Security and his 
Attorney General, William Barr. We ought to be proud of that.
  Sadly, however, instead of telling people the truth and defending our 
elections, lawmakers in many States are using the Big Lie, propagated 
by former President Trump, as a pretext to undermine America's right to 
vote. We need to use examples here so you understand what we are 
saying.
  Remember the runoff election for two senatorial seats in the State of 
Georgia? It was an important election, and there were unprecedented 
numbers of voters participating in it. The law in Georgia at the time 
said that people could register to vote between the official election 
count on November 3 and the runoff election count in January. Then the 
Georgia Legislature, after two Democratic Senators were elected, 
changed that and said: No, you can't register to vote in that interim 
period of time. They reduced the amount of time that people would have 
to cast absentee ballots.
  Since the January 6 assault on the Capitol, more than 425 bills have 
been introduced in 49 States to make it harder to vote and in some 
cases easier for some politicians to overturn elections if they don't 
like voters' choices.
  This is exactly how democracies wither. If we undermine the most 
fundamental concept of democracy--the right to vote and the right for 
people in that electorate to choose its leaders--we are going to weaken 
this democracy that we were honored to inherit.

  Three times this year on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Republican 
Senators have used the filibuster, which historically has been the 
favorite tool of segregationists--and I might add, many of those 
segregationists were Democrats--to prevent this Senate from even 
debating voting rights. Let me say that again. Republicans have used 
the filibuster to prevent the Senate from even debating both the For 
the People Act twice and the Freedom to Vote Act.
  The other day, I looked up the cloture vote on another of our 
Nation's great laws, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On June 10, 1964, 
Senators voted to end the longest filibuster in history and allowed the 
Civil Rights Act to move forward. The vote tally is important. Among 
Republican Senators, 27 voted for cloture to end the filibuster, and 6 
voted not to, to support the continuation of the filibuster--27 to 6 on 
the Republican side. The vote by Democratic Senators, as history judges 
it, and I stand by that judgment, was less noble. Forty-four Democrats 
voted to end the filibuster on the Civil Rights Act, and 23 voted to 
sustain it.
  So if the Republicans voted with such a strong majority in favor of 
ending the filibuster that was propagated by Democratic Senators at the 
time against the Civil Rights Act, what has happened since? What has 
become of this Republican Party, this party of Abraham Lincoln? In 
fact, what has become of the party of Ronald Reagan?
  You see, 40 years ago this week, President Reagan proudly signed a 
bill

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extending the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for 25 
years. This is what Ronald Reagan, Republican President of the United 
States, said: ``For this nation to remain true to its principles, we 
cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted, or defiled. The 
right to vote,'' he said, ``is the crown jewel of American liberties, 
and we will not see its luster diminished.''
  What a statement--as powerful and decisive as one might ask from a 
Republican President when he extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  So I want to commend my friend, and she is my friend, Senator Lisa 
Murkowski, the senior Senator from Alaska, for remaining true to the 
values of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan even in this hyperpartisan 
age.
  Later today, the Senate will vote on whether to begin debate on the 
compromise version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The 
compromise is the result of months of good-faith negotiation involving 
Senator Leahy, the lead Democratic sponsor, my office, as well as 
Senator Manchin, Senator Murkowski, and others who support this 
legislation. It will restore the original intention and protections of 
the 1965 Voting Rights Act, before misguided rulings by the Supreme 
Court gutted that magnificent law and rendered many of its critical 
protections vulnerable.
  When a narrow conservative majority in the Supreme Court struck down 
the Voting Rights Act enforcement provision 8 years ago, it concluded 
that Congress could come up with a new enforcement formula for our 
times. Well, we did. This is it. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights 
Advancement Act contains that new formula. It is fair, it is 
bipartisan, and we need it urgently to stop the nationwide assault on 
voting rights that is being justified by President Trump's Big Lie.
  Years ago, in one of the most memorable experiences in my public 
life, early on a foggy Sunday morning, I stood on the Edmund Pettus 
Bridge in Selma, AL, with my friend John Lewis. The two of us looked 
across at that piece of territory just at the bottom of the bridge 
where John Lewis nearly died when he was beaten during that march.
  John Lewis risked his life so poor people and Black people in the 
Deep South could vote.
  John Lewis had more moral courage than anyone I have known.
  Many of our Republican friends say they revere him too. Well, today 
is the chance to show it. John Lewis championed the Voting Rights 
Advancement Act in the months before he died. He knew it would protect 
the America he loved and the cause he nearly died for.
  The bill we will vote to begin debating later today is based on the 
same foundation as the Voting Rights Act extension that passed the 
Senate unanimously in 2006. Unanimously, it passed. But that was then, 
and this is now.
  Do you know who voted in 2006 for the protections that we seek to 
restore with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act?
  Senator Lisa Murkowski was one of those who did. But also at that 
time in 2006, the Senate Republican Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell; 
the Senate Republican Whip, Senator John Thune--they voted for it too. 
It was a bipartisan, unanimous undertaking.
  Next week, Americans will pause to honor the courage and sacrifice of 
our veterans. Before we vote on whether to allow the Senate to even 
begin debating voting rights, I urge my Republican friends to remember 
the words spoken by another President, President Johnson.
  He spoke in the Capitol Rotunda, surrounded by Republican and 
Democratic Senators of the day and the Reverend Martin Luther King and 
other heroes of the long struggle to secure voting rights. President 
Johnson called the passage of the Voting Rights Act ``a triumph for 
freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any 
battlefield.''
  For all those--the thousands--who have risked their lives to defend 
this country, they were defending not just a name, not just a piece of 
geography; they were defending our rights as Americans and they were 
prepared to die for it, whether on the foreign battlefield or on a 
bridge in Selma.
  I urge my Republican colleagues to let the Senate debate voting 
rights. Vote ``yes'' for cloture.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on the 
latest power grab by our friends across the aisle, a bill that is 
called the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021.
  The most important reason to vote against this legislation is that it 
is clearly unconstitutional.
  I know it is unusual for Members of the legislative branch to make 
statements like that, but we do take an oath to uphold the Constitution 
and laws of the United States, and I think it is part of our 
responsibility to assess the constitutionality of legislation that is 
being proposed and to make a judgment on whether it is constitutional 
or not.
  One reason why I say that is because the Supreme Court has made very 
clear that it is within the authority of the States to conduct 
elections, and that those elections must be run subject to the Voting 
Rights Act; but that is section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which 
applies across the entire country.
  One of the reasons we find ourselves in this position today is 
because, in 2006, our Democratic colleagues proposed an extension of 
the Voting Rights Act but did not update the formula by which covered 
States were being determined. In other words, in 2006, they did not 
reflect the huge improvement and advances made in minority voting 
strength since 1965.
  I think you could say without fear of contradiction that the Voting 
Rights Act is one of the most important and most successful pieces of 
legislation ever passed in this country. The good news is that it has 
worked exactly as Congress had hoped. So our colleagues are really 
trying to pass an unconstitutional law, which would require States to 
change their voting rules to ask permission of the Biden Justice 
Department before they do so.
  As Chief Justice Roberts laid out in the Shelby County case, that is 
a departure from the norm, to be sure, and can only be justified to 
remedy past discrimination. But if you look at the current numbers of 
minority voting strength around the country, you see minorities voting 
at historically high numbers and even in many instances exceeding that 
of the majority. So this is really a piece of legislation that is being 
sold under false pretenses.
  Based on the way our Democratic colleagues talk about the state of 
voting rights in America, you would think the Supreme Court had struck 
down the Voting Rights Act. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
who just spoke, the Democratic whip, described the current law as an 
``insidious effort to suppress the right of voters of color.''
  The majority leader, Senator Schumer, recently said that the right to 
vote was ``under attack in ways we have not seen in generations.''
  And the Speaker of the House has said ``voting rights are under 
relentless attack.''
  But the facts do not align with this doom and gloom picture of 
America. In 2020, roughly two-thirds of all eligible voters cast a 
ballot. In Texas, 66 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, 11.3 
million voters. Compared to 2016, 17 million more people voted in 2020. 
This includes a higher turnout in Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian-
American communities.

  When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act back in 1965, the goal--
the laudable goal, which we all share--was to eliminate discriminatory 
practices, and there is no question that it ultimately has worked.
  In 2012, for the first time on record, the turnout among Black voters 
was higher than that of White voters--higher. And in 2012, Hispanic and 
Asian voters turned out at the highest rate on record.
  So, clearly, thankfully, we have come a long way since 1965. And 
despite what Democrats would have you believe, the Voting Rights Act is 
alive and well and continues to protect minority Americans from 
discrimination.
  Even though the facts don't align with the Democrats' sky-is-falling 
depiction of voting rights in America, that hasn't stopped them from 
pushing this false narrative of widespread voter suppression. As our 
colleagues have demonstrated over the past few years,

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they have one tried-and-true strategy: if you can't win the game, 
change the rules.
  They failed to stop conservative nominees from reaching the Supreme 
Court, so their solution is to pack the Supreme Court with additional 
Justices--just add more liberal Justices. They are uninterested in 
bipartisanship, so they proposed ending the legislative filibuster. We 
have heard that time and time again. The Democratic whip just talked 
about the filibuster. And since they failed to secure a mandate in 
Congress, they want to forever change the rules of America's elections 
to rig the game in their favor.
  We have seen a steady stream of bills designed by our Democratic 
colleagues to achieve this end. This current bill, I think, is about 
the third iteration. First came the so-called For the People Act.
  Who could be against the For the People Act?
  It was so unpopular among Democrats that they had to go back to the 
drawing board and rewrite it. When the updated version came to the 
floor for a Senate vote, it went down with bipartisan opposition. So 
they came back from their drawing board once again, giving their 
legislation a new and different name: the Freedom to Vote Act.
  They stripped out some of the most egregious provisions, but not 
nearly enough to change the fate of this partisan bill; and like its 
predecessor, it failed to pass the Senate.
  But now our Democratic colleagues, they really do have the answer: a 
bill that perverts the cause of voting rights to give the Democratic 
Party unprecedented control over America's elections.
  At the heart of this legislation is the preclearance regime. In other 
words, the States would have to ask the Federal Government: Can we pass 
laws in our State?
  And it would be up to the Biden Justice Department and Merrick 
Garland to say yes or no.
  Now, back in 1965, the original Voting Rights Act did have a 
preclearance requirement, but it is clear that, according to the 
Supreme Court, that was only justified based on a history of past 
discrimination, which has now been essentially eradicated, if you 
believe the numbers of minority voters who are casting their ballots 
now.
  So think about the children's game, ``Mother, may I?'' All the kids 
line up on one side of the room except one who stands on the other side 
and acts like the mother. Before anyone can move forward, they have to 
ask, ``Mother, may I?'' Sometimes the mother says ``yes, you may,'' and 
sometimes she says ``no, you may not.'' Sometimes she even orders the 
children to take a step backward.
  That is eventually what Democrats are proposing in this legislation, 
to make the Biden Justice Department the mother, and the States have to 
ask, ``Mother, may I?'' before they could even fulfill their 
constitutional responsibilities.
  In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the portion of the law that 
set the formula for when a State or local jurisdiction would have to 
seek preclearance. But, to be clear--and you can't tell this from the 
rhetoric on the left--the Court did not strike down the Voting Rights 
Act in its entirety; just the formula that determined which States 
would be covered. Because, as the Supreme Court said, that formula had 
to reflect current conditions, and, instead, Congress chose not to 
update the formula from 1965. That was section 4 of the Voting Rights 
Act, which the Supreme Court of the United States held 
unconstitutional.
  Chief Justice Roberts, in his opinion, speaking of the formula in 
that legislation, said: `` . . . history did not end in 1965.''
  Well, here's an example. The formula set in 1965 required States to 
receive preclearance if they had any ``test or device'' that restricts 
voting. That would include things like literacy tests or subjective 
determinations of good moral character, which are, thankfully, nowhere 
to be found today.
  Democrats have tried to market this bill as a response to the Supreme 
Court's decision, but the truth is this legislation goes far beyond 
updating that outdated formula.
  It would make the formula so broad that virtually every State would 
have to ask of the Biden Justice Department, ``Mother, may I?'' before 
making any changes in their election laws. So if a county or municipal 
utility district or the State itself wanted to do something as simple 
as clean up voter rolls and remove the names of dead people, they would 
have to ask the Federal Government and the Biden Justice Department for 
permission to do so.
  Well, this is the same organization--the Biden Justice Department--
that recently took aggressive actions to discourage parents from 
exercising their constitutional right to speak out at local school 
board meetings.
  Clearly, we don't need to vest States' authorities in the hands of 
these unanswerable bureaucrats who are willing to abuse their power to 
discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights.
  Based on this broad formula, you would think there has been countless 
unenforced instances of voter discrimination. If Democrats are willing 
to go this far to stop discrimination, it must be a widespread problem, 
right?
  Wrong.
  The Justice Department, as I said, retains the right to enforce 
section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies to the entire United 
States, and it prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or 
membership in a language minority group.
  During the entire 8 years of the Obama administration, the Justice 
Department only filed four--four--enforcement cases under section 2.
  Well, if you think that discrimination against minority voters is 
rampant, don't you think you would see more than four enforcement 
actions by the Obama administration over an 8-year period of time?
  Well, the power grab doesn't stop there.
  This legislation also gives the Department of Justice veto power over 
State voter ID laws. Now, we all know you have to show a photo ID to 
open up a bank account; buy tobacco, alcohol; get married; board a 
plane; and do countless other things in our country. But our Democratic 
colleagues have this thing about requiring voter ID to vote, to make 
sure that you are actually qualified and authorized to cast a ballot.
  The American people overwhelmingly support voter ID laws. Four in 
five people believe voters should be required to show a voter ID in 
order to cast a ballot. But this legislation would override the will of 
80 percent of Americans and allow the Justice Department to veto those 
laws for basically any reason that they choose.
  In so many ways, this legislation is a solution in search of a 
problem. It interferes--and I would say it usurps--the States' 
constitutional authority to manage their own elections and set their 
own congressional districts.
  You would have to ask ``Mother, may I?'' of the Biden Justice 
Department to redo any redistricting, which is currently underway now, 
in advance.
  And it makes it virtually impossible for the States to take actions 
to prevent fraud, essentially encouraging them to wait for large-scale 
voter fraud before they can take any action. And it arms the Department 
of Justice with new powers that will surely be used against those of 
the Democratic Party.
  We are still seeing the consequences of the Justice Department's 
blatant attack on concerned parents in our schools. Why on Earth would 
we hand a politically motivated Department even more power to abuse, 
especially when that power could shape the result of our elections?
  From city councils and school boards, all the way up to the President 
of the United States, the American people have a right--and I would 
argue a duty--to make their voices heard. A ``government of the people, 
by the people, for the people''--as Abraham Lincoln phrased it--is only 
possible if all Americans are free to participate in public life.
  Despite what the radical left might lead you to believe, there is no 
nationwide assault on minority voting rights. If there were, every 
single person in this building would be lined up together, arm's 
length, to fight against it.
  As I said before, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is one of the most 
important laws in modern American history, and it has actually worked, 
and it continues to protect all persons of color from any sort of 
discrimination when

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it comes to their right to cast their ballot.
  This bill isn't about supporting disenfranchised voters, though, or 
fighting voter suppression. This is a politically motivated power grab 
that would allow Democrats to determine and Washington to determine how 
elections in Texas would run.
  The narrative of widespread voter suppression is nothing but a scare 
tactic designed to support a political outcome.
  Republicans have blocked every iteration of this partisan power grab 
so far, and we will stand together to oppose this one as well at the 
next vote.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.