[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 5 (Friday, January 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S83-S89]
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 today to speak in
support of legislation that is critical to our democracy, the Freedom
to Vote Act, which I introduced this year with many Senators who worked
together through the summer to come up with a bill that would make a
difference for our country, with input from secretaries of state across
our country, election experts, in order to give the people of this
country the right to vote, to protect the right to vote, and to make
sure that they understood that they can vote anywhere from any ZIP Code
in a safe way because right now, sadly, that is simply not the case in
many States in our country.
If you are in North Carolina right now and you want to cast a mail-in
ballot and you have COVID or you are in the hospital, you have to get a
notary public to sign off on your ballot.
If you are in Georgia, and you don't register, you are a new resident
there, you have moved there from another State, and you are in a big
election, and you think, well, I am going to vote in the final place,
you are no longer allowed to register in the last month as you were in
the past during the runoff election.
As we saw in the last election in 2020 in Houston, in that county--5
million people--there was only one drop-off box in the entire county;
Harris County, 5 million people, only one drop-off box.
There are places in States where you wait in line, 8, 10 hours in the
hot Sun just to exercise your right to vote.
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That is why, through the year, we worked together with, of course,
Leader Schumer, who brought us together, and Senators Manchin, Merkley,
Padilla, King, Kaine, Tester, and Warnock--different Senators coming
from different parts of the country with different political views on
certain issues, but we came together and cosponsored this bill, which
is supported by every Member of the Democratic caucus.
I want to thank all of them for their ongoing hard work to get the
bill passed and also to thank Senators Schumer, Durbin, Kaine, and
Merkley for joining me on the floor today in support of this bill.
The freedom to vote is fundamental to all of our freedoms, which is
why we called it the Freedom to Vote Act. It ensures that people are
part of a franchise and that government is accountable to the people,
but, today, this fundamental right that is the very foundation of our
system of government is under attack.
Since the 2020 election, we have seen a persistent and coordinated
assault on the freedom to vote in States across the country. I just
used a few examples of the laws that have changed, the attempts that
have been made in nearly every State, with over 400 bills, to change
those laws.
But then there have been direct threats. Local election officials,
many secretaries of state have told me that they are having trouble now
recruiting people to run their election-day and election-month
facilities. Why? Because there are threats. There have been polls and
studies that have shown that election officials in inordinate numbers
are the victims of these threats.
One Republican commissioner in Philadelphia, election commissioner
who recently left his job, they actually put his family's names, young
kids' names, a picture of his house, and his address on the internet so
that people can target his very family.
The emails, the voice messages left, the one left for Katie Hobbs,
the secretary of state for Arizona: We will hunt you down, Katie. We
will hunt you down.
These attacks on our local election officials and also Members of
Congress of both parties--a record number 9,600 in the last year, which
is double or triple what it has ever been. You cannot look at the
incident of January 6, of that insurrection, on its own. These threats
of violence have continued into the year.
And why is that? Well, we know there is this enormous lack of trust
right now in our election system. We know that people have wrongly been
told, have been given misinformation, have been motivated, as we saw,
as those people marched down the Mall on January 6, to believe that
somehow our democracy and our voting system is a fraud.
Now, we know that is not right because we hear it from Republican and
Democratic local officials all the time. President Trump's own Homeland
Security election head, after the last election, said it was the most
secure in the history of America. That was President Trump's appointee.
Former Attorney General Barr made it very clear that there was not
widespread fraud in the last election of any kind. But yet this lie
continues, and people, sadly, continue to believe it.
And what is the most sad is that elected leaders in States--a number
of States, not just one or two, multiple States--are passing laws with
the false tenet of fraud and literally taking away people's right to
vote, kicking them off of voting rolls.
People who for years have gone to one polling location now can't
figure out where they are supposed to vote; people in Georgia who
suddenly have been told--after the last election did it differently--
that they have to write their birthday on the outside of an envelope.
Anyone who is asked to write a date on an envelope for a ballot, one
would assume it is the date that you are putting your ballot in the
mail. But, no, it is your birthday. That is the kind of thing we are
seeing across the country.
As one court in North Carolina once said about previous efforts to
suppress the law, it is discrimination with surgical precision, State
by State by State.
These attacks on our democracy demand a federalist response. Just as
we saw in the 1960s with civil rights legislation, at some point, the
Federal Government had to step in. And, in fact, our own Founding
Fathers actually anticipated that this might be necessary because right
in the Constitution, it says that Congress can ``make or alter'' the
laws regarding Federal elections--as clear as can be, ``make or alter''
the laws regarding Federal elections.
So what we are talking about here are some minimum standards in place
for how you do early voting, for the fact that you can register, for
the fact that you can have drop-off boxes, ``make or alter'' the rules
for Federal elections.
When you have States, certain States messing around to the extent
that they are, with the clear intent that they have, this is the moment
that we look to the Constitution for guidance, and it is right there.
This is why the need for action could not be more serious. This is
why, as Leader Schumer has announced, we will be moving to advance the
Freedom to Vote Act next week.
With State legislatures beginning to convene for their 2022
legislative sessions this week, with plans to pass more bills that will
restrict voting and with primaries for the 2022 election just around
the corner, we cannot wait another moment.
Yesterday, we gathered in this Chamber to mark 1 year since the
violent mob of insurrectionists stormed into this Capitol. I can see
everything like it was in technicolor--when we came back into this
Chamber, to our desks, everyone looking in their desks to see if
anything had been taken; the videos we saw, which only a few hours
before people had invaded this Chamber; and the walk that Senator Blunt
and the Vice President and I took through the broken glass, spray-
painted statues, with the young staff members with the mahogany boxes
containing the last of the electoral ballots.
As I said 2 weeks later at the inauguration, this is the moment when
our democracy brushes itself off, stands straight, moves forward, ``one
nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.''
You just said that pledge, I say to the Presiding Officer, in this
very Chamber. The pages said that pledge in this very Chamber. To me,
those are not just empty words; they are a pledge that we must keep.
Election officials, as I noted, across the country have been targeted
by an overwhelming increase in the number of threats. We cannot keep
that pledge, ``for liberty and justice for all,'' and a democracy if we
can't have fair elections and literally people who are just doing their
jobs, whether in this building or out in Mississippi or out in
Pennsylvania or in Arizona, getting threatened just for counting votes.
We actually even heard from the Republican Kentucky secretary of state
recently in a hearing that Senator Blunt and I had about how difficult
it is to fill those jobs.
So in light of all of this, let's talk some basics about what the
Freedom to Vote Act does.
It strengthens protections for election workers by making it a
Federal crime to ``intimidate, threaten, or coerce'' election workers.
It protects election officials from improper removal by partisan
actors. It puts a standard in place. So you can't just throw them out
because you don't like what the results were, what their votes were
that they counted; it establishes a statutory right to vote, to have
their votes counted; and it protects against sham audits, like the one
we saw in Arizona and the ones being advanced in Wisconsin, Michigan,
Texas, and Pennsylvania.
It is worth noting that even though these so-called audits aren't
using reliable methods in Arizona, that sham audit actually found
President Biden had a larger margin of victory, and the first round of
findings in Texas found nothing that could have changed the outcome in
the election.
A few weeks ago, we gathered for the funeral of a great man who
served many years in this Chamber, Senator Dole. President Biden
reminded us of something he had once said when the debates in this
Chamber--when there were actual debates--were raging about civil rights
legislation. Bob Dole said this:
No first-class democracy can treat people like second-class
citizens.
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``No first-class democracy can treat people like second-class
citizens.''
We are a first-class democracy. Yet, as I know, 19 States have passed
34 bills that include provisions to restrict voting, and State
legislatures are looking at even more. The need for Federal action is
urgent.
But as we have seen in States like Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Montana,
and Texas, we are up against a coordinated attack aimed at limiting the
freedom to vote. Examples--I have used a few already, and I am going to
keep using them throughout the weeks ahead.
The new law in Georgia shortens runoffs by 5 weeks and prevents new
voters from registering to vote during runoff elections.
In Iowa, a new law cut the days of early voting by 9 days and closes
the polls an hour early. That was after the State, in the words of its
own Republican secretary of state, shattered its voter turnout record
last year. If that shattered the voter turnout record, Senator Kaine,
to have an hour extra, why would you then take the hour away?
A new law in Montana says you can no longer register to vote on
election day. Yet that same-day registration--I know because my State
is proud of our same-day registration, and we have the highest voter
turnout in the country in nearly every single election--for 15 years
that was in place in Montana--15 years. Don't tell me it was some new
thing that they weren't used to--15 years. And as part of this
coordinated national attack on voting, they took it away.
In 2020, the Texas Governor, as I noted, also limited counties,
including Harris County, which has as many people as nearly my entire
State, to that one ballot dropoff box.
We cannot hold free and fair elections with laws and procedures like
these. And, yes, there is the issue--the horrendous issue--of messing
around with how the votes are counted and getting rid of the
nonpartisan boards and allowing partisan legislatures to count and sham
audits.
All of that is covered by our bill, and it is a big problem. But if
you rig the elections before the votes are even counted by making it
impossible for certain people to vote--in the words of our great
colleague Reverend Warnock, ``Some people don't want some people to
vote''--does it even matter if you count them if they are not allowed
to vote in the first place?
That is why Americans need the Freedom to Vote Act, which builds on
the framework put forward by my colleague and former West Virginia
secretary of state Senator Manchin last summer. As I note, it reflected
the work--hard work--of many, many Senators, including ones in this
room today: the Senator from Oregon, Senator Merkley; the Senator from
Virginia, Senator Kaine.
We can't just sit back and allow for 5 weeks to be cut from the
Georgia runoff period--during which over 1.3 million people voted in
2021--or allow for people to be prevented from registering to vote for
runoff elections when nearly 70,000 Georgians registered to vote during
that time.
Protecting elections against subversion also won't bring back same-
day registration on election day in Montana unless we do the work from
the beginning, which nearly 8,200 Montanans used in 2020 to register or
update their registration. That is a lot of people in Montana.
It won't ensure that over 16 million registered voters in Texas have
access to drop boxes. It simply is not enough to just focus on counting
the votes if you want to protect things that matter to people.
The best of the best is what the American people want. They want to
be able to vote in the safest way possible that works for them. One
poll found that 78 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of
Republicans--this is from April 2021, Pew--support making early in-
person voting available for at least 2 weeks before election day. That
is exactly what this bill does.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans, including 59 percent of
Republicans, support making election day a national holiday--Pew poll,
April 2021. That is what this bill does.
Sixty-one percent of Americans support automatic voter registration--
Pew, April 2021. That is what this bill does. If you go in and get your
driver's license--huh?--why would you have to then, when the State has
all of your information, have to go in and register again?
So while Senate Republicans claim that this bill isn't popular, there
are people in their own party, time and time again, who have supported
these provisions.
How about, for instance, Utah, where nearly the entire State has
mail-in balloting, but yet in other States--like I just mentioned in
North Carolina--you can't cast your mail-in ballot without getting a
notary public?
That is why the Constitution says that, for Federal elections,
Congress can make or alter the rules regarding Federal elections.
For decades, we know voting rights has been a bipartisan issue. In
2006, the Voting Rights Act--I know Senator Durbin, the author of this
bill, has worked so hard on this--was reauthorized. The Voting Rights
Act was reauthorized by a vote of 98 to 0. But right now, when we look
at changes to the Voting Rights Act in response to a court case out of
the Supreme Court, it is so necessary to update that bill right now.
Only one Republican, Senator Murkowski of Alaska, voted to even advance
that bill to allow for debate. Only one was willing to debate it.
Let's be clear. When article I, section 4 of the Constitution
empowers Congress to make or alter rules for Federal elections at any
time--at any time--I believe it is in there for a reason. I don't think
they just put that in there for, ``Oh, let's just throw this in,'' in
the very few words of a Constitution for the greatest democracy the
world has ever known. No, it was in there for a reason. This is the
reason.
We get to one more thing--and then I will turn it over to my
colleagues--and that is the need to look at the Senate rules for
voting. So I would argue that maybe for the people of this country--the
hundreds of millions of people of this country--their voting rules
might be just a little, tiny bit more important than our voting rules
in this Chamber.
But, nevertheless, acknowledging that, our voting rules have changed
many, many times. Since the beginning of the Senate, the rules
governing debate have changed, as I said, multiple times. Throughout
history, there have been over 160 exceptions to the 60-vote cloture
threshold, including nominees, reconciliation, and disapproval of arms
sales. Even the number of votes needed to end debate has changed.
I am very interested in making this place work. I don't think people
would spend all this time getting elected just to come here and stop
bills from happening and then go home, but that is pretty much what is
going on right now in this Chamber.
I look at those pages. I think about that they came here to watch
these grand debates in what is supposed to be the greatest deliberative
body of all time, and instead we basically have an empty room.
This is the moment to protect voting rights. And yes, we acknowledge
that to do it--because, sadly, we don't have the bipartisan support
that we have had in the past for voting rights and for protecting
people's rights--we have to do it this way. And there is nothing
magical about the rules as they are now. If there were, there wouldn't
be 160 exceptions and they wouldn't have been changed multiple times.
I will end with this. Protecting the freedom to vote has never been
easy. Throughout our country's 245-year history, we have had to course-
correct to ensure that our democracy--for the people, by the people--
always lived up to our ideals.
Last year, when speaking in Philadelphia, President Biden called the
fight to protect voting rights the test of our time. We owe it to
ourselves and future generations of Americans to ensure that our
democracy is protected.
With that, I thank you, Mr. President, and I turn it over to my
colleagues.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from
Minnesota. She is an extraordinarily talented legislator and works well
in a challenging political environment, and she has tackled this issue
with a ferocity and intensity which is seldom seen in the U.S. Senate.
It is fitting that she did
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and that she continues even to this day because of the gravity of the
issue, but we are fortunate to have her leadership--extraordinary
leadership--to bring us to this moment where we are facing the issue of
voting in America.
Mr. President, I started on Capitol Hill at the lowest possible
level, as an intern, in the office of U.S. Senator Paul Douglas of
Illinois. I was a college student at Georgetown University.
Senator Douglas had served in World War II. He volunteered at the age
of 50 to enlist in the Marine Corps and worked his way into a fighting
position in the South Pacific. And on the island of Okinawa, he was
shot up, and his left arm dangled by his side the rest of his life,
much like Bob Dole. He used to refer to that left arm as his
paperweight.
He had a way of running a Senate office which would be impossible in
these days, but he insisted on signing every letter that went out of
his office. And he would read them and make notes, which I thought were
illegible, but they were his efforts to send personal greetings along
with the letters.
Well, you can imagine that they stacked up the letters each day--his
staff did--as they typed them and used carbon paper back in the day.
And he would come in at 5 o'clock at his conference table with a large
stack of letters and start to fold them. Of course, with one arm, he
needed help. That is where I showed up--and the other interns. We sat
next to him and pulled the letters as he signed them.
And we were told by the senior staff in the office that, as interns
in that capacity, we weren't supposed to talk to this great man because
he had important thoughts going through his mind and we shouldn't
interrupt him. But, lo and behold, he would open the conversation with
me and others, and we felt really fortunate to have a chance to just
speak to him for a few minutes.
So I would prepare, every time I was going to play that role, to read
even more about his background so I knew what he had been through. I
can recall the day when I worked up the courage and said--they called
him Mr. D.--Mr. D., I read somewhere that before Franklin Roosevelt was
elected President of the United States, that you were a socialist and a
follower of Norman Thomas, another American socialist. Why were you not
a Democrat?
He said: Dick, in those days, the Democratic Party was the party of
southern Democrats who were not good on civil rights and big-city
bosses, whom I always fought in the city of Chicago. So socialism was a
good alternative for a progressive like me.
I think he used the word ``liberal''--``a liberal like me.''
But then came Roosevelt and opened the door for a lot of us on the
liberal side to become part of the Democratic Party--the new Democratic
Party--under his leadership.
I always remember that and thought that in the course of American
history, so many times, tables have turned, and they are turning on
this very issue of voting rights, because if you look at the history of
voting rights in this country and the suppression of voting rights,
particularly toward African Americans, I am sorry to report that it is
my Democratic Party--one I am very proud of today--which was guilty of
so many sins in the past when it came to discrimination against voters
when it came to voting.
And that, to me, was a reality that is now interesting today because
the tables have turned. The Republican Party, the party of Abraham
Lincoln, was the party, by and large, that fought for voting rights for
the recently liberated African-American populations after the Civil War
and the Democrats in the South that resisted it.
I want to commend a book to those who are following this debate. It
is entitled ``One Person, No Vote.'' And the book is written by Carol
Anderson, who has become a friend of mine. Carol is a professor in
African-American studies at Emory University in Georgia, and she writes
the history of reconstruction and Jim Crow.
I want to read just a small section of this book to put in
perspective what was happening. Here it was, a Civil War in this
country, with over half a million Americans dead, with inflamed
feelings on both sides of the war. And, afterward, for the first time,
African Americans, because of the war and because of constitutional
amendments, were going to be enfranchised--actually be allowed to vote.
And, of course, when they did turn up in great numbers, they ended up
electing their own and electing people who were sympathetic to their
cause.
Well, there was a backlash, primarily among Democrats in the South,
and that backlash led to Jim Crow during Reconstruction and the
suppression of the right to vote.
It was horrible.
I want to read one part of this book, Carol Anderson's book, ``One
Person, No Vote.'' She writes:
That became most apparent in 1890 when the Magnolia State
passed the Mississippi Plan, a dizzying array of poll taxes,
literacy tests, understanding clauses, newfangled voter
registration rules, and ``good character'' clauses--all
intentionally racially discriminatory but dressed up in the
genteel garb of bringing ``integrity'' to the voting booth.
This feigned legal innocence was legislative evil genius.
Virginia representative Carter Glass, like so many others,
swooned at the thought of bringing the Mississippi Plan to
his own state [of Virginia], especially after he saw how well
it had worked. He rushed to champion a bill in the
legislature that would ``eliminate the darkey as a political
factor . . . in less than five years.'' Glass, whom President
Franklin Roosevelt would one day describe as an
``unreconstructed rebel,'' planned ``not to deprive a single
white man of the ballot, but [to] inevitably cut from the
existing electorate four-fifths of the Negro voters'' in
Virginia.
One delegate questioned him: ``Will it not be done by fraud
and discrimination?''
Glass [answered]:
``By fraud, no. By discrimination, yes.'' ``Discrimination!
Why, that is precisely what we propose . . . to discriminate
to the very extremity . . . permissible . . . under the
Federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every
negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without
materially impairing the numerical strength of the white
electorate.
Well, the Mississippi Plan was picked up by other States. In
Louisiana, for example, where more than 130,000 Blacks had been
registered to vote in 1896, after the application of these laws, the
number dropped from 130,000 to 1,342. African-American registered
voters in Alabama plunged from 180,000 to fewer than 3,000 in just 3
years.
I am sorry to say that these were Democrats in the South who were
leading that charge. I am sorry to say that that was part of the
history of my party. But it is history. It does reflect what is going
on today.
Now there is a conscious effort by the other party--then-party of
Abraham Lincoln--to find ways to reduce the opportunity to vote. And
why? Why would they do this? In the last Presidential election, in
2020, we had the largest turnout in the history of the United States,
exactly what a democracy should celebrate. And, instead, we find State
after State dominated by Republican legislatures and Governors trying
to find ways to reduce opportunities to vote. Why? Why wouldn't we make
it as easy as possible for every eligible American to vote?
Justice Roberts, in his confirmation hearing before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, I remember, talked about voting being the right
that is the preservative of all other rights. It is so fundamental. You
would think that we could accept the premise that if this democracy is
to work, the electorate should speak and as many as possible should
participate. But today we have the opposite: an effort by nearly 20
States or more to reduce opportunities to vote, and in reducing those
opportunities, many people will be denied their chance to speak when it
comes to the election.
Congress and our Nation marked the first anniversary of one of the
darkest days in America history yesterday: the January 6 insurrection,
the day American democracy was nearly lost. That day, an embittered,
defeated President Trump sent a murderous mob to attack this Capitol
and overturn the election he had lost.
I was honored to join my colleagues yesterday to speak to the bravery
of the Capitol Police, the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police, and the
National Guard, who battled not only to defend this building but to
defend our way of life and our government. Those defenders of democracy
faced down violent extremists for hours. They endured vicious attacks
with fists, chemical sprays, baseball bats, flagpoles, steel bars, and
other weapons.
It is because of their courageous sacrifice that our democracy
survived.
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Five police officers who battled the mob on January 6 died over the
following days, weeks, and months. Most of them continue to protect us,
even as they heal from the wounds of that day.
As these officers will tell you, January 6 was not a normal day for
tourists in the Capitol, despite what Congressman Andrew Clyde,
Republican of Georgia, claimed. And the threat of January 6 is not
over.
For a few short hours after the insurrection, many of our Republican
colleagues denounced the violence and the former President who provoked
it. But sadly, Republican lawmakers throughout America quickly changed
their tune. In a matter of days, more and more were intimidated to
embrace the former President's Big Lie that the 2020 election somehow
was not legitimate. Since January 6, we have seen a torrent of bills
introduced in Republican-controlled legislatures to restrict voting
rights and undermine the integrity of our democracy. Republican
lawmakers in nearly 20 States--including Georgia, Arizona, and
Florida--have passed laws making it harder for millions of Americans to
vote, and in some cases, making it easier--and this is so critical--for
politicians to overturn election results they don't like.
Let's be honest. These laws aren't about preventing voter fraud. They
are about giving politicians the power to pick and choose the votes
they want to count.
Does that sound like an echo of the history that we lived through
right after the Civil War in the 19th and 20th centuries?
Instead of denouncing these efforts, our Republican colleagues have
resurrected the age-old battle cry that they were using in those days:
States' rights. They insist--falsely--that Congress has no authority to
protect citizens whose voting rights are under attack. They are wrong.
They have not taken the time to read history or the Constitution.
Inside the desk in this Chamber of every single Senator is a little
book: the U.S. Constitution. I commend it to my colleagues,
particularly in light of this debate.
It is article 1, section 4 of that Constitution which says: ``The
Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and
Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature
thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such
Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.''
When you think about what we are trying to do here, as the Senator
from Minnesota has described it, we are setting out to establish the
standards by law for the choosing of Federal election.
Fast forward about 80 years after that sentence was written. The
Civil War had come to a close, and the 15th Amendment was ratified to
protect the rights of newly freed slaves, including the right to vote.
What does that section of the Constitution say? Section 2 of the 15th
Amendment:
Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
It couldn't be stated any more clearly. Preventing States from
denying citizens their right to vote is not constitutional overreach.
It is urgent, constitutional obligation, and we must honor it.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance is
a think tank in Sweden. Every year, for more than 50 years, it has
ranked the world's nations according to their commitment to democracy.
In 2021, for the first time ever, the United States' ranking fell to
what the group calls ``a backsliding democracy.'' The report said: ``A
historic turning point came in 2020-21, when former President Donald
Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 elections in the United
States.''
We call it the Big Lie. If we in this Senate fail to denounce that
Big Lie, do you know what America's future is going to look like? It
won't be a government of and by the people. It will be a government
ruled by political strongmen with weak principles.
These new voter-suppression laws are a coup in slow motion. They are
the continuation of the January 6 assault on this building and our
Constitution. They are designed to bring your right to decide your
future--and deny it.
Ask yourself this: If the American people don't decide the outcome of
elections, who will? I will tell you: political partisans, special
interests, the rich and the powerful.
This Senate has the responsibility to protect the power and the
rights of American voters in our democracy. And right now, there are
two commonsense proposals before the Senate to do just that. I am
honored to cosponsor both. The first is the bipartisan--thank you,
Senator Murkowski, of Alaska--John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
It would strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crown jewel of
the Civil Rights Movement.
For decades, Republicans and Democrats have worked together--on a
nearly unanimous basis--to reauthorize and update the Voting Rights
Act. As Senator Klobuchar mentioned earlier, there were times when more
than 90 Senators would vote in favor of the reauthorization of that
act. It reached a point in the House of Representatives where I believe
the only Republican Congressman who would stand up and continue to vote
for the reauthorization of that act was Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin.
He has since retired.
This new version, named in honor of the great John Lewis, our friend
and colleague, would restore the full strength and authority of that
legislation, which has been dangerously weakened by a series of
misguided decisions from the conservative majority on the Supreme
Court. I worked with Senators Leahy, Murkowski, and Manchin to craft
this compromise bill.
The second bill, which Senator Klobuchar spoke to--the Freedom to
Vote Act--would preserve the integrity of our elections by establishing
minimum standards for voting access in all States, including same-day
voter registration and establishing election day as a Federal holiday.
What is behind all that? Just a very basic premise: Eligible voters
should not face obstacles in voting. We ought to make it easier for
them. Isn't it an embarrassment to you--it is to me--to watch the
newscast show people standing in line--literally, hours to vote? Bless
them for their determination to exercise their rights as citizens in
this country. But shame on us--this great Nation--that we would make it
so inconvenient and so difficult. And now State legislatures across the
Nation are doing even worse.
I am grateful to Senator Merkley, who is here, and Senator Klobuchar,
for leading the efforts on this critical legislation. Both of these
measures are simple, sensible, and popular. Together, they will protect
every eligible voter's access to the ballot box.
There is no guarantee that more people turning up to vote are all
going to vote for Democrats--or even for Republicans. But isn't it the
nature of democracy to leave it to the American people to make that
choice, not to those of us in legislatures, either State or Federal?
So why is it that our colleagues on the other side are once again
using the filibuster to prevent the Senate from even beginning debate
on these bills? It goes back to that old States' rights argument. I
mentioned it earlier. Some Republicans have claimed that our proposals
would amount to ``a Federal takeover of our election system.''
To those Republicans, I would say: Open your desk, and open this
book, and read.
It is a baseless claim. These measures are about preventing partisans
from poisoning the well of democracy. We cannot stand idly by as
Republicans State legislatures enact a wave of unprecedented voter
suppression, returning to that grim, dark period in American history of
suppression of voting. We cannot accept that the Senate is powerless.
Later this month, we are going to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
a champion of democracy in our lifetime. Throughout the civil rights
movement, Dr. King would quote a phrase from Thomas Carlyle, the
historian, who wrote in his account of the French Revolution: ``No lie
can live forever.''
So how much longer will we allow Mr. Trump's Big Lie to tear our
Nation apart? How much longer will we accord a simple Senate rule more
protection and respect than the Constitution--a Senate rule that began
as a clerical error and has been changed 160 times?
Right now, the only obstacle standing in the way of stopping this
voter suppression is the filibuster. But let's be clear. There is no
Senate rule more
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important than our constitutional right to vote. Americans have given
their lives to defend our constitutional rights. No one has ever been
asked to risk their life to defend the Senate filibuster rule.
For our Republican colleagues to feign outrage about preserving the
rules and norms of this Senate, I would ask them to think back a year
ago this week. Where were these precious rules and norms when the
leader of the Republican Party--then-President Trump--plotted an
overthrow of the government by disrupting the Senate business? Where
were these rules and norms when some of our colleagues echoed the Big
Lie that led to that bloody insurrection? And where were these rules
and norms when some members of the Republican Party openly endorsed
installing Donald Trump to the Presidency against the will of the
American people?
Right now, this is not just another political debate; the future of
the American democracy is at stake.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am so proud to be on the floor with my
colleagues Senator Durbin, Senator Merkley, and Senator Klobuchar to
work on this issue of such great importance.
I would like to now discuss the John Lewis Act and the Freedom to
Vote Act, critical voting rights proposals that the Senate will soon
take up and that the Senate needs to pass. We have tried to bring these
bills to the floor in recent months. The minority party has blocked the
effort to even consider the bills, with the sole exception of one
Republican, the senior Senator from Alaska, who has been willing to
vote to proceed to consideration of the John Lewis Act.
Some of the most epic moments in the history of this Chamber have
come as we grappled with voting rights. After the Civil War, the debate
surrounding the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were epic struggles
about the Nation's new recommitment to the equality principle after the
Civil War, and those struggles included dramatic discussions about
voting connected to both the 14th and 15th Amendments. The struggle for
women's suffrage, culminating in the 1919 passage of the 19th Amendment
in the Senate, was also a pivotal moment for this body.
I believe the most dramatic voting rights struggle in the Chamber was
the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Civil rights activist John
Lewis and others marching for voting rights were savagely beaten on the
Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, in March of 1965. The building
frustration of those denied votes in many States, together with that
shocking instance of violence, coalesced into a final push to get a
comprehensive voting rights bill approved. President Johnson addressed
a joint session of Congress on March 15, just 8 days after the attack
on John Lewis, and he threw his support behind the Voting Rights Act.
The Senate began floor consideration of the bill on April 22. After
more than a month of vigorous debating, filibustering, fighting, and
amending, the bill passed, and it passed in a dramatically bipartisan
fashion. Democratic support was 47 to 16. Republican support was
overwhelming--30 to 2. The House passed its own version in July. A
conference report was passed and then accepted by both Houses in early
August. President Johnson then signed the bill in a ceremony attended
by Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, and many
other legislative and civil rights leaders.
The Voting Rights Act that was fought for so hard in this Chamber and
passed in 1965 is viewed as the most important piece of civil rights
legislation in the history of this country. It ushered in dramatic
increases in voter turnout, more opportunity for racial minorities not
only to vote but also to run for office.
Studies have drawn a direct connection between the act and concrete
actions to provide more government services to communities that had
long suffered from public disinvestment. It is obvious: When all
citizens are protected in their right to vote, then government becomes
more responsive to all citizens.
The 1965 act was strongly bipartisan, both in its passage and in the
frequent reauthorization over the years, most recently in 2006. But
since 2006--really beginning with the Obama Presidency--the Republican
Party has essentially done a 180 in its long support of expanding the
franchise. Hostile Supreme Court rulings in Shelby v. Mississippi and
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee have put the burden back on
Congress to fix the Voting Rights Act. But, in contrast to previous
history where Republicans would join with us in those efforts, efforts
to fix or improve the act have foundered because now the Republican
Party is unwilling to support voting rights.
I talk about the 1965 act because it is notable to me for two
reasons. First, it came at a time when many States, primarily in the
South, including my own Commonwealth of Virginia, were undertaking
massive efforts to disenfranchise African-American voters. And there
was a culminating event--shocking violence against John Lewis and
others as they tried to press for voting rights, and that violence
galvanized the Nation and this body into action so we could protect
voting and protect our democracy.
History repeats itself. Today, we are seeing a full-out attack on
voting and our entire electoral system. Now it is not just limited to
Southern States. Now it is not just directed solely at African-American
voters. Now it is not just an attack led by bigoted State or local
officials in one region. The attack emanated from the previous
President, with years of attacks on the integrity of American
elections--attacks that ratcheted up in the closing phase of the 2020
election.
President Trump, after losing that race, then went on a wild search
for a way to hold on to power, making up lies about the election,
spearheading meritless lawsuits in many States to challenge the
result, directly asking election officials to ``find'' him enough votes
to win key jurisdictions, and even trying to strong-arm his own Vice
President into violating his constitutional oath so that he would
deliver a victory to the losing candidate.
Just as in 1965, there came an unforgettable episode of violence
directly related to the attacks on our system of elections. The Capitol
itself was attacked on a particular day and hour for a particular
purpose: to stop the certification of the electoral outcome. More than
100 police officers were injured that day as a result of this attack on
our democracy. Five Virginia law enforcement officers lost their lives
as a result of that day.
The violence wasn't just a riot; it was violence designed to
disenfranchise the 80 million people who had voted for Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris. That singular event ranks among the largest
disenfranchisement efforts in the history of this country.
History repeats itself, and the attacks on our democracy continue. In
Republican State legislatures all across this country, as has been
demonstrated by my colleague from Minnesota, efforts are underway to
restrict voting, to make it harder for people to vote if they are more
likely to vote for Democrats, to make it easier to challenge and
intimidate voters with the hope that it will discourage their
participation, to interfere with the counting of votes, and to
interfere with the certification of elections by duly-sworn election
officials. These are partisan efforts only occurring in States with
Republican leadership, and they pose a grave threat to our democracy.
The violence of January 6 also continues in a tremendous spike in
threats to those public servants who serve as election officials--
threats to their lives, threats to their families--all designed to
intimidate those who won't bend to the will of the former President and
those who have been dragged into his full-scale assault on our
democracy.
So the Senate stands at the same moral crossroads where we stood in
the spring of 1965. There is an assault on voting and elections, on the
very system of democracy that distinguishes our Nation. The assault has
led to shocking and cataclysmic violence specifically designed to
disenfranchise millions of people, and the question for the Senate is,
What should we do about it?
In the John Lewis Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, we find a solution
for the moment, just as the Senate found in the Voting Rights Act a
solution for its time.
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The Lewis Act restores the preclearance process contained in section
5 of the Voting Rights Act by coming up with a fair process for
determining which jurisdictions must seek preclearance of voting
changes. No longer is preclearance limited to certain geographies or
States with long histories of discriminatory electoral practice;
instead, every region and community is treated the same, subject to
preclearance for a fixed period of years following any voting rights
violation and able to avoid preclearance if there have been no such
violations.
The Freedom to Vote Act sets minimal standards for access to the
ballot in Federal elections, mandates transparency in campaign
contributions, requires nonpartisan redistricting for congressional
seats, and provides remedies to block partisan efforts to take power
away from duly-sworn election officials. It is designed for the dangers
of the moment and will both protect people's right to vote and give
them confidence that their vote will be counted and an election result
will be accurate and fair.
It is high time we take up these bills and pass them, and the floor
debate should be vigorous, with an opportunity for colleagues to make
their case and offer amendments. The Nation is watching us and needs to
understand where every Member of the body stands on this critical
issue.
I acknowledge one sad reality of this likely debate. Protecting
voting rights is unlikely to attract Republican support as it did in
1965. I hope I am wrong. I would be very happy to apologize for being
wrong, but I have had enough conversations with my Republican
colleagues, and I watched their votes on the floor as we brought these
matters up before. I think I understand what they will likely do. But
even if we get no Republican support, we cannot shrink from the task.
The stakes are too high and the moment is too meaningful to allow for
any evasion. If we pass this bill, it will be good for Republicans and
Democrats and Independents because it is good for democracy.
As I close, I will just bring up a recent example to show why
expanding voting is not just good for one party. We just had a
Governor's election in Virginia, November 2021. My preferred Democratic
candidate lost, but the election, in a bigger way, was good for
democracy because the turnout in the election went up by 25 percent
over the turnout in the Governor's race 4 years before. More people
participated, and that is a good thing.
Why did the turnout go up? The turnout went up because Democrats
earned control of both houses of our State legislative chamber and made
a set of changes--much like the changes in the Freedom to Vote Act--to
make it easier for people to participate and give them confidence in
the integrity of the ballot and certification of results. Guess what.
When Democrats did that, turnout went up by 25 percent. And the winner
wasn't a Democrat; the winner was a Republican.
Doing things like the Freedom to Vote Act isn't partisan, even though
the vote in here will be partisan. It is good for all.
That increase in turnout by almost 25 percent almost set a record in
Virginia. There was only one Governor's race where the turnout jump was
even bigger, and it was when my father-in-law was elected Governor of
Virginia in 1969. My father-in-law, Linwood Holton, had run as a
Republican for Governor in 1965 and lost. He ran again in 1969 and won,
and the turnout went up by 65 percent between his two races. That is
the one that sets the record in Virginia. Why did turnout go up?
Because the Voting Rights Act was passed and because the U.S. Supreme
Court in Harper v. Virginia in 1966 struck down poll taxes as a
precondition of voting in State elections.
So fancy that. You make it easier for people to vote, you remove
discriminatory obstacles in their way, and more people participate--not
necessarily good for Democrats, not always good for Republicans, but
always good for the health of a democracy. That is why we need to pass
these bills.
I yield the floor.