[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.

[[Page S84]]

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.


[[Page S85]]


  ``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

[[Page S86]]

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.

[[Page S87]]

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.