[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 5 (Friday, January 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S89-S100]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I usually don't give such lengthy 
speeches, but today I will be on the floor for a little while, and I 
have 12 sections to my speech. The first section is on voting rights, 
of course.
  The first section is history, equality, democracy, and the Founders' 
vision. And I begin with a quote.

       To understand political power right, and derive it from its 
     original, we must consider, what state all men [and women] 
     are naturally in and that is a state of perfect freedom to 
     order their actions and dispose of their possessions and 
     persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of 
     nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of 
     any other [person].

  John Locke published those words in England anonymously--
anonymously--exactly 100 years before the Constitution of the United 
States came into effect a very, very long time ago, at least to the 
human mind.
  They were published not in the era of Republics but of kingdoms; not 
of Presidents but of Monarchs; not of citizens but rather subjects. It 
was an era when many argued and took up arms for the idea that the King 
derived power from the decrees of Heaven, and here John Locke said, no, 
political power, in fact, comes from free individuals.
  These words were circulated for years in secret--in secret--because 
to hold these views back then was treason. Locke went further:

       The natural state is also one of equality in which all 
     power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, and no one has more 
     than another. It is evident that all human beings . . . are 
     equal amongst themselves.

  These words, these ideas, a third of a millennia old, but it is right 
there staring us in the face. All men and women are naturally free, and 
all men and women are naturally equal.
  I will admit this may be lofty stuff, but history lessons matter--
because these ideas were the initial blueprints for a different sort of 
political order that would take shape here in this continent, 
articulated a century later in the words of the American Declaration of 
Independence.
  These were the original ideas for what would inspire the Framers to 
create--not a kingdom but a Republic, a democratic society, a place 
where people equal in rank decide their own leaders and create free 
elections.
  It reminds me of the words of James Madison as well:

       Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? 
     Not the rich, more than the poor; not the learned, more than 
     the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names. . 
     . . The electors are to be the great body of the people of 
     the United States.

  Section 2: American History is a Long March Toward Universal 
Suffrage. That is the noble side of our early history, worthy of 
remembering and pursuing to this day. There is, of course, a more 
complicated, more frustrating reality, one we should not be afraid to 
admit and to recognize. And one we hide from or, worse, try to erase at 
our own peril.
  We all know that when our country was founded, mass participation in 
representative government might have been the object of the Founders, 
but it certainly was not a practice. Immediately excluded were 700,000 
enslaved men and women, counted as three-fifths of a person for the 
purpose of congressional allotment, but zero-fifths of a person for all 
other matters of human dignity. Women, too, were left out.
  Also cast aside and brutalized were those who lived on this continent 
for thousands of years before the colonial era, for whom full 
participation in political life, in practicality, has never, never been 
made real, even till today. And through it all--through it all--voting 
requirements were left to the States to choose for themselves so that 
depending on which side of a State boundary you lived on, a different 
side or set of rules might apply to you in determining your worthiness 
to choose your own leaders.
  So despite Madison's sentiments, at the time of our Constitution's 
ratification, you had to be a White male, oftentimes Protestant, 
landowner to vote.
  By the election of 1800, barely more than 1 in 10 Americans were even 
eligible to vote. Of the 16 States then in the Union all but 3 limited 
suffrage to property holders or taxpayers.
  And here is another truth too: Despite all that, the story of 
democracy

[[Page S90]]

in America has been a long march, a very long, torturous march toward 
universal suffrage.
  In America, our holy struggle has been to take these words of our 
Framers, to take the idea that everyone should live freely and equally 
and to make it real in whatever way the people can make it real.
  It is an exercise in making better what was once woefully imperfect, 
of having hope that we can make even more progress in the future. 
Indeed, this is written into the very, very first statement of 
our Constitution, making a more perfect Union.

  So, from the get-go, generations of Americans have sought to truly 
establish the United States as a full democracy. We fought a bloody 
Civil War to end slavery. Women organized and reached for the ballot.
  The civil rights movement brought an end to the vicious segregation 
of the mid-20th century. And here in Congress, yes, in this Congress, 
we passed the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, 
and the 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th Amendments to expand the 
franchise until there were no more boundaries.
  Now, we all know, unfortunately, the march has not always been 
linear. Throughout our Nation's history, moments of significant 
progress have been followed by reactionary backlash. That backlash 
takes many forms: White supremacy, tyranny, demagoguery, fear, and 
political violence, and much, much more.
  Today, it lives on in the internet, in the dark corners of online 
places that deal not in truth but in conspiracies that I would call 
wacky or bizarre, if they weren't so darn dangerous. It also lives, 
sadly, in the cascade of deranged propaganda we see emanating from 
certain cable news networks.
  Unfortunately, it seems, led by one party, compelled by the most 
dishonest President in history, we are entering another one of those 
dark periods.
  That is what we are talking about here today on the Senate floor.
  Section 3: The Origins of the Big Lie. If there is anything else, 
besides free and fair elections, that has been central to our national 
political character, it has been our largely unbroken fidelity to the 
peaceful transfer of power--peaceful transfer of power.
  You can't talk about voting rights and free and fair elections and 
democracy without also presupposing that the leaders are willing to 
step down when their turns are over, when they have lost elections. 
Thankfully, our leaders have, by and large, honored this tradition, 
whether that has been in victory or in defeat. Nobody likes losing, but 
sometimes you have to move on. That is life.
  But then came Donald Trump. Like many before him, Trump ran for 
reelection in 2020 and lost his race. In fact, he lost to Joe Biden by 
7 million votes and 74 electoral college votes. I shouldn't have to say 
that, but it is the truth, and sometimes the truth gets distorted 
around here.
  But rather than accept defeat, rather than follow in the noble 
tradition of those who came before him, Donald Trump rejected the 
results of the 2020 election and claimed, without a shred of evidence, 
without any evidence, that the election was rigged, that it was stolen, 
that it was a con job unlike anything we have ever seen before.
  He planted the seeds of that lie long before the election even 
happened. Yes, the Big Lie was born then.
  Section 4: The Big Lie is Just That, a Lie. It is a lie. It is not a 
misinterpretation. It is not one person looks at it one way; one person 
looks at it the other, as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
want us to believe. It is just a lie.
  To this day, there is not a shred of evidence supporting the fantasy 
that Donald Trump won the election only to have it stolen from him.
  As a general principle, extraordinary claims should come with 
extraordinary proof. We haven't seen anything close to proof in the 14 
or so months since the 2020 election. On the other side of the aisle, 
the biggest--biggest--loudest talkers about the election being stolen 
have not presented any facts. It is appalling.
  So let's examine the record. First, Donald Trump has had plenty of 
chances to prove his allegations in the court of law. In virtually 
every instance, he has failed. Let me read an excerpt from USA TODAY, 
published last year on the day of the insurrection:

       The President and his allies have filed 62 lawsuits in 
     state and federal courts seeking to overturn election results 
     in states that the President lost.

  A little further it reads:

       Out of the 62 lawsuits filed challenging the presidential 
     election, 61 have failed.

  Sixty-one.
  Sixty-two lawsuits in a little under 2 months, and if that is not 
good enough for some people, let me read further from the article.

       Some cases were dismissed--

  Says the article--
     for lack of standing and others based on the merits of the 
     voter fraud allegations. The decisions have come from both 
     Democratic- . . . and Republican-appointed judges--including 
     federal judges appointed by [President] Trump.

  So Trump and his allies went to court to try and make the case for 
voter fraud and virtually lost at every turn.
  Now let us move from the courts to what actually happened in the 
States during the 2020 election.
  Across the board, state officials in States, both red and blue--and, 
in fact, States that ultimately made the difference in the election--
all said the same thing: There was no--no--voter fraud.
  Here is what the Republican Secretary of State in Nevada said in 
April of last year, the State GOP concerns did ``not amount to 
evidentiary support for the contention that the 2020 general election 
was plagued by widespread voter fraud.''
  No voter fraud in Nevada.
  In Arizona, Secretary of State Hobbs said last year:

       There is absolutely no merit to any claims of widespread 
     voter fraud.

  Just this week--just this week--the election department at Maricopa 
County, the largest county in Arizona, headed by a Republican, released 
a 90-page document delivering a point-by-point refusal of claims of 
voter fraud. Their conclusion? The November 2020 election in Arizona 
was administered with integrity, and the results were accurate and 
reliable. This has been proven throughout statutorily required accuracy 
tests, court tests, hand counts performed by political parties, and 
post-election audits. No fraud in Arizona.
  Let's turn to Georgia. The secretary of state in Georgia published an 
op-ed in the Washington Post last year to defend his State's results.
  He wrote:

       Georgia's voting system has never been more secure or 
     trustworthy.

  They had multiple recounts in Georgia, importuned by Trump 
supporters. They had a hand recount. The result was the same every 
time: No voter fraud in Georgia.
  In Pennsylvania, one Pennsylvania Republican legislator said the 
following about his own party's efforts to conduct a so-called forensic 
audit:

       The current attempt to discredit the 2020 election runs 
     headlong into an unmistakable truth: Donald Trump lost 
     Pennsylvania because Donald Trump received fewer votes.

  No fraud in Pennsylvania either.
  In Wisconsin, the same story. Newsweek: ``GOP-Aligned Group Finds No 
Evidence of Wisconsin Voter Fraud After 10-Month Investigation.''
  It reads:

       A close review, including a hand count of roughly 20,000 
     ballots from 20 wards, uncovered no evidence of fraudulent 
     ballots or widespread voter fraud.

  The report reads:

       Our hand review found that the counts closely matched those 
     reported by the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

  The review found no evidence of fraudulent ballots.
  Then we have Michigan. By now, I expect you know how this is going to 
end. Last summer, the GOP--the Republican-controlled State senate 
released a much anticipated report examining allegations of fraud 
within their own State. According to the Detroit News, the report's 
main author, Senator Ed McBroom, a Republican, said ``he found `no 
evidence of widespread or systematic fraud,' contradicting months of 
assertions from some members of his own party, including former 
President Donald Trump.''
  So let's just take a moment to review. No voter fraud in Nevada. None 
in Arizona, nor in Georgia or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. No voter fraud 
in Michigan.

[[Page S91]]

  So it is clear that the reason Donald Trump is not in office today is 
because he didn't receive enough votes to win the election. It is that 
simple. It is indisputable. The court said so, the States say so, and 
the facts say so. Indeed, even Donald Trump's own administration said 
so.
  A month after the election, it was none other than former Attorney 
General Bill Barr himself who made clear that the President was lying 
to the American people.
  In an interview with the AP, the Associated Press, about a month 
after the election--here is a quote. Barr told the AP that ``U.S. 
attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific 
complaints and misinformation they have received, but, to date, we have 
not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome 
in the election.'' Bill Barr, Donald Trump's acolyte, said that.
  Months later, Barr said:

       My suspicion all the way was that there was nothing there. 
     It was all [BS].

  I will note that Mr. Barr used a different word at the end of that 
quote, which I am not repeating here.
  But this is the Attorney General, the President's acolyte, who sided 
with him through impeachment and issue after issue. Even he says there 
is no fraud.
  How can so many people still cling to this? Elected officials, 
responsible elected officials--they are doing damage, true damage, to 
our Republic--true damage.
  I rarely agree with the Attorney General. On this, he is on the mark. 
The Big Lie is BS--BS.
  So let me state once again, although it should hardly need repeating, 
that the 2020 election was not in dispute. Donald Trump did not have an 
election stolen from him. Nothing about 2020 was rigged, as he says. 
But today--today--a frightful amount of Americans still believe what 
Mr. Trump is saying is true, tens of millions of Americans--a minority, 
yes, but a sizeable one that cannot be ignored. That is the Big Lie in 
a nutshell. To them, it doesn't matter that there is no substance to 
these arguments. To them, it doesn't matter that the President's own 
allies have debunked it. They want to believe it anyway, and believe 
it, they do.

  Donald Trump, about the most pernicious President we have ever had--
not about; the most pernicious President--no President has done this. 
Well, he understands that. He understood from the moment the polls 
closed on election night that all he had to do was repeat the lie again 
and again and again, and it would take a life of its own.
  Now, sadly and greatly troubling the whole country, the Big Lie is 
poisoning our democracy--poisoning it. Conspiracy theories are 
spreading online. Cable news anchors are spewing falsehoods and 
generating a sense of rage among their viewers.
  When the courts refused to back the former President, when the States 
refused to back him, and when some of his own administration refused to 
back him, he was left with one last-ditch effort to hold on to power: 
to get the Vice President to reject the results of January 6.
  By now, we all know about the dreaded tweet he posted in December of 
2020: ``Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!''
  What a sad documentation this all is in 21st-century America.
  Section 5: The Attack on the Capitol. A Short Review.
  It was Donald Trump's Big Lie that soaked our political landscape in 
kerosene. It was Donald Trump's rally on the Mall on January 6 that 
struck the match. And then came the fire, and all of us were here 1 
year ago yesterday to watch the fire burn.
  Yesterday, many of us spent much of the day recounting what it was 
like to be here in the Capitol on January 6. I want to commend my 
colleagues for doing so. But it is shameful my Republican colleagues 
had to come to the floor to speak as well. January 6 was every bit an 
attack on them as it was on anyone else. It is shameful that my 
Republican colleagues did not come to the floor to speak as well. They 
did not come to the floor. This room was empty on this side of the 
aisle. January 6 was every bit an attack on them as it was on anyone 
else. All of us suffer when democracy is assaulted. This is not a party 
matter.
  So I want to thank my colleagues who did come to the floor yesterday 
and everyone across the Capitol who shared their stories yesterday. 
Many of these stories are painful to visit, but they radiate with the 
light of truth, and I applaud them all.
  Of course, we also pay tribute to all those who put themselves in 
harm's way to protect us and protect this building: our Capitol Police, 
our DC Metro Police, our National Guard. They were outnumbered, 
unprepared, largely left on their own, but they held the line.
  When rioters cleared out of the building, another wave of heroes came 
in: the men and women who work as the maintenance staff, as 
technicians. They came in into the night, without complaint, and 
brought the Capitol back to life so that we were able to continue to 
count the votes and not let this insurrectionist mob stop American 
democracy from proceeding forward.
  Those who came in represent the best of us--the best of us.
  Section 6: The Disease of the Big Lie Lives On.
  The attack on the U.S. Capitol may have been limited to a single day; 
the attack on our democracy, unfortunately, has not ceased.
  Since last year, there have been no outright attempts to storm this 
building to undo the will of the people, thank God, but the disease of 
the Big Lie continues to spread. Donald Trump has not changed his tune. 
He keeps insisting that our democracy is rigged and that our elections 
have been riddled with voter fraud. He did it as recently as yesterday. 
In fact, he was going to have an entire press conference on it before 
calling it off. It was reported that his own Republican colleagues 
didn't want to hear him spew his lies on this day that has become so 
sacred to so many. What Donald Trump does is poison. The consequences 
of the former President's words continue to erode our democracy day by 
day.
  If the enemies of democracy fail to get their way with baseball bats 
and pipe bombs, they have now turned their focus to a much quieter, 
much more organized effort to subvert our democratic process from the 
bottom up--in other words, a slow-motion insurrection but equally as 
insidious and ultimately more damaging.
  Slow-motion insurrection. ``Democracy experts alarmed over GOP 
takeover of election machinery.'' That is the AP.
  I want to read the following from the AP:

       In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the 
     U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans--well-known 
     politicians, obscure local bureaucrats--stood up to block 
     then-President . . . Trump's unprecedented attempt to 
     overturn a free and fair vote of the American people.
     [But] in this year since, Trump-aligned Republicans have 
     worked to clear the path for the next time.

  The article continues:

       In battleground states--

  That is the headline here--

     In battleground states and beyond, Republicans are taking 
     hold of the once-overlooked machinery of elections. While the 
     effort is incomplete and uneven, outside experts on democracy 
     and Democrats are sounding alarms, warning that the United 
     States is witnessing a ``slow-motion insurrection''--

  Slow-motion insurrection--

     with a better chance of success than Trump's failed power 
     grab last year.
       They point to a mounting list of evidence: Several 
     candidates who deny Trump's loss are running for offices that 
     could have a key role in the election of the next president 
     in 2024.

  The efforts are poised to fuel disinformation and anger about the 
2020 results for years to come.
  This is the heart of the matter of why we are here today. The 
insurrection that occurred a year ago yesterday is still going on. It 
may be slow-motion but, in all likelihood, if we do nothing about it, 
far more damaging to this Republic than even the insurrectionists were 
on the sixth.
  Section 7: Voter Suppression in the States.
  It merits repeating again. Twenty-twenty was the safest election we 
have had in a long time. A record number of Americans cast a ballot 
that year--over 159 million people. As I have said already, there have 
been no indications that the result was anything less than free, fair, 
and accurate.

[[Page S92]]

  But despite the fact that the 2020 election was free, fair, and 
accurate, in the year following the 2020 election, at least 19 
Republican-led legislatures suddenly decided to rewrite the rules that 
govern the way people vote in their respective States. At least 33 new 
laws have been passed across the country that will, as I will explain 
in a moment, have the effect of making it harder to vote, harder to 
register to vote, and, worst of all, potentially empower partisans to 
arbitrate outcomes of future elections instead of nonpartisan election 
workers. Hundreds--hundreds--more such laws were proposed, and they may 
very well get enacted in the near future, particularly if we don't act.
  Now, the Republican leader has pointed repeatedly to the 2020 
election as proof that there was no effort to suppress the vote. This 
is nothing but a sleight of hand from the Republican leader. He ignores 
that the problem today is not about what happened during the 2020 
election, it is what happened after.

  So, I say to Leader McConnell, when you say there was no problem in 
2020, then why do we need to change it? And why do you ignore all the 
changes that are occurring after 2020? It is sophistry.
  Let me say it one more time. It is amazing. The Republican leader has 
argued that the 2020 election is proof there is no effort to suppress 
the vote in America, but it is not what happened during 2020 that we 
are arguing, although Donald Trump called 2020 ``the Big Lie.'' Mr. 
McConnell is contradicting him, although he never does it directly, for 
many different nonadmirable reasons.
  So any objective observer will admit that different rules have made 
it harder for people to vote, but the danger is not then, it is what 
the States have done after the 2020 election, even though some States 
tried to do it before.
  We need to be clear. The timing, the sheer volume, and the nature of 
these new election laws is not an innocent coincidence. It didn't just 
happen, springing up in each State on its own. No. Over the course of 
the year, we have kept hearing the same justification for many of these 
laws. State Republicans said we need to preserve ``election integrity'' 
over and over again. They said we need to safeguard against voter 
fraud.
  But take a look at the actual policies that are now law, and tell me 
if you think they have anything to do with election integrity: Reducing 
polling hours and polling places within a State? That is now the law in 
Iowa, Montana, and Texas. What does that have to do with election 
integrity? Limiting the number, location, or availability of absentee 
ballot drop boxes--now the law in Georgia, Indiana, and Florida--what 
does that have to do with election integrity?
  Making it harder to register to vote, that is now the law in Texas, 
Florida, Kansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Montana; shortening the 
window to apply for a mail-in ballots, now the law in Alabama, 
Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, and Kentucky; and the use of risky or 
potentially faulty voter purges, now the law in Arizona, Iowa, 
Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Utah, and New Hampshire; increasing 
barriers for voters with disabilities, that is now the law in Alabama, 
Iowa, and Texas--which passed not one but two laws which will have that 
effect.
  Telling disabled people it is going to be harder for you to vote, 
what does that have to do with election integrity?
  Here is an especially egregious one: limiting early voting days or 
hours--Georgia, Iowa, Texas. And, of course, as many have condemned for 
months, criminalizing giving food and water to voters waiting in line 
to vote. That is now the law in Georgia and Florida.
  When Republicans say it is a crime to give voters some food or water 
in line, do they think they are preventing fraud by denying people a 
snack?
  Kafkaesque--Kafka was writing about the demise of democracy.
  Now, in addition to these new laws that are actually on the books, we 
also need to remember all the proposals they have tried to pass but 
have not been able to do to date. They tell us all we need to know 
about the true intentions of these reforms, these so-called proposed 
laws.
  The most reprehensible were, of course, the attempts in States like 
Georgia and Texas to eliminate early voting on Sunday--a day, of 
course, when many churchgoing African Americans participate in ``souls 
to the polls.'' Did they show that Sunday voting is more fraudulent 
than other voting? No. We know what they are up to.
  What an astonishing coincidence, outlawing voting on a day when 
African-American churches sponsor a get-out-the-vote effort. Have they 
shown that using drop-off ballot boxes creates more fraud than other? 
No. These are aimed at suppressing certain types of people from voting, 
not everybody.
  Policies like these have nothing to do with election integrity. When 
you say you can't vote on Sunday, it is the same intention of those old 
restrictions that used to require African Americans to guess the number 
of jellybeans in a jar before they were allowed to cast a ballot. What 
regression.
  Now, of course, our Republican friends--many of them--reject these 
ideas. It is not a surprise. But every so often, they speak with 
astonishing and stunning honesty. As one State rep in Arizona said when 
defending his State's efforts to defend Republican voting: Everyone 
shouldn't be voting.
  That is what he said. I wonder who ``everyone'' was? Indeed, he 
actually said, ``We don't mind putting security measures in that won't 
let everybody vote--but everybody shouldn't be voting.''
  And every now and then, the very plain and simple truth makes its way 
to the surface.

  When you lose an election, you are not supposed to stop people from 
voting, even if they didn't vote for you. That is democracy, my 
Republican friends. That is democracy. If you lose an election, you are 
supposed to try harder to win over the voters you lost. Instead, 
Republicans across the country are trying to stop the other side from 
voting. That tears apart--rips apart--the very fabric of our democracy.
  So let's be abundantly clear. These anti-voter laws are on the books 
today only--only--because their authors cited the Big Lie and are 
trying to succeed where the insurrection failed. A slow-motion 
insurrection, that is all it is, equally, if not more damaging to our 
Republic.
  Section 9: Election subversion. Disenfranchising millions of 
Americans is bad enough, but there is actually another more sinister 
component to these laws, because Republicans aren't just trying to 
suppress the vote, they are trying to subvert the vote. They are trying 
to subvert the very machinery of the Democratic process itself.
  It is not enough that they make it harder for people to vote; they 
are making it more likely that those who do vote could see--God 
forbid--their ballots called into question, subject to unwarranted and 
dangerous scrutiny, and maybe get thrown out entirely.
  In States like Arizona, Kansas, Arkansas, Georgia, Republican 
legislatures are trying to give more power to themselves and other 
partisan bodies to undermine, override, or neuter bipartisan election 
boards and county election officials. In a number of States, they have 
already succeeded.
  Last August, a report from ABC News noted that at least 10 new State 
laws have shifted power over elections from nonpartisan election 
officials to partisan entities--from nonpartisan people to partisan 
entities. Why? It is obvious to figure that out.
  Here is what ABC News said:

       Among the dozens of election reform laws changing rules 
     regarding how voters cast ballots, several have also 
     diminished secretaries of states' authority over elections or 
     shifted aspects of election administration to highly partisan 
     bodies, such as state legislators themselves or unevenly 
     bipartisan election boards.

  A separate report from Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by 
former White House and DOJ officials, warned last summer that:

       Many state legislatures are pursuing a strategy to 
     politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election 
     administration. Their course of action threatens the 
     foundations of fair, professional, and non-partisan 
     elections.

  Let's go through some of the examples. In Arizona, ABC News reported 
last August that under a new law passed by the Republican legislature:

       The Arizona Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, can 
     no longer represent the state in lawsuits defending its 
     election code. The power now lies exclusively with the 
     Republican attorney general--but only through January 2, 
     2023, when [coincidentally] Hobbs' term ends.


[[Page S93]]


  That is now the law in Arizona.
  In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has now been 
effectively fired from the State election board, months after refusing 
to go along with President Trump's request to ``find enough votes'' to 
secure him a win.
  Appalling, my friends. Donald Trump calls up and asks the secretary 
of state of his own party to find enough votes. He gets fired, and they 
are all defending it or shrugging their shoulders or putting their 
heads in the sand. I have never seen anything quite like this.
  By the way, for those who don't know, the State election board in 
Georgia is responsible for, among other things--investigating voter 
irregularities. Amazing, just amazing.
  There are other examples across the country. Let's turn to Texas.

  According to the Voting Rights Lab, a particularly sinister new 
policy is now the law in that State:

       The recently-enacted election omnibus bill, S.B. 1, 
     prohibits local officials from modifying election procedures 
     to better serve voters. It also increases the likelihood of 
     partisan poll watchers disrupting polling places and ballot 
     verification and counting locations. The bill increased the 
     ability of poll watchers to move freely throughout an 
     election location, including areas containing voters waiting 
     in line, checking in, or casting their ballots.

  Again, it is helpful to look at those pernicious proposals that were 
introduced at the State level but to date have not been enacted into 
law.
  One bill in Arizona would have given flat out to the State 
legislature the authority to cancel the certification of electors by a 
simple majority vote.
  So looking through the record, the conclusion is not in doubt. 
Republicans across the board justify these new laws by saying they want 
to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat, but when you are looking 
at what they are actually doing, it is perfectly clear that they are 
doing the opposite--the exact opposite--making it harder to vote and 
easier to steal an election.
  And this, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg. These State 
legislatures will soon return to session this year and keep going, all 
importuned by Donald Trump's Big Lie.
  And what is missing is the profile in courage--enough profiles in 
courage--enough people, whether it is in this Senate Chamber, in the 
House Chamber, in the legislatures on the Republican side, saying: I 
want to be a Republican. I want Republicans to win, but I am not going 
to stoop to this level of beginning to dismember our democracy.
  Let's make a final crucial point about what we are seeing playing out 
in the States. Everything I just described at the State level is being 
done on a partisan basis. This is a Republican con job, with zero 
efforts being made to get any input from Democrats.
  Should State Republican legislatures keep going? Should we in this 
Chamber fail to do something about it or respond with insufficient 
force, our democracy could very well cross a fatal point of no return.
  And then the unthinkable becomes real. Democracy erodes and could--
horror of horrors--vanish, as it has in other nations in the course of 
world history. What history shows us is, when these pernicious 
activities start, when a mob starts, when a leader just lies to gain 
power, if people don't rise up, it happens.
  America, don't be complacent. It is happening, and it is a great 
danger. In many other countries that devolved to dictatorship, it 
started in ways similar to this, and the majority of good people said, 
``Uh, we don't have to worry about it.''
  Well, we do. That is why we are here. That is why Senator Merkley and 
I and Klobuchar and Durbin and others have taken to the floor today.
  Section 10: The Senate will vote again on voting rights.
  So what is the way forward? Do we accept these developments as 
inevitable? Do we say it is not so bad? Do we look the other way? Do we 
tell ourselves this dark cloud will pass and the disease of the Big Lie 
is just going to cure itself?
  We can't. The risk is too great.
  What we must do is remember the words of our great friend, John 
Lewis, who shortly before his death said:

       When you see something that is not right, you must say 
     something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. 
     It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help 
     build what we called the Beloved Community. . . .

  Well, right now, the Senate is being called to take action. So as 
soon as next week, we intend to bring up legislation back to the floor 
of this Chamber, to protect our democracy and shore up the right to 
vote. Everyone in this Chamber will once again have the opportunity to 
go on record.
  Will Republicans join Democrats in a bipartisan manner moving forward 
on defending democracy? As soon as next week, they will be called on to 
give us an answer, and they know the eyes of history are watching. 
Maybe the few ideologues don't, but most of them do--most of them do.
  And next week, our Republican friends will be called to give us an 
answer. If there is any fight that this body should know how to win, it 
is protecting our democracy and strengthening our right to vote.
  Throughout this Chamber's history, in the aftermath of the Civil War, 
during the 1960s, throughout the second half of the 20th century, 
passing voting rights legislation has been one of the Senate's crowning 
achievements. And now, in this moment of peril for democracy, the 
Senate now needs to work to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. We need to 
work to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
  We must get both done so we can send these bills to President Biden's 
desk and they be signed into law--preventing, undoing, the pernicious 
activities that I have documented in the past hour.
  For months--for months--we have tried to get our Republican 
colleagues to join us. After all, voting rights should not be partisan. 
It hasn't been in the past. It has been supported by Ronald Reagan, 
George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush--hardly big liberals, hardly 
Democratic sympathizers--oh, no.
  We have tried to continue in that bipartisan spirit. We have tried no 
less than four times to begin a simple debate here on the floor about 
this matter. We have lobbied our Republican friends privately. We have 
gone through regular order. We have attempted to debate them on the 
floor. We have presented reasonable, commonsense proposals in June, 
August, October, and November. Each time--each time--I personally 
promised my Republican colleagues and my Democratic colleagues, 
particularly the two who have some doubts, that they would have ample 
opportunities to voice their concerns, offer germane amendments, and 
make changes to our proposals. At no point did we ever ask our 
Republican friends to vote for our legislation. We have simply been 
asking them to begin debating, just as the Senate was intended to do.
  Off the floor, we have held public hearings, group discussions with 
Senators, and one-on-one meetings with the other side to try to win 
some support. Senators Manchin and Kaine and Tester and King and Durbin 
and Klobuchar and Leahy and many more have all met with Republicans to 
initiate a dialogue. At every turn, we have been met with resistance. 
Next week, we will try again. They will go on record again. But, of 
course, obstruction is all we have been able to see so far.
  As an aside, one of the arguments we hear from the other side is that 
this is an attempt at a Federal takeover of our elections. The 
sophistry, the dishonesty is legion.
  The Founders, whom my Republican colleagues invoke when it is time to 
confirm a rightwing judge, wrote in the Constitution that the Congress 
precisely has the power to pass laws to determine the time, place, and 
manner of Federal elections. This is nothing new. We have done it over 
and over again with amendments and with legislation--bipartisan.
  The problem isn't simply that they oppose our proposals for voting 
rights legislation. They now even refuse to support legislation they 
embraced in the past, including the policies in the John Lewis Voting 
Rights Advancement Act.
  Remember, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized five times through 
its history, including by Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.
  Many of my Republican colleagues have worked in the past to improve 
preclearance provisions similar to the ones contained in our latest 
proposal.

[[Page S94]]

If it was good enough for Republicans back then--Republicans who were 
true conservatives--it should be good enough for our Republican friends 
today. But they won't even support that. In fact, they won't even 
support a vote to open debate.
  The sole exception in 10 months has been our colleague, the Senator 
from Alaska--once on four votes. But where is the rest of the party of 
Abraham Lincoln? Down to the last Member, the rest of the Republican 
conference has refused to engage, refused to debate, even refused to 
acknowledge that our country faces a serious threat to democracy.
  Leader McConnell, this week, seemed to refer to laws I talked about 
earlier as mainstream here on the floor. What is he talking about? 
Maybe they are mainstream in failed democracies, but his proposals are 
unacceptable in the United States.
  So it is clear that the modern Republican Party has turned its back 
on protecting voting rights. The party of Lincoln is increasingly 
becoming the party of the Big Lie, not just Donald Trump but just 
everybody here, with the rare exception.
  Section 11: Restore the Senate. The Senate is better than this. A 
simple look at our history shows we are better than this. The same 
institution that passed civil rights legislation, the New Deal, the 
Great Society, and the bills of Reconstruction, should be more than 
capable of defending democracy in the modern era. But, today, the 
partisanship, the Big Lie, the looming specter of Donald Trump and his 
vindictiveness, his dishonesty, is a shadow that is cast over this 
entire Chamber and leads to the gridlock we have.
  This Chamber is not capable of functioning when one side's strategy 
for legislation is inflexible, total, unthinking, unwilling to admit 
fact and actually making up lies to buttress the Big Lie, such as that 
the Federal Government shouldn't be involved in how Federal offices are 
voted for.
  The Senate is no longer a cooling saucer. It is a deep freezer. 
Anyone who has been here for more than a few years knows the gears of 
the Senate have ossified. The filibuster is used far more today than 
ever before--by some measures, the filibuster is used as much as 10 
times today compared to the past decade. My colleague from Oregon is an 
expert on this, and my guess is he will speak on it.
  Some might wonder if any of the great accomplishments of the past 
would have had a chance of passage today. Would the Social Security Act 
pass the modern Senate? Medicare and Medicaid? Civil rights? We sure 
hope they would, but it is difficult to see with the way the Chamber 
works this day.
  As I have said since the fall, if this sort of obstruction will 
continue, I believe the Senate needs to be restored to its rightful 
status as the world's greatest deliberative body. It was that in the 
past. It is certainly, certainly, not that now. It earned that title 
precisely because, yes, debate is a central feature of this body and 
always will be. But at the end of the day, so is governing, so is 
taking action when needed once the debate has run its due course.
  This is an old, old fight in this Chamber. Over 100 years ago, the 
great Senator of Massachusetts, Henry Cabot Lodge, said that ``to vote 
without debating is perilous, but to debate and never vote is 
imbecile.''
  ``To vote without debating is perilous, but to debate and never vote 
is imbecile.'' We should heed those words today, and Democrats are 
currently exploring the paths we have available to restore the Senate 
so it does what the Framers intended: debate, deliberate, compromise, 
and end in the vote.
  As I said in my ``Dear colleague'' earlier this week, if Republicans 
continue to hijack the rules of the Chamber to prevent us from 
protecting our democracy, then the Senate will debate and consider 
changes to the rules on or before January 17, Martin Luther King, Jr., 
Day.
  As we hold this debate, I ask my colleagues to consider this 
question: If the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, 
then how can Democrats permit a situation in which Republicans can pass 
voter suppression laws at the State-level with only a simple majority 
vote but not allow the U.S. Senate to do the same?
  This asymmetry cannot hold. If Senate Republicans continue to abuse 
the filibuster to prevent this body from acting, then I would plead 
with the Senate, particularly my colleagues on this side of the aisle, 
to adapt. And we must adapt for the sake of our democracy so we can 
pass the legislation I talked about earlier.
  In conclusion--the last section--now, as I near the end of my 
remarks, let me appeal to an important moment from history. In the 
aftermath of the Civil War and as the Nation began the colossal work of 
Reconstruction, America was more divided than at any point in history. 
I am reading Grant's biography now. That is clear. It was hard to 
imagine that a single nation could endure after the bloody conflict of 
the previous 4 years.
  At the time, the Congress set to work on granting newly freed slaves 
the basic freedoms that had long been denied to them. Back then, it was 
the party of Lincoln, which a century and a half later bears little 
resemblance to what we see among their ranks today. These freedoms were 
eventually enshrined federally in the 14th and 15th Amendments, 
granting due process and the right to vote to all citizens, regardless 
of color or race.
  Today, these amendments rank as some of the greatest and most revered 
accomplishments in congressional history. They are proof that our 
country is capable of living up to its founding promise, if--if--we are 
willing to put in the work.
  But at the time, the minority party in both Chambers refused to offer 
a single vote--a single vote--for any one of the civil rights 
legislations put forth during Reconstruction--not one vote, not one 
vote. And it was, of course, the Democratic Party that was not offering 
the vote. They argued these bills represented nothing more than the 
partisan interest of a majority--a power grab, they said, if you will, 
from vengeful northerners.
  But that didn't stop the majority. If basic freedoms meant going it 
alone, they knew they had to do it.
  To the patriots after the Civil War, this wasn't partisan. It was 
patriotic, and the American democracy is better off today because the 
patriots in this Chamber at the time were undeterred by minority 
obstruction.
  On this day--on this day--the day after we mark the 1-year 
anniversary of an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, rooted in the 
Big Lie that is eroding our democracy, the question before the Senate 
is, How will we find a path forward on protecting our freedoms in the 
21st century?
  Members of this body now face a choice. They can follow in the 
footsteps of our patriotic predecessors in this Chamber or they can sit 
by, just as the segregationist-oriented Democrats in the post-Civil War 
era did it, and try to have democracy unravel.
  I do not believe that we want our democracy to unravel. I do not 
believe it is the ultimate destiny of this country. It is a grand 
country--as the Founding Fathers called it, ``God's noble experiment.''
  I believe--I truly believe--our democracy will long endure after 
these latest attacks. I believe that because of what I said at the very 
beginning of my remarks: The long history of this country is a long 
march toward expanding our democracy, toward making more perfect what 
our Founders sought to establish.
  It took millions of Americans hundreds of years to make this country 
what it is today--Americans of every age and color and creed who 
marched and protested, who stood up and sat in; Americans who died 
defending democracy in its darkest and lowest hours.
  On Memorial Day in 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes told his war-weary 
audience that ``whether [one] accepts from Fortune her spade, and will 
look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will 
scale the ice, the one and only one success which it is [yours] to 
command is to bring to [your] work a mighty heart.''
  I have confidence that Americans of a different generation--our 
generation, those of us in this Chamber--will bring to our work a 
mighty heart: to fight for what is right, to fight for the truth, to 
never lose faith, and to protect the precious gift handed down to us by 
those brilliant Framers. And by the grace of God, I know that our 
democracy shall not perish in this hour but rather endure today, 
tomorrow, and for generations to come.

[[Page S95]]

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warner). The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased to be here with my 
colleagues today to emphasize the incredible importance of voting 
rights as the foundation for our democratic Republic: Senator Klobuchar 
of Minnesota, who spoke with the perspective of the chair of our Rules 
Committee and her experience in her State of Minnesota; Senator Durbin, 
who so understands the challenges from his decades of public service 
and service in this Chamber; Senator Kaine of Virginia, who brought 
forth some of the challenges over time that have existed targeting 
Black Americans; and Senator Schumer, who just took us on a tour 
through history, bringing us to that point of saying: Let's make sure 
that our democratic Republic does not perish, that it endures; that 
that responsibility sits on our shoulders.
  Mr. President, there are more than 4,500 words in the Constitution, 
but the three that matter most are the first three: ``We the People.'' 
Our Founders printed those words in supersize font, saying this is what 
it is all about, that we do not take our government's power and 
authority in America as descended from Kings or the elite or the 
powerful; that our government takes its authority and power from the 
people up. And that is accomplished through the ballot box.
  We are a nation with a government, as President Lincoln so eloquently 
said, ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' That is why 
the ballot box is the beating heart of our democracy. It is the ballot 
box that is the physical manifestation of every American's sacred right 
to have a voice in their government through their vote because, as 
Lyndon Johnson told us, ``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever 
devised . . . for breaking down injustice.''
  For 245 years, since our Declaration of Independence, through war and 
depression, through civil strife and terrorist attack, our democracy 
has persevered. It has weathered storms. Through those storms, it has 
continued to shine as a beacon of light to the world, as Ronald Reagan 
so fondly spoke of it, to serve as a beautiful, shining city on the 
hill.
  All the while, through generation after generation, we have worked to 
expand access to the ballot box, recognizing that the vision of the 
Constitution wasn't fulfilled until every American had the ability to 
exercise their right to vote. And for most of our lives in this 
generation, we haven't really worried about the strength of our 
democratic institutions.
  We have read about Presidents around the world writing a new 
constitution and throwing the old out without process, of wiping out 
the clause that limited them to two terms or to one term and continuing 
on, of shows that were put on in terms of legislative function that was 
just a cover story for authoritarian power.
  But, here, we have thought we have practiced for more than 200 years 
converting the power of the people into representative democracy and 
decisions made through the House and the Senate and the President of 
the United States. We took for granted that they worked because they 
had worked for generation after generation, election after election, 
year after year.
  But now, in recent years, we have come to realize that we shouldn't 
have taken the strength of our institutions for granted. We have come 
to see all too clearly that these institutions are fragile. We have 
seen the relentless efforts to undermine faith in our institutions. We 
have seen the attacks on our free press. We have seen the siloing of 
channels of information into different 24-hour cable news networks, and 
we have seen the echo chamber of social media.
  We have experienced the impact that has occurred attacking the basic 
right to vote being torn away by the highest Court in the land, to 
political leaders deliberately lying to and deceiving the American 
people, and fanning the flames of hate and bigotry, of division and 
discrimination, for their political gain.
  Then, just over a year ago, we saw it culminate in a violent mob of 
extremists stirred up and unleashed by a man who couldn't face the 
reality of his electoral loss, and that mob stormed this very building 
to stop the wheels of democracy from turning.

  I was sitting here in this Chamber, and I well remember the agents 
rushing down the center aisle up to the podium to sweep away the Vice 
President to safety, wondering why they were running down the aisle 
because that doesn't happen here in the Senate. We heard the sounds of 
people outside these doors and wondered what was going on. We saw our 
Sergeant at Arms team start to lock the doors of this Chamber--all of 
it in just an extraordinary moment. Then, because we have smartphones, 
we started to understand what was going on outside of the Capitol and 
inside of the Capitol.
  Later, we learned of the incredibly valiant acts of an officer named 
Eugene Goodman, who, as the first wave of the mob ascended the 
staircase that is just outside the Chamber in this direction, proceeded 
to essentially challenge the leader of that group, shoving him slightly 
and backing up away--down that hallway to move the mob away from 
entering the double doors that were closer by, buying more time for the 
security of this Chamber.
  It is hard to believe that men and women in this building were 
chanting for the death of Nancy Pelosi and the death of the Vice 
President of the United States of America, calling for him to be 
hanged.
  Because we started to understand the threat, I heard whispered phone 
calls to loved ones saying: I am OK. I think I am fine.
  We saw fear and pain in the eyes of some of our staff, who were 
simply doing their job to help our democracy function that day.
  We know how that day lingers in the hearts of our Capitol Police 
officers, and I continue to grieve with them for the trauma and loss 
they endured and to appreciate so much the service they rendered.
  The insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, came all too close to 
stopping democracy in its tracks that day. Here in the Chamber, we were 
ushered into a safer location, and along with us went the three ballot 
boxes pictured here.
  This is a picture that I took when I was so pleased to see these 
ballot boxes had traveled with us to safety, because the mob did enter 
this Chamber, and had these boxes still been here in the well of the 
Senate, they would have opened them and they would have destroyed those 
ballots because that was what they were intent on doing, was to destroy 
the ballots from various States to alter the outcome of the election. 
They couldn't get to them because they were safe with us.
  These boxes were crafted by real artists who work here in the Senate, 
and there was a new box, a larger box, because some of the States were 
sending larger certifications of the ballots, the electoral college 
ballots, from their State.
  Well, we were determined to return to the Chamber that evening, to 
come back here and reclaim this Chamber from the mob, replace these 
boxes in the well of the Senate, transport them to the House through 
the rhythm of counting the electoral college votes, and make sure the 
certification of the election went ahead. And it did. We completed our 
work, and the House and Senate certified the election results.
  The physical attack on our national temple, our revered Capitol 
Building, was intended to prevent the counting of ballots--the most 
important act marking the transfer of power from one President to the 
next.
  You know, our leaders in the early phase of our country weren't sure 
that this system would survive. Would the first President of the United 
States declare that he would continue beyond the bounds of the 
Constitution regardless of an election or prevent the election from 
happening? It was one of the motivations behind supporting George 
Washington as the first President, because people had faith that he 
would honor the vision in that Constitution and set the rhythm for the 
generations that followed. And he did.
  So on January 6, 2021, 1 year and 1 day ago, democracy held--barely, 
but it held. Although it held on that day, the attack on our Federal 
elections has continued nonstop through the year that has followed.
  This is the question we now face. In State after State, Republican 
legislatures are erecting barriers to the ballot box to make it more 
difficult for specific groups of Americans to vote--

[[Page S96]]

making it more difficult for Native Americans to vote, for Black 
Americans to vote, and for college students to vote. It is our 
responsibility, in the face of these attacks on the right to vote, to 
say: Hell, no. We will not let any group in America be blocked from 
voting.
  We will guarantee the right of every citizen to exercise the most 
fundamental act of a citizen in democracy: the act of putting a ballot 
into a ballot box. That is why we must pass, without delay, the Freedom 
to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
  The 2020 election was free. It was fair. It was secure. In every 
analysis, in every court hearing, in every recount, in every audit, we 
have found that the election of 2020 was free and fair and secure. We 
have seen that proven time and time and time again.
  It was the most scrutinized election ever held in this country. It 
was also the election with the largest turnout ever in this country. 
More than 159 million Americans cast a ballot. But instead of 
celebrating the integrity of that election--that beautiful display of 
democracy, the embodiment of the ``we the people'' Republic--some in 
our country have spent this past year trying to undermine our Republic, 
to lie about it, to tear it down, to tear down what so many have worked 
and fought for, marched and sacrificed for over 245 years. These forces 
cannot win by the power of their ideas so they want to change the 
rules. They want to rig the vote.
  So how do you do that? Well, the States make laws to make it harder 
to register to vote. The States make laws to allow those on the voting 
rolls to be thrown off without them even knowing they have been thrown 
off, to purge the voting rolls in a discriminatory fashion. You make it 
harder for early voting. You make it harder to vote by mail, and the 
consequence of making early voting and vote-by-mail hard is you direct 
the voting to election day, and on election day, you have a set of 
time-tested tactics to block the ballot box. What are these tactics?
  Well, one, you understaff the precinct voting location so the line is 
very long in places where you don't want people to vote. In Georgia, in 
the last election, in those precincts, where the electorate was 80 
percent White, the wait time was an average of about 5 minutes. In 
those precincts where the electorate was 80 percent Black, the wait 
time was about 50 minutes, or 10 times longer. This did not happen by 
accident.
  What else can be done? You move the location of the precinct voting 
location so people go to the wrong place in the places where you don't 
want them to vote. You put them in places where there isn't much 
parking so they have to walk a long way to get to the polling place. 
You let the machines malfunction and have no one around to fix them to 
increase the length of the line. You ban volunteers from giving food 
and water to the people who are standing in line, hour after hour after 
hour. You put out text messages saying, ``We are so sorry you missed 
the vote last week,'' when, in truth, the vote is the next Tuesday 
coming, but you make people think they missed the vote so they won't 
show up or you put out messages saying, ``We hope you will vote on this 
day,'' which is a week after the real vote so people don't show up on 
election day.
  All of these things happen. And when I read about them happening, I 
think about how important early voting and vote-by-mail are. If you 
want to look at ballots being stolen--the right to vote being stolen, 
the corruption of voting--look to these corrupt activities on election 
day. Those are stealing the votes. That is where the crime is being 
committed, and that is the crime we need to stop.
  Now, in Oregon, we were the first State to have vote-by-mail. And it 
started with the Republican Party saying: Let's get everybody signed up 
for absentee ballots because we know we can increase turnout. And then 
the Democrats said: That is a really good idea. Let's get all our folks 
to sign up for absentee ballots.
  So when I first ran for the State legislature, half the State was 
voting by absentee ballot, and half was voting at the polls. And then 
in the next election, the State said: We liked voting by absentee 
ballot so much, let's give vote-by-mail to everyone. And it was 
embraced by both parties.
  And I remember going door-to-door and people telling me: We really 
love not having to worry about the challenges of election day--of 
parking; of weather; I have a bad hip, and I can't stand in line; I 
have to pick up my children after I get off work, and I won't have time 
to stand in line.
  Why did President Trump attack vote-by-mail? He hated vote-by-mail 
because it takes away the cheating on election day that he feels can be 
implemented to benefit Republicans across this country. President Trump 
is the primary proponent of cheating Americans out of their right to 
vote.
  This Chamber has to act. We are seeing the strategies unfold in State 
after State. Last year, 440 bills were introduced in multitudinous 
States aimed at restricting the freedom to vote. Thirty-four of those 
bills have been passed into law in 19 States, restricting access to the 
ballot box, threatening the integrity of our elections.
  The first week of this new year, 13 bills were filed in Arizona and 
New Hampshire. Eighty-eight bills were introduced last year that are 
carrying over into the 2022 legislative session in nine States, 
including swing States like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
  We can see how prevalent the activity is. Now, when we were wrestling 
with the right to vote in the 1960s, it was primarily a challenge of 
the Southern United States using strategies targeted at Black 
Americans. But now, we have a challenge of strategies being enacted 
across the country targeting Black Americans and Native Americans and 
young Americans.
  So let's take a look at this, at some of the key swing States. 
Arizona--for over a decade, voters have been mailed a ballot.
  Now, currently, if you are an infrequent voter, and you don't vote 
early in two election cycles, you can be removed from the permanent 
early voting list--meaning you no longer automatically receive that 
ballot, meaning that you are expecting it, but you don't get it. When 
you realize that you have to get to the polls, it may be too late, 
making it harder for targeted voters to vote by having discriminatory 
purging of the voting rolls.

  Seventy percent of Arizonans are on that permanent early voting list. 
Eighty percent of Arizona voters cast a ballot by mail in 2020.
  It is estimated that under this law, 200,000 voters in the State of 
Arizona might be removed from the list, and many of them will not 
realize they have been removed until it is too late.
  Think about how significant that is in a State that President Biden 
won by less than 11,000 votes.
  What else in Arizona? You have the power being taken away of the 
secretary of state to control election litigation, to defend the ballot 
box, and it is being moved to the attorney general.
  Now, why would Arizona move it from the secretary of state, where it 
has always been, to the attorney general? Well, they are moving it 
because the secretary of state is a Democrat and the attorney general 
is a Republican and they want a partisan angle on enforcement of voting 
laws.
  I will tell you one bill that hasn't been enacted that really is 
something very scary to think about. It says, essentially, that the 
legislature can revoke the certification of the State's Presidential 
election by majority vote--meaning the State might vote for one person, 
but the legislature, which is Republican, could then vote to assign the 
electors to the person that the legislature wants instead of whom the 
people of that State want.
  That is an incredible--incredible--perversion and shows you how far 
this conversation is going to create partisan control of the outcome. 
The election was won fair and square by one person, and the State 
legislature says: Too bad, we are assigning our electoral votes to the 
other person.
  Florida--Florida has enacted an omnibus election bill. It attacks 
mail-in voting. It requires voters to continually renew their request 
for a mail-in ballot. It used to be that that was once every 4 years, 
but now it is continuous. One-third of Floridians voted by mail in 
2018. One-half mailed in their ballots in 2020. An overwhelming 
majority of those were Democrats. So if you take away vote-by-mail, the 
thought is you can warp the outcome of the election.
  Their omnibus bill puts up restrictions on drop boxes, requiring them 
to

[[Page S97]]

be supervised in person. They make it hard to drop off your ballots. 
And the goal, of course, is if you make it harder to drop off ballots, 
maybe that ballot will sit on your kitchen counter and never get filed 
and never, therefore, have an impact. And Florida, like Georgia, has 
stopped volunteers from handing out food and water to voters waiting in 
long lines.
  Every time I hear that, I think: Are we not familiar with the story 
of the good Samaritan who goes down the road, and he sees someone 
beaten up by the side of the road and goes over to help that individual 
and gets them to safety and covers the expenses for their lodging and 
their food? Well, here, good Samaritans are being outlawed from 
providing food and water to people trapped in line for a long period of 
time.
  That is not just in Florida but in Georgia too. So let's turn to 
Georgia. They enacted legislation that attacks early voting. It 
eliminates 5 weeks of early voting in runoff elections--5 weeks. Over 
1.3 million people voted in 2021's runoffs in Georgia that brought 
Senators Warnock and Ossoff here to the Senate. It attacks voting 
registration.
  You can't register to vote when a runoff election is occurring. You 
have to already have registered for the general election. And why did 
they do that? Because 70,000 people registered to vote during the 2021 
runoffs, and more Democrats than Republicans registered in that period. 
So, prejudicially, they want to cut that off. They want to virtually 
eliminate the drop boxes. They are relied on far more in the urban 
Atlanta metro area than in rural counties. And the law says you can 
have no more than one drop box for every 100,000 registered voters, 
meaning that four counties that make up the greater Atlanta metro area 
will now only have about 20 drop boxes, a reduction to one-fifth of the 
drop boxes that were there before.
  About half of the absentee voters in the Atlanta metro area used 
those drop boxes. And then it says those drop boxes have to be inside 
early voting sites, meaning that they are only available during the 
hours those early voting sites are open. So if you are going to work at 
6 a.m., you can't drop off your ballot. And if you are getting home and 
picking up your kids and getting home past 5 p.m., or whatever the 
early voting sites close, then you can't vote then either by dropping 
off your ballot at a ballot box.
  Cobb County Elections Director Janine Eveler said, and refers to the 
boxes:

       They are no longer useful. The limited numbers mean you 
     cannot deploy them in significant numbers to reach the voting 
     population.

  In Georgia, also, the law gives power to interfere directly with 
people's votes. The legislature has been given power--the partisan 
legislature has been given power--over the State election board, and 
the State election board can replace the local election boards and, 
thereby, influence how they behave to the benefit of the Republican 
Party. It also gives ability of an individual to challenge countless 
numbers of voters' rights to cast a ballot.
  To sum up, in Georgia, they are making it harder to get a ballot in 
the mail. They are making it easier to intimidate voters at the polls, 
and they are making it easier to rig the results after the votes have 
been cast.
  How about Iowa? Iowa enacted omnibus election legislation that 
attacks early voting and takes away 9 days of early voting. It reduces 
it by a third, 29 to 20 days. It attacks in-person voting.
  As Senator Klobuchar pointed out, it says you have to close the polls 
an hour earlier, making it harder for people who work late in the 
evening to be able to vote. It attacks vote-by-mail.
  Let's turn to Montana. Montana has enacted HB 176, which eliminates 
same-day registration. It has been in place for 15 years. Nearly 8,200 
Montanans used that option on election day in 2020--but, prejudicially, 
wiped out.
  SB 169 also, as a matter of fact, requires voters who do not have 
certain specified IDs to get two forms of ID in order to vote at the 
polls, making it harder to vote at the polls.
  HB 50, also enacted, prohibits the mailing of ballots to new voters 
who are eligible to vote on election day but are not yet 18, an attack 
on younger voters. Why? Because younger voters tend to vote more often 
for the Democratic candidate.
  And SB 319 bans voter registration activities on public college 
campus buildings such as dorms, study halls, and athletic facilities, 
an absolute attack on the ability of college students to vote. Why? 
Because they tend to vote more Democratic.
  This strategy of deliberately attacking the ability to vote of young 
Americans, college students, Native Americans, and Black Americans to 
vote is so wrong. It is unethical. It violates the very premise of our 
Constitution, which gives every American the right--the equal right--to 
participate.
  New Hampshire--in one new law, the secretary of state is enabled to 
make up their own system of confirming voter residency so that it is 
easier to take voters off the rolls. Why is that important? Well, the 
Republican legislature is going to choose the secretary of state in New 
Hampshire, and ideas have been floated in regard to ``Let's require 
residency to be written so that your car has to be registered here if 
you are a student who is here.'' And students can't afford to 
reregister the car; so students won't be able to vote--another attack 
on college students, as an example.
  Texas--Texas attacks the drop boxes. The new law eliminates ballot 
drop boxes for 16 million voters--16 million. The Governor limited 
counties to just one drop box in 2020. The 4.7 million residents in 
Harris County, where Houston is located, have to share one drop box for 
a population equal to the entire population of Louisiana. It stops 
127,000 voters in Harris County who availed themselves of curbside 
voting to avail themselves of curbside voting in the future. The 
legislature eliminated it.
  I think the point should be adequately clear at this moment that in 
State after State after State, Republican legislators and Republican-
controlled legislatures are creating prejudicial laws to block 
Democratic constituencies--constituencies that tend to favor the 
Democratic Party--from voting. This is completely unacceptable, and it 
is up to us to defend the rights of every American to vote.
  Now, there are three States where the Republicans control the House 
and the Senate but not the Governorship: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North 
Carolina. And we know that changes may well happen there in 2 years. 
Those Governors may be gone. Last year, the Democratic Governor of 
Wisconsin vetoed six bills that would have severely restricted 
citizens' ability to vote. So who knows what is going to come next?
  Now, some have said: You know, all these measures won't make that big 
a difference. Don't worry about it.
  Well, I can tell you, those who say that are wrong. Let's think about 
how it would affect this Senate. Let's say those measures could make a 
3-percent difference in the outcome of the balloting. If that were the 
case, then we would have seven Democratic Senators who are here today 
who would not have been here. It wouldn't be a 50-50 Senate; it would 
be a 57-43. Senator Ossoff won by 1.2 percent; Senator Peters of 
Michigan, 1.7 percent; Senator Kelly of Arizona, 2.4 percent; Senator 
Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, 2.4 percent; Senator Hassan of New 
Hampshire, 0.1 percent; Senator Cortez Masto, 2.4 percent, Nevada. 
Seven Senators would not be here today if you changed the outcome by 3 
percent. There is a huge difference between a 50-50 Senate and a 57-43.

  That is what this is about. It is about the targeting of swing States 
by Republican legislatures to seize control of this body against the 
voting will of the citizens of the United States of America.
  This is why we have to set minimum standards that guarantee access to 
ballot, minimum standards for vote-by-mail, minimum standards for early 
voting, minimum standards for registration, minimum standards so folks 
are not purged off the voting rolls without their knowledge.
  I think about democracy, which we sometimes assume is the path more 
traveled by countries around the world, and there was a period of a 
decade or two where we saw the birth of a lot of new democracies. Now, 
this last decade, we have seen many of them slide into authoritarianism 
around the world. The truth is, most of the world

[[Page S98]]

is not governed by democracies. It is governed by authoritarian 
governments. Democracy is the road less traveled. It takes incredible 
vigilance to defend the ability of the citizen to participate.
  And here we are at that moment where we have to defend the ability of 
the citizen to participate. That vigilance, that responsibility, that 
weight of preserving our ``We the People'' Republic is on our 
shoulders. So the Freedom to Vote Act needs to be passed to ensure 15 
days of early voting; to ensure access to vote-by-mail; to provide 
relief for voters waiting in long lines; to ensure that poll workers 
exist in sufficient numbers for the polling places and have adequate 
training to operate them effectively; to take on gerrymandering through 
national standards so that the House of Representatives, down this 
hallway outside this door, reflects the will of the people instead of 
being rigged for the powerful.
  And the bill is needed to take on dark money, money no one knows 
where it comes from. If you or I donated $100 to a campaign, it is 
recorded. Everyone knows that we donated that money. But if the 
billionaire spends tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, 
it is done in secret, dark money. Americans of every political entity--
Democratic, Republican, Independent--know this is corrupt, know that it 
shouldn't happen, know that the same things should apply to the 
billionaire as to the ordinary citizen.
  We need to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, and we need to pass the John 
Lewis Voting Rights bill. That bill restores preclearance. The 1965 
bill, the Voting Rights Act, was a preclearance bill. It said that 
those States that have conducted violations of the rights of citizens 
to vote can't change election laws without getting them precleared to 
make sure they are not prejudicial on the basis of race.
  The Supreme Court has gutted that. The Supreme Court has operated as 
a supreme legislature of the land and decided it wanted to legislate 
out what this body and the House of Representatives passed 
overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion.
  The 2013 Shelby County decision opened the floodgates to voter 
suppression and voter repression with laws like the ones I have been 
talking about. Preclearance protects us against those corrupt 
strategies that are yet to come, while the Freedom to Vote Act protects 
us against the activities that have already occurred. We need to do 
both.
  All of us, Democrats and Republicans, should be working together as 
the two parties did in 1965, as they did each and every time to renew 
authorization of the Voting Rights Act, until now.
  But, now, under the sway of President Trump, who has become the chief 
champion of cheating Americans out of their right to vote, they have 
decided to abandon their responsibility to defend the Constitution.
  You know, in July of 1963, about a month after President Kennedy 
unveiled his Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King was here in 
Washington, DC, giving interviews, and his words today still ring true. 
He said: ``The tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that 
has a minority of misguided senators . . . that want [to keep] . . . 
people from even voting.''
  We thought that was cured in 1965. We have gone decades where we were 
completely united around defending the right to vote. And, suddenly, we 
have seen this past year the continuation. The assault on the Capitol 
to disrupt the counting of electoral votes has been continued as an 
assault in State after State after State after State to stop Democratic 
constituencies from exercising their right to vote.
  Raphael Warnock, Senator from Georgia, elected by less than 3 
percent, said it boils down to this: ``Some people don't want some 
people to vote.''
  Well, if you have sworn an oath to the Constitution, you have sworn 
an oath to ensure every citizen has a full opportunity to vote.
  So much depends on the makeup of this body. Whether you care about 
voting rights or attacking climate chaos or healthcare or housing, 
whether you care about living wages and safe conditions for workers, 
those decisions are affected by the makeup of this body. And the theory 
of a democratic republic is that if the majority viewpoint is honored, 
we will work to address those issues that the majority cares about.
  And the majority does care about healthcare and housing and good 
working conditions and clean air and clean water and taking on the 
warming of this planet. The majority cares about that. If you take and 
assault the ability of the minority to express their viewpoints, you 
have destroyed that very premise of our democracy.
  And voting rights is different than every other issue. On every other 
issue, if we go off track, then the citizens can say: What have you 
done? You lose my support. I am voting for the other party or the other 
candidate. You promised to take on that challenge, and then you didn't. 
You have lost my support, and I am exercising my ballot to put in 
people who will actually address issues we care about.
  But voting rights is different because that issue is about whether or 
not the voters actually can exercise their outrage with us if we veer 
off track. If you compromise voting, then the voters no longer have the 
ability to throw you out--throw the bums out--and bring fresh voices to 
bear on the issues they care about. That is why this is so important.
  I am going to pivot to a little bit of history because for us to be 
able to vote on voting rights in this Chamber, we have a problem, and 
the problem is, the current rule of the Senate requires 60 votes to 
allow us to get to a final vote, a final majority vote.
  In essence, we have become a Chamber where policies cannot be passed 
except by 60 votes of support. Many think, Isn't this the way the 
Senate was designed? Isn't this the way that our Founders envisioned 
the Senate? Didn't they talk about the Senate being a cooling saucer--
an expression attributed to President Washington that historians say he 
never said, but still it captures the understanding of this Chamber--
that is, that this Chamber would be a little more steady than the House 
would because we would have longer terms, 6-year terms instead of 2-
year terms?
  Now, it was debated that maybe 12-year terms, maybe lifetime 
appointments to the Senate, but in the end, the Founders settled on 6-
year terms to make this Chamber a little less rash to some current 
trend that might be ill-considered than the Chamber down the hall. That 
is the cooling saucer.
  The Founders said that because Senators will have a larger territory 
than House members, they will have more diverse constituents. They 
won't just have a city or just a rural area; they will probably have 
both and have to be thinking about how laws affect the farm, the ranch, 
the suburb, the city, the manufacturing, all the different aspects of 
our economy. So Senators will have a broader view. That is the cooling 
saucer.
  Then the Founders threw in something else and said: Furthermore, we 
are going to say Senators will be elected indirectly by State 
legislatures, not by the people. Again, give them a little more 
insulation from citizens being very upset about something that hasn't 
been well thought through.
  But never, ever, ever did our Founders want this Chamber to have a 
supermajority barrier, and we know this so clearly because they said 
so. When they were writing the Constitution, they were operating under 
the Confederation Congress, and the Confederation Congress required a 
supermajority, and it was paralyzed. It couldn't even raise the money 
to take on Shays' Rebellion. So those who were working to design our 
1787 Constitution said: Whatever you do, don't embed a supermajority.
  Let's see what they said. Hamilton, in Federalist Paper No. 22, said 
that with the minority in control of the majority, the result will be 
``tedious delays . . . and . . . contemptible compromises of the public 
good.'' He said the real impact of a supermajority will be ``to 
embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government.''
  On another occasion, he summed it up this way. He said:

       If two thirds of the whole number of members had been 
     required, it would . . . amount in practice to a necessity of 
     unanimity. And the history of every political establishment 
     in which this principle has prevailed, is a history of 
     impotence, perplexity, and disorder.


[[Page S99]]


  Why would he say that? Because the Confederation Congress was a 
setting of impotence, perplexity, and disorder.

  I don't know what other places around the world he was thinking of, 
but he was certainly thinking of the Government of the United States at 
that very moment.
  Madison, in Federalist Paper 58, said:

       It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the 
     power would be transferred to the minority.

  He was noting that the principle of free government would be 
reversed.
  The principle of free government is that you go the direction the 
majority weighs in on, not the minority. But when you require 60 votes 
to go down path A, and without them, you go down path B, then you go 
the direction the minority wants. You have done exactly what Madison 
said we must not let happen. We are reversing the principle of free 
government.
  So we have seen two things. We have seen that--as the filibuster is 
used more and more and eating up the time of the Senate, we have seen 
amendments decline dramatically. We saw, for example, in the 109th 
Congress some 314 amendments. That has declined to just 26 amendments 
in the last Congress, the 116th Congress. We are currently in the 
117th. Why is it? Well, Senators can't come to the floor and offer an 
amendment.
  When I was first here as an intern covering the floor for Senator 
Hatfield during the Tax Reform Act of 1976, I watched how one amendment 
was debated for an hour or so, voted on, and then half a dozen to a 
dozen Senators would say to the Chair ``Mr. President, Mr. President,'' 
and the Chair was supposed to call on whomever he heard first--at that 
point, it was always a man in the Chair--and that person would offer an 
amendment, and an hour later, they would vote on it. And then again, 
there would be a group seeking to get the next amendment, and they 
would go on until they were exhausted.
  That debate on a bill might go on for days and days or be spread over 
the course of numerous weeks, with other intervening activity, as in 
the Tax Reform Act of 1976, but every Senator knew they could offer an 
amendment. If they cared about a tax issue, they could offer it, and 
this body would have to debate it, would have to take a vote on it, but 
not today--not today. We twiddle our thumbs while the majority and 
minority leaders negotiate over amendments. The minority leader wants 
to protect Republicans from having to vote on issues that they might be 
embarrassed by. The majority leader wants to protect majority Members 
from voting on issues they might be embarrassed by or that 
constituencies might not support. So we twiddle our thumbs while the 
leaders of the two parties debate. That is not how the Founders 
envisioned this Senate.
  This process of requiring 60 votes--it isn't just the 60 votes; it is 
also the time it eats up because, in order to get that vote to close 
debate, you have to file a cloture motion and you have to wait an 
intervening day. So if you file it on a Monday, you have to wait until 
Wednesday. Then, if it should pass and you close debate, you have to 
have 30 hours of debate. Then, if a Senator wasn't allowed to vote 
during those 30 hours, they get another hour, so tack on a few more 
hours. So every cloture motion eats up a week of the Senate's time, 
even if it is successful.
  Well, we are about to see in the charts I am going to put up how this 
is destroying the Senate.
  After 1965, after the Voting Rights Act, the filibuster, the cloture 
motion lost its racist taint because we had passed the 1965 Voting 
Rights Act. So Senators started to think, Well, we can use this on 
other issues. But, still, it was pretty much under control until the 
early seventies.
  In the early seventies, you saw an increase to about a dozen motions 
per year, in 1971, 1972, 1973. In 1974, it exploded to almost three 
dozen, and if you think about that eating up 36 weeks of the Senate's 
time, people yelled: This is terrible. This is terrible.
  So they reformed it in March of 1975, but that reform actually 
backfired after a few years, and Senators started to use this cloture 
motion--this cloture requirement in ways it hadn't been used but rarely 
in times past. It hadn't been used on motions to proceed with bills to 
the floor. It hadn't been used on amendments. It hadn't been used on 
nominations.

  But let's take a look at how that has changed. Let's look first at 
the amendments--actually, cloture on nominations.
  That one didn't make it through the printer in time, but here is the 
story: On nominations, there were only three cloture motions in the 
history of the United States before 1975--three. After 1975 to now, 852 
times cloture has been filed on nominations; 852 weeks of the Senate's 
time potentially obstructed.
  Let's look at motions to proceed. Before the reform in 1975, only 16 
times in our history had cloture motions been filed to keep a bill from 
being debated on the floor of the Senate. Think about it. If the 
filibuster was about enhancing debate, extending debate, here it is 
being used to prevent debate, prevent a bill from ever being debated. 
That is very relevant to the election bill we have been talking about 
because, as Majority Leader Senator Schumer pointed out, four times 
now, Republicans have voted to prevent an election bill from being 
debated, ever getting started, a debate occurring on the floor of the 
Senate.
  It is the most anti-democratic thing to do, and both parties have 
done it, but it is a practice that needs to end, and it is a practice 
that exploded in the eighties, in the nineties, in the 2000s, in the 
2010s--blocking bills from ever getting to the floor 175 times in the 
decade 2010 through 2020.
  Looking at cloture motions on amendments, it was considered 
unacceptable to prevent votes on amendments until the 1970s, and then 
the practice expanded. So you couldn't actually get your amendment up 
because of the filling of the tree and the negotiating between the two 
bodies, but if you did get it up, you could end up with it being 
blocked because it was blocked by a 60-vote requirement to close the 
debate on the amendment. The practice has continued and gone up and up 
and up.
  How about on final passage? Final passage before 1975, that is 
virtually the only place where cloture was used, and that expanded as 
well.
  So we are seeing that the cloture motion that takes up a week 
expanded in every single realm, and now, we are at an average of more 
than 100 per year--more than 100 per year. We don't have a 100 weeks in 
a year.
  So the filibuster in its best form--its best form--is the ability of 
the minority to stand here on the floor and speak to delay action while 
they use that leverage to negotiate amendments or to negotiate 
compromise, and both sides have an incentive to reach a deal.
  They have an incentive to reach a deal because those who are 
filibustering--it takes time and effort. That is difficult, so they 
have an incentive to reach a deal. And the majority, which is 
responsible for getting things done, has the goal of not having lots of 
time eaten up by filibuster. So both sides have an incentive to 
negotiate.
  But under the current 60-vote requirement, that is not a filibuster; 
it is a 60-vote requirement. It is a minority veto, and because it is a 
minority veto, it doesn't incentivize negotiation. It does the exact 
opposite, especially with the polarized tribal politics of today. The 
base of both parties wants us to stop the other party, and so we 
paralyze each other.
  It is Mahatma Gandhi to whom it is attributed the phrase ``An eye for 
an eye makes the whole world blind.'' It is the same challenge here. If 
Democrats do everything they can to prevent Republican ideas from 
getting into law to be tested and Republicans do everything they can to 
prevent the Democratic ideas from being tested, then no ideas are 
tested, and no issues are addressed, and the legislature fails in its 
responsibility to the people of the United States of America, and that 
is what is happening right now.
  We are failing in our responsibility to the people of the United 
States of America.
  Now, there are two ways that we can get that election bill--so vital 
to our responsibility under the Constitution, so vital to defending the 
rights of Americans to vote--to the floor of the Senate and off the 
floor.
  One is to create a carve-out that says we will not apply the 60-vote 
standard to the election bill because the election bill is too vital.
  The second is to rehabilitate, reenergize the filibuster, return to 
the vision

[[Page S100]]

that if you want to slow things down, you have to be on the floor 
speaking. The way that it worked was that you kept that power in place 
by making sure there were continuous speeches, one after the other, 
because if there was a break, the Chair could call the question. That 
means it comes before the public. That is a good thing. The public of 
the United States will see us arguing the pros and cons of whether to 
defend or not defend the voting rights of Americans. They would see us 
debating whether to stop billionaires from buying elections or not with 
dark money. They would see us debating the finer points of stopping 
gerrymandering so the principle of equal representation would either be 
honored or not honored. That debate would be healthy for the United 
States of America.
  Those are the only two possibilities right now to have an election 
bill enacted to protect the rights of Americans: a carve-out or restore 
the filibuster.
  I powerfully believe the best path is to restore the filibuster. The 
Senate is better off by having the rights of the minority honored, the 
ability of minority Members to be heard; to slow things down to seek 
amendments; to slow things down to seek compromise; to slow things down 
to make sure a complicated bill has been weighed in by experts; to slow 
things down to make sure the press has been able to examine what is in 
the bill. That is all positive. That doesn't happen with a carve-out.
  So I hope we will reinvigorate the filibuster; that all 50 of us will 
say: Let's restore the balance in the Senate where the minority can 
slow things down for those valuable reasons but ultimately cannot block 
a final vote being taken.
  This idea was here from the start. The initial Senate--26 Members--
they had a motion to move the prior question in the rule book, but they 
never used it. So in 1805, when Aaron Burr directed the rewriting of 
the rules, he said: We never use this rule, so let's take it out 
because we all listen to each other before we vote.
  That is a big positive. Every Member should be heard in this Chamber. 
Every Member should be able to participate and have the ability to put 
amendments forward, have their voice heard. We should not become the 
House. The House of Representatives--the majority runs over the top of 
the minority.
  It is a better Chamber for having the voices of minority and majority 
weighing in on legislation, having amendments from both parties being 
considered. That is the reinvigoration of the filibuster in its best 
light.
  You know, a year ago and 1 day, a mob attacked the Presidential 
election, but in the ensuing year, we have had 19 States attack Federal 
elections for House and Senate Members by changing the rules in their 
State prejudicially to try to block the young, the college students, 
the Tribal members, the Black Americans from voting. It is wrong, but 
it is happening, and it is on our shoulders, our responsibility, to 
stop that.
  Earlier, I referred to the fact that the path of democracy is not the 
road most taken. Most of the people in the world operate under 
authoritarian governments. We have been the shining light to the world 
to say the right thing in human rights is for governance to flow up 
from the people, not down from the powerful. We have been that light. 
But if we cannot make this Chamber function, then the world does not 
look at us and say, That is the model we want to follow. If we cannot 
protect the rights of Americans to vote because their names are 
stripped out of the voting rolls or they are blocked from registering 
to begin with or blockades are put around the ballot box to make it 
hard for them to participate, then we are not in a position where the 
world looks to us and says, That system works. So it is incumbent on us 
to fix it.
  As I was thinking about these roads, the authoritarian road and the 
democratic road, the role of the Republic and the Republican road being 
the road less taken, it brings to my mind the poem by Robert Frost, 
``The Road Not Taken.''

     Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
     And sorry I could not travel both.

  He goes on to say at the end of the poem:

     Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
     I took the one less traveled by,
     And that has made all the difference.

  That is how his poem ends.
  We have taken the road less traveled, the road of power flowing up 
from the people. It is the right road to take, and it makes the 
difference.
  Look at the vast difference between human rights being crushed by 
China, enslaving a million people in Xinjiang Province, stripping the 
democratic voice of the people, the right to free speech in Hong Kong, 
versus the freedom we have in our Nation. Our road is the right road. 
We have to make it work. To make it work, we need to pass the Freedom 
to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and we need to do it 
now.

                          ____________________