[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 11 (Tuesday, January 18, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S254-S259]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               H.R. 5746

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise tonight to speak about the voting 
legislation that we are debating on the floor. Like so many of my 
Democratic colleagues, I rise along with those Democratic colleagues in 
calling for comprehensive Federal legislation to turn back the 
avalanche of voter suppression legislation in various States, all of 
it--all of it--animated by the Big Lie about the 2020 election. We will 
talk more about that in a moment.
  It is clear to me that Republican politicians across the Nation in 
State capitals and even here in Washington are attempting to make it 
harder for tens of millions of Americans to register to vote, to cast 
their vote, and they are even making it harder, of course, for every 
vote to count.
  This is a subversive threat. It is a subversive threat to our 
democratic institutions. I believe it is a clear and present danger to 
our elections and also a clear and present danger to our stability as a 
nation, and, of course, it is a clear and present danger and a direct 
threat to our democracy itself.
  Just by way of a significant example, consider what happened in just 
one State in the last couple of years, in Pennsylvania. I will start 
with a historical backdrop.
  Pennsylvania, like a lot of States, had a high-water mark of voting 
in 1960 in the election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, 
and then in 1964, the numbers were very high as well. So in 1960, about 
right at--almost exactly 70 percent of the voting-age population voted, 
but after 1960 and 1964, you had a precipitous drop that occurred every 
4 years. Some years, it would go up a little higher; other years, it 
would go back down. But we never got, in 60 years, to that level again.
  For example, just the most recent two elections before 2020 in 
Pennsylvania--in the 2012 election, 5.74 million

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people voted. That was 57 percent of the voting-age population, so down 
from that high-water mark of 70 percent in 1960. Twenty-sixteen was a 
big turnout in our State.
  The year 2016 was a big turnout in our State. We had more voters than 
2012. It was 6.1 million voters, and it went from 57 in 2012 to 61, so 
it got over that 60 mark, but, of course, 61 is not 70--so we got 
nowhere near, even in 2016, when you look at the percent of the voting 
age population. That is the backdrop of 2016: big turnout but not the 
turnout level we saw in 1960 or 1964 or a few other years.
  Then, in October of 2019--this is just an example of why the voting 
measures we are debating here are important in a positive way for 
helping people to vote. In October 2019, Governor Tom Wolf, in 
Pennsylvania, signed Act 77. This was a historic and comprehensive 
election reform bill that sailed through the general assembly with 
strong bipartisan support.
  Consider this: 133 Republicans voted for this bill, when you add up 
the number who voted in the State senate for this bill who were 
Republicans and then you add them to the number in the State house who 
were Republicans who voted for the bill. When you look at it across the 
whole general assembly--both parties, both houses--about 70 percent of 
the general assembly voted for it. So there is a lot of give-and-take 
and a lot of compromise, and they voted on a strong election reform 
bill.
  Remember, that was October of 2019, well before the onset of the 
pandemic. But thank goodness we had that bill in place during the 
pandemic. In addition to enhancing election security, the Pennsylvania 
law, so-called Act 77, established ``no excuse'' absentee voting, 
better known today as mail-in voting. That applied to all voters. 
Finally, we had a mechanism that people could vote by mail, especially 
in a pandemic.
  But, of course, when they voted on the bill in 2019, no one could 
have predicted how useful this legislation would be just a year later. 
This law was passed before COVID, but, of course, it was in the face of 
a once-in-a-century pandemic during the runup to the 2020 election, but 
it proved to be, of course, particularly important.
  Now we get to 2020. We have had--over many, many years, many, many 
Presidential elections--nowhere near the percent of the voting-age 
population voting in the Presidential election compared to 1960 and 
1964.
  What happened in 2020? In the middle of a pandemic, when everyone was 
predicting, not just in my home State of Pennsylvania but other places 
as well, that turnout is going to be low because people are worried. 
They are worried about--and this is, of course, before vaccines. They 
are worried about contracting the virus. So they won't vote; the 
turnout is going to be low; and we will see what happens. Well, it 
didn't happen that way.
  In Pennsylvania, in 2020, 6.9 million people voted--6.9 million 
people. That is an increase of roughly 800,000 votes from just 4 years 
earlier, and that was a pretty good turnout, a really good turnout in 
2016. That 6.9 million votes amounted to 71 percent of the voting-age 
population of Pennsylvania, which was a point higher than 1960. No 
one--no one--thought that was possible. The only way it was possible 
was because we had better voting procedures in place.
  In other words, if you look at it not just from 2016 to 2020 but even 
from the most recent election before 2016--2012, the 2012 election--the 
2020 election from the 2012 was a 20-percent increase in voter turnout. 
So there can't be any dispute that Pennsylvania's record-setting 71-
percent turnout was made possible only through expanding opportunities 
to vote for all voters--all voters young and old and so many others in 
between. Mail-in voting enabled almost 3 million Pennsylvanians to 
safely and securely cast their ballot.
  By any measure, Pennsylvania should be celebrated as a success story 
of why these voting provisions help people vote. I hope that we never 
fall below that 71 percent of the voting-age population. That ought to 
be the standard for voting in a pandemic or not. In fact, that number 
should go higher when we are outside of the pandemic because people 
have different ways to vote.
  A Republican-controlled legislature and a Democratic Governor came 
together and enacted strongly supported bipartisan election reform 
legislation to increase election security and ballot access.
  Unfortunately, we know that the story doesn't end there. We all know 
what happened in the next chapter, and it is not unique to 
Pennsylvania. In response to the 2020 election, we have seen a new 
chapter, one focused on election subversion and voter suppression 
written in statehouses across the country. Again, it is attributable to 
the Big Lie about the 2020 election.
  I want to note for the record that when we voted here on January 6, 
the evening of January 6, 2020--after the violent insurrection in the 
Capitol where we had people marching through this building, calling for 
the death of the Vice President, trying to locate Members of Congress 
to bring them harm, and also the whole effort was directed at stopping 
the counting of the electoral votes--but I want to note for the record 
that a number of Republican Senators, in fact, most Republican 
Senators, stood up on January 6 that evening to vote to certify the 
election.
  Unfortunately, since January 6 of 2020, despite having voted the 
right way for democracy that night, a lot of these Republican Senators 
since then have only validated the Big Lie. They may have voted the 
right way that night for our democracy, but since that time, they 
haven't disputed the Big Lie enough--some of them, not all of them, but 
some of them. And, of course, now they have at least turned a blind eye 
to efforts at the State level that I just spoke of.
  I think it is also important for the record to note--I won't read all 
of this--but to note what the Associated Press found about the election 
of 2020. Here is a copy.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
this Associated Press story titled: ``Far too little vote fraud to tip 
election to Trump, AP finds,'' dated December 14, 2021, by Christina A. 
Cassidy.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Associated Press, December 14, 2021]

      Far Too Little Vote Fraud To Tip Election to Trump, AP Finds

                       (By Christina A. Cassidy)

       Atlanta (AP).--An Associated Press review of every 
     potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states 
     disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer 
     than 475--a number that would have made no difference in the 
     2020 presidential election.
       Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, 
     Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College 
     votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots 
     cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% 
     of his victory margin in those states.
       The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if 
     all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which 
     they were not, and even if those ballots were actually 
     counted, which in most cases they were not.
       The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the 
     voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual 
     acting alone to cast additional ballots.
       The findings build on a mountain of other evidence that the 
     election wasn't rigged, including verification of the results 
     by Republican governors.
       The AP review, a process that took months and encompassed 
     more than 300 local election offices, is one the most 
     comprehensive examinations of suspected voter fraud in last 
     year's presidential election. It relies on information 
     collected at the local level, where officials must reconcile 
     their ballots and account for discrepancies, and includes a 
     handful of separate cases cited by secretaries of state and 
     state attorneys general.
       Contacted for comment, Trump repeated a litany of unfounded 
     claims of fraud he had made previously, but offered no new 
     evidence that specifically contradicted the AP's reporting. 
     He said a soon-to-come report from a source he would not 
     disclose would support his case, and insisted increased mail 
     voting alone had opened the door to cheating that involved 
     ``hundreds of thousands of votes.''
       ``I just don't think you should make a fool out of yourself 
     by saying 400 votes,'' he said.
       These are some of the culprits in the ``massive election 
     fraud'' Trump falsely says deprived him of a second term:
       A Wisconsin man who mistakenly thought he could vote while 
     on parole.
       A woman in Arizona suspected of sending in a ballot for her 
     dead mother.
       A Pennsylvania man who went twice to the polls, voting once 
     on his own behalf and once for his son.
       The cases were isolated. There was no widespread, 
     coordinated deceit.

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       The cases also underscore that suspected fraud is both 
     generally detected and exceptionally rare. ``Voter fraud is 
     virtually non-existent,'' said George Christenson, election 
     clerk for Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, where five people 
     statewide have been charged with fraud out of nearly 3.3 
     million ballots cast for president. ``I would have to venture 
     a guess that's about the same odds as getting hit by 
     lightning.''
       Even in the state with the highest number of potential 
     fraud cases--Arizona, with 198--they comprised less than 2% 
     of the margin by which Biden won.
       Trump has continued to insist that the election was 
     fraudulent by citing a wide range of complaints, many of them 
     involving the expansion of mail voting because of the 
     pandemic. As the Republican weighs another run for president 
     in 2024, he has waded into some GOP primary contests, 
     bestowing endorsements on those who mimic his ``Stop the 
     steal'' rhetoric and seeking to exact revenge on some who 
     have opposed his efforts to overturn the results.
       Trump's false claims of a stolen election fueled the deadly 
     Jan. 6 attempted insurrection at the Capitol, have led to 
     death threats against election officials and have become 
     deeply ingrained within the GOP, with two-thirds of 
     Republicans believing Biden's election is illegitimate. 
     Republican lawmakers in several states have used the false 
     claims as justification to conduct costly and time-consuming 
     partisan election reviews, done at Trump's urging, and add 
     new restrictions for voting.
       The number of cases identified so far by local elections 
     officials and forwarded to prosecutors, local law enforcement 
     or secretaries of state for further review undercuts Trump's 
     claim. Election officials also say that in most cases, the 
     additional ballots were never counted because workers did 
     their jobs and pulled them for inspection before they were 
     added to the tally.
       ``There is a very specific reason why we don't see many 
     instances of fraud, and that is because the system is 
     designed to catch it, to flag it and then hold those people 
     accountable,'' said Amber McReynolds, a former director of 
     elections in Denver and the founding CEO of the National Vote 
     at Home Institute, which promotes mail voting.
       The AP's review of cases in the six battleground states 
     found no evidence to support Trump's various claims, which 
     have included unsupported allegations that more votes were 
     tallied than there are registered voters and that thousands 
     of mail-in ballots were cast by people who are not on voter 
     rolls. Dozens of state and federal courts have rejected the 
     claims.
       White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the AP's reporting 
     offered further proof that the election was fairly conducted 
     and decided, contrary to Trump's claims.
       ``Each time this dangerous but weak and fear-ridden 
     conspiracy theory has been put forward, it has only cemented 
     the truth more by being completely debunked--including at the 
     hands of elections authorities from both parties across the 
     nation, nonpartisan experts, and over 80 federal judges,'' he 
     said.
       Experts say to pull off stealing a presidential election 
     would require large numbers of people willing to risk 
     prosecution, prison time and fines working in concert with 
     election officials from both parties who are willing to look 
     the other way. And everyone somehow would keep quiet about 
     the whole affair.
       ``It would be the most extensive conspiracy in the history 
     of planet Earth,'' said David Becker, a senior trial attorney 
     in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division during the 
     presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush who now 
     directs the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & 
     Research.
       Separate from the fraud allegations are claims by Trump and 
     his allies that voting systems or ballot tallies were somehow 
     manipulated to steal the election. Judges across the country, 
     of both parties, dismissed those claims. That includes a 
     federal judge in Michigan who ordered sanctions against 
     attorneys allied with Trump for intending to create 
     ``confusion, commotion and chaos'' in filing a lawsuit about 
     the vote-counting process without checking for evidence to 
     support the claims.
       Even Trump's former attorney general, William Barr, said a 
     month after the election that there was no indication of 
     widespread fraud that could change the result.
       For its review, AP reporters in five states contacted 
     roughly 340 election offices for details about every instance 
     of potential voter fraud that was identified as part of their 
     post-election review and certification process.
       After an election is over, officials research voter 
     records, request and review additional information if needed 
     from the state or other counties, and eventually decide 
     whether to refer potential fraud cases for further 
     investigation--a process that can take months.
       For Wisconsin, the AP relied on a report about fraud 
     investigations compiled by the state and filed public records 
     requests to get the details of each case, in addition to 
     prosecutions that were not initially reported to the state 
     elections commission. Wisconsin is the only one of the six 
     states with a centralized accounting of all potential voter 
     fraud cases.
       A state-by-state accounting:
       --ARIZONA: Authorities have been investigating 198 possible 
     fraud cases out of nearly 3.4 million votes cast, 
     representing 1.9% of Biden's margin of victory in the state. 
     Virtually all the cases were in Pima County, home to Tucson, 
     and involved allegations of double voting. The county has a 
     practice of referring every effort to cast a second ballot to 
     prosecutors, something other offices don't do. In the Pima 
     cases, only one ballot for each voter was counted. So far, 
     nine people have been charged in the state with voting fraud 
     crimes following the 2020 election. Six of those were filed 
     by the state attorney general's office, which has an election 
     integrity unit that is reviewing an undisclosed number of 
     additional cases.
       --GEORGIA: Election officials in 124 of the state's 159 
     counties reported no suspicious activity after conducting 
     their post-election checks. Officials in 24 counties 
     identified 64 potential voter fraud cases, representing 0.54% 
     of Biden's margin of victory in Georgia. Of those, 31 were 
     determined to be the result of an administrative error or 
     some other mistake. Eleven counties, most of them rural, 
     either declined to say or did not respond. The state attorney 
     general's office is reviewing about 20 cases referred so far 
     by the state election board related to all elections in 2020, 
     including the primary, but it was not known if any of those 
     overlapped with cases already identified by local election 
     officials.
       --MICHIGAN: Officials have identified 56 potential 
     instances of voter fraud in five counties, representing 0.04% 
     of Biden's margin of victory in the state. Most of the cases 
     involved two people suspected of submitting about 50 
     fraudulent requests for absentee ballots in Macomb, Wayne and 
     Oakland counties. All the suspicious applications were 
     flagged by election officials and no ballots were cast 
     improperly.
       --NEVADA: Local officials identified between 93 and 98 
     potential fraud cases out of 1.4 million ballots cast, 
     representing less than one-third of 1% of Biden's margin of 
     victory. More than half the total--58--were in Washoe County, 
     which includes Reno, and the vast majority involved 
     allegations of possible double voting. The statewide total 
     does not include thousands of fraud allegations submitted to 
     the state by local Republicans. Republican Secretary of State 
     Barbara Cegavske has said many of those were based ``largely 
     upon an incomplete assessment of voter registration records 
     and lack of information concerning the processes by which 
     these records are compiled and maintained.'' It's not known 
     how many remain under investigation.
       --PENNSYLVANIA: Election officials in 11 of the state's 67 
     counties identified 26 possible cases of voter fraud, 
     representing 0.03% of Biden's margin of victory. The 
     elections office in Philadelphia refused to discuss potential 
     cases with the AP, but the prosecutor's office in 
     Philadelphia said it has not received any fraud-related 
     referrals.
       --WISCONSIN: Election officials have referred 31 cases of 
     potential fraud to prosecutors in 12 of the state's 72 
     counties, representing about 0.15% of Biden's margin of 
     victory. After reviewing them, prosecutors declined to bring 
     charges in 26 of those cases. Meagan Wolfe, administrator of 
     the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said the number of cases 
     in 2020 was ``fairly run of the mill.''
       AP's review found the potential cases of fraud ran the 
     gamut: Some were attributed to administrative error or voter 
     confusion while others were being examined as intentional 
     attempts to commit fraud. In those cases, many involved 
     people who sought to vote twice--by casting both an absentee 
     and an in-person ballots--or those who cast a ballot for a 
     dead relative such as the woman in Maricopa County, Arizona. 
     Authorities there say she signed her mother's name on a 
     ballot envelope. The woman's mother had died a month before 
     the election.
       The cases are bipartisan. Some of those charged with fraud 
     are registered Republicans or told investigators they were 
     supporters of Trump.
       Donald Holz is among the five people in Wisconsin who face 
     voter fraud charges. He said all he wanted to do was vote for 
     Trump. But because he was still on parole after being 
     convicted of felony drunken driving, the 63-year-old retiree 
     was not eligible to do so. Wisconsin is not among the states 
     that have loosened felon voting laws in recent years.
       Holz said he had no intention to break the law and only did 
     so after he asked poll workers if it was OK.
       ``The only thing that helps me out is that I know what I 
     did and I did it with good intentions,'' Holz said after an 
     initial court appearance in Fond du Lac. ``The guy upstairs 
     knows what I did. I didn't have any intention to commit 
     election fraud.''
       In southeast Pennsylvania, 72-year-old Ralph Thurman, a 
     registered Republican, was sentenced to three years' 
     probation after pleading guilty to one count of repeat 
     voting. Authorities said Thurman, after voting at his polling 
     place, returned about an hour later wearing sunglasses and 
     cast a ballot in his son's name.
       After being recognized and confronted, Thurman fled the 
     building, officials said. Thurman's attorney told the AP the 
     incident was the result of miscommunication at the polling 
     place. Las Vegas businessman Donald ``Kirk'' Hartle was among 
     those in Nevada who raised the cry against election fraud. 
     Early on, Hartle insisted someone had unlawfully cast a 
     ballot in the name of his dead wife, and state Republicans 
     seized on his story to support their claims of widespread 
     fraud in the state. It turned out that someone had cast the 
     ballot illegally--Hartle,

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     himself. He agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of 
     voting more than once in the same election. Hartle's attorney 
     said the businessman, who is an executive at a company that 
     hosted a Trump rally before the election, had accepted 
     responsibility for his actions.
       Additional fraud cases could still surface in the weeks and 
     months ahead. One avenue for those is the Electronic 
     Registration Information Center, a data-sharing effort among 
     31 states aimed at improving state voter rolls. The effort 
     also provides states with reports after each general election 
     with information about voters who might have cast ballots in 
     more than one state.
       In the past, those lists have generated small numbers of 
     fraud cases. In 2018, for example, Wisconsin used the report 
     to identify 43 additional instances of potential fraud out of 
     2.6 million ballots cast.
       Official post-election audits and other research have shown 
     voter fraud to be exceptionally rare. A nonpartisan audit of 
     Wisconsin's 2020 presidential election found no evidence of 
     widespread fraud and a Republican lawmaker concluded it 
     showed that elections in the state were ``safe and secure,'' 
     while also recommending dozens of changes to how elections 
     are run. In Michigan, Republican state senators issued a 
     report earlier this year saying they had found ``no evidence 
     of widespread or systematic fraud'' in the 2020 election.
       Not only do election officials look for fraud, they have 
     procedures to detect and prevent it. For mail voting, which 
     expanded greatly last year because of the pandemic, election 
     officials log every mail ballot so voters cannot request more 
     than one. Those ballots also are logged when they are 
     returned, checked against registration and, in many cases, 
     voter signatures on file to ensure the voter assigned to the 
     ballot is the one who cast it. If everything doesn't match, 
     the ballot isn't counted.
       ``Often, we don't get to fraud,'' said Jennifer Morrell, a 
     former local election official in Utah and Colorado who 
     advises election officials on security and other issues. 
     ``Say we have evidence that something might not be correct, 
     we ask the voter to provide additional documentation. If the 
     person doesn't respond, the ballot isn't accepted. The fraud 
     never happened.''
       If a person who requested a mail ballot shows up at a 
     polling place, this will become apparent when they check in. 
     Typically, poll workers either cancel the ballot that was 
     previously issued, ensuring it's never counted, or ask the 
     voter to complete a provisional ballot that will only be 
     counted if the mail ballot is not.
       In Union County, Georgia, someone voted in person and then 
     election officials found their ballot in a drop box. Since 
     the person had already voted, the ballot in the drop box was 
     not counted and the case was referred to the state for 
     investigation, Deputy Registrar Diana Nichols said.
       ``We can tell pretty quick whenever we pull up that 
     record--wait a minute, this person has already voted,'' 
     Nichols said. ``I'm not saying it's foolproof. We are all 
     human, and we all make mistakes. But as far as the system is 
     set up, if you follow the rules and the guidelines set up by 
     the state, I think it's a very good system.''
       The final step is the canvassing process in which election 
     officials must reconcile all their counts ensuring the number 
     of ballots cast equals the number of voters who voted. Any 
     discrepancies are researched, and election officials provide 
     detailed explanations before the election can be certified.
       Often, an administrative error can raise questions that 
     suggest the potential for fraud. In Forsyth County, Georgia, 
     election officials were asked by Arizona investigators for 
     records confirming that a voter had also cast a ballot in 
     Georgia last November. It turns out that voter didn't cast a 
     ballot but was listed as having done so because their 
     registration number was mistakenly associated with another 
     voter's record in the county's system, according to a letter 
     sent by county election officials.
       In other cases, it could be as simple as a voter signing on 
     the wrong line next to another person name in a paper 
     pollbook at their polling place. Once researched, it quickly 
     becomes clear no fraud occurred.
       Republican lawmakers have argued there are security gaps in 
     the process, using concerns of fraud to justify restrictions 
     on voting laws. This has happened even in places where 
     Republican lawmakers have pushed back against Trump's false 
     claims and said the 2020 election was valid.
       The review by Republican lawmakers in Michigan that found 
     no systemic fraud cited various claims they had investigated. 
     For example, senators were provided with a list of over 200 
     voters in Wayne County who were believed to be dead. Of 
     these, the report noted, only two instances involved actual 
     dead voters. The first was due to a clerical error in which a 
     son had been confused with his dead father and the second 
     involved a 92-year-old woman who had died four days before 
     the election.
       And yet, Republicans in the state are collecting signatures 
     for a citizen initiative that would allow the GOP-controlled 
     legislature to approve voting restrictions and bypass a veto 
     by the Democratic governor. Republicans say mail voting needs 
     to be more secure as more people embrace it.
       ``These bills will restore confidence in our elections,'' 
     said GOP Rep. Ann Bollin, chairwoman of the Michigan House 
     Elections and Ethics Committee and a former township clerk. 
     ``Voters want to know their vote will count and that they, 
     and only they, are casting their own ballot.''
       Overall, 80% of counties in the six states reviewed by the 
     AP reported no suspicious activity after completing their 
     post-election reviews. This was true of both small and large 
     counties, something experts said was to be expected given how 
     rare voter fraud has been.
       Limited instances of fraud do occur, as the AP review 
     illustrates, but safeguards ensure they are few and that they 
     are caught, said Ben Hovland, a Democrat appointed by Trump 
     to serve on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which 
     supports the state and local officials who administer 
     elections.
       ``Every credible examination has shown there was no 
     widespread fraud'' in the 2020 presidential election, Hovland 
     said. ``Time and again when we have heard these claims and 
     heard these allegations, and when you do a real 
     investigation, you see that it is the exception and not the 
     rule.''

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I will just read the first paragraph of 
this Associated Press story dated December of this past year:

       An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter 
     fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former 
     President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475--a number 
     that would have made no difference in the 2020 Presidential 
     election.

  And, of course, Pennsylvania was one of those States that they looked 
at. We know what happened in the election, and we know why we can say 
with certainty that the Big Lie is nothing but a lie. After the 
election of 2020, in June of 2021, Pennsylvania's Republican-controlled 
legislature became one of the many legislatures across the Nation 
passing a voter suppression law. Here is what they would have done if 
they were successful. If they would have passed it, this bill would 
have imposed unconstitutional voter ID restrictions, restricted mail-in 
voting--the mail-in voting they just voted in favor of in 2019, the 
same legislators--and this bill would essentially have eliminated the 
use of drop boxes. Furthermore, it rolled back several successful 
provisions of the bipartisan Act 77, including reducing the number of 
days permitted to register to vote, and eliminating an option to opt in 
to receive an annual mail-in ballot.
  While this bill was, fortunately, vetoed by Governor Wolf, the threat 
to suppress the vote in Pennsylvania remains ever present as the 
legislature continues to work on another omnibus election bill.
  Once again, the Big Lie animates the work of Republican politicians 
in Pennsylvania and throughout the country. It is not simply a lie; it 
is a lie that engenders fear. Sometimes fear of losing your election in 
a primary--we understand that fear. We have seen it play out here as 
well. But sometimes the fear is deeper than that; that your own 
security will be at risk if you don't espouse the Big Lie.
  In light of these efforts, it is fair to question, How did 
Pennsylvania go from a shining example of bipartisan election reform in 
2019 to ground zero in the fight against voter suppression and election 
misinformation in 2021 and continuing into 2022?
  In the months leading up to the 2020 general election, the former 
President led an assault on our election system, sowing seeds of 
division, and, without evidence, questioning the legitimacy of voting 
methods, including mail-in voting, which has been utilized in the 
Nation for decades. By the way, mail-in voting allowed us to set a 
turnout record, as I said before, in Pennsylvania, for the first time 
in 60 years to go that high--of the voting-age population.
  The former President lost his election to President Joe Biden, but 
instead of honorably conceding the race, he created the Big Lie that 
the election had been stolen from him by raising unfounded allegations 
of voter fraud, election irregularities in Pennsylvania and across the 
Nation. Of course, there is simply no evidence to justify these claims 
of widespread voter fraud or irregularities, as suggested in the AP 
story and in their investigation that undergirds their conclusions that 
support that.
  The Big Lie is the fraud. If you want to talk about fraud, that is 
where it is. That is the fraud. The Big Lie is the falsehood and the 
con job. It is a deliberate, ongoing attempt to sow instability. We 
know that over 60 cases in court after court--from State courts to 
district courts, to circuit courts, to the U.S. Supreme Court--all 
those courts refused to indulge the unprecedented,

[[Page S258]]

loopy, legal arguments and false conspiracy theories that were put 
forward by the President's campaign and some Republicans after the 
election.
  Despite the lack of any evidence to support claims of widespread 
fraud, we continue to hear these baseless conspiracy theories in calls 
to roll back Pennsylvania's Act 77 for one reason and one reason only: 
to disenfranchise voters. So in order to please one man, rather than 
support positive reforms that worked in Pennsylvania, that increased 
turnout in Pennsylvania exponentially like no other law has, lawmakers 
have introduced, all over the country now, some 400 voter suppression 
bills.
  There are three types of corrupt proposals that I would like to 
summarize. No. 1, shifting election authority; that is one measure of a 
corrupt practice. No. 2, attacking election workers; that is corrupt, 
and that is what they are trying to do. And No. 3, restricting mail-in 
voting.
  First and foremost, many of the bills attack the most fundamental 
foundational element of our democracy: administering our elections.
  According to a report from Voting Rights Lab, in September of 2021, 
more than 180 of the bills introduced across the country are an effort 
to subvert our current election administration. Some of these bills 
would allow the legislature or other partisan actors--really, purveyors 
of the Big Lie--to exert greater control over elections and interfere 
with local election administrators.
  For example, Georgia's SB 202, which has already been enacted into 
law--not just proposed--this law will allow a partisan State election 
board to remove and replace local election administrators. The new law 
empowers the State legislature--the State legislature--to appoint the 
chair of the election board, ensuring that the majority of the board 
reflects the partisan will of the legislature.
  We have also seen numerous lawmakers, including in Pennsylvania, 
initiate or attempt to initiate partisan election ``audits'' into the 
2020 election results without any evidence of fraud. The better word 
for this type of approach is ``fraudit.'' That is what it is. It is a 
fraudulent attempt, and it is nothing more than a ``fraudit.''
  These efforts fueled by the Big Lie have wasted millions of taxpayer 
dollars, money solely in an attempt to further call into doubt the 2020 
election and create instability in our elections. Republican effort to 
shift election authority undermines people's faith in elections, and it 
injects partisanship into our election administration.
  The second area of corruption we have also seen in some of these 
bills is efforts to pass legislation that create or increase civil and 
criminal penalties against election workers. Election officials across 
the Nation--Republicans and Democrats alike, from blue counties and red 
counties--should be accorded the respect and commendation they deserve. 
These are public servants. They should not be subjected to threats, 
either legal or otherwise. In the middle of the pandemic, these same 
Americans risked their own health and their families' health to ensure 
that the elections were conducted safely and efficiently. These 
Americans--Republicans and Democrats and Independents--did their job 
honorably. Rather than receiving appreciation for their efforts, they 
and their families have been threatened with threats of violence, 
fueled by the deliberate falsehoods of which I spoke before.
  The same falsehoods spread by politicians here in Washington and in 
State legislatures across the country. These threats were particularly 
relevant in my home State of Pennsylvania when then-Philadelphia 
Commissioner, Al Schmidt, a Republican, his family, and his colleagues 
were subjected to death threats--death threats--for doing their job.
  This is a Republican elected official in Philadelphia subjected to 
death threats after election day, simply because he was trying to 
fulfill--and the others who worked with him were trying to fulfill--an 
essential part of their basic duty, which is counting the votes in that 
city.
  So despite the widely reported threats against our election officials 
and concerns about mass resignations due to the stresses on our 
democratic institutions, Republican legislatures have enacted laws that 
further threaten these officials with felony prosecutions, and they 
also threaten civil penalties for not complying with the election 
rules, even inadvertent or technical mistakes.
  We have never seen this before in America, but that is what we are 
talking about today. So these attacks are a clear attempt to further 
undermine our democracy and counter the efforts of many election 
officials to help make voting safer and easier during the COVID-19 
pandemic.
  Finally, the third issue, which I would consider a corrupt practice 
that is embedded into these bills, is the question of mail-in voting. 
As I have already shared, Pennsylvania's record turnout in 2020 was a 
direct result of the bipartisan efforts, 133 Republican legislators 
voting for mail-in balloting, so that we would have universal mail-in 
voting, and early voting in addition to mail-in voting.
  Rather than embracing its success, Republican lawmakers in 
Pennsylvania and across the country have worked to greatly restrict or 
eliminate--or eliminate--mail-in voting through a variety of methods. 
Seven States have reduced the timeframe in which voters can request 
mail-in ballots. Another four States limited the use of ballot drop 
boxes.
  Some States have gutted or tried to gut the ability of voters to 
automatically register to receive a mail-in ballot for every election 
they are eligible to vote in.
  Republican politicians just keep on lying about the 2020 election. 
Not a single Republican politician has come forward with evidence of 
the type of widespread systemic voter fraud that would necessitate any 
of the changes that these laws are predicated on and these proposals 
are predicated on.
  In reality, these changes are about one thing and one thing only--
making it more difficult to cast a ballot.
  Every single American should be alarmed by these efforts. If we allow 
voter suppression efforts to go unchecked, they will, eventually and 
simply, impact everyone.
  I think it was Martin Luther King who talked about injustice--an 
injustice that would be validated by these corrupt proposals. 
``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.''
  Voter suppression efforts would make it harder. Here are just a 
couple of examples from my home State, and this is true of a lot of 
States. Voter suppression laws make it harder for a 90-year-old living 
in rural Pennsylvania who can't get to her county election bureau to 
vote or to a polling place. She will have a harder time voting in 
Pennsylvania and in every other State, if Pennsylvania goes in the 
direction of some of these other States.
  Pennsylvania has over 800,000 veterans who fought for our freedoms, 
including the right to vote, the freedom to vote. Shouldn't that 
veteran continue to have the option to vote early or to vote by 
mail? After they have served our Nation, shouldn't they continue to 
have that option? Or should we just go back to the old ways where that 
veteran is limited to one day a year, for a certain number of hours a 
year, to vote in a general election?

  So these proposals--these voter suppression and subversion 
proposals--will impact everyone. It will impact a farmer in 
Pennsylvania who might have a very busy day on election day and can't 
get to vote for one reason or another.
  So, if they are not able to vote, their vote gets cancelled out 
because we decided not to have early voting, which we have now; we 
decided not to have mail-in ballots, which we have now? All in the 
service of one man and one Big Lie, that is what this is all about.
  So we can't go back to those days.
  How about just another example from Pennsylvania? We have had a long 
tradition where men and women serving overseas have voted by absentee 
ballot. Guess what an absentee ballot is? An absentee ballot is a mail-
in ballot. It is the same thing. We just broadened the category of 
folks who could use that same method.
  So do we want to go back to a time when we can't have the kind of 
mail-in ballots that we had in 2020 that led to that great turnout? And 
it is entirely possible that we could go back to a time when even the 
votes of men and women serving overseas would be put at risk, because 
when you eliminate

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mail-in ballots in a State like Pennsylvania, you are eliminating 
absentee ballots, as well, by doing that.
  So I don't think we want to do that to our fighting men and women. So 
we can't go back to the days when farmers and small business owners and 
veterans and busy moms juggling their kids' schedules and seniors who 
may have trouble voting and need another option to vote--we can't go 
back to those days when they couldn't vote if they didn't have the time 
on that one single day.
  It is one of the reasons why we had such low voter turnout, even in 
Presidential elections, for all these years in Pennsylvania and in so 
many other States. So we know what we have to do. We have to go back to 
our founding principles. And voting is a foundational pillar of our 
democracy. And, as elected officials, it is our responsibility to do 
all we can to expand voter access and remove institutional barriers to 
voting.
  But we have got to be clearer about what is happening. Our democracy, 
by virtue of these suppression bills, is under siege right now. The 
attack here on January 6 continues. What was a violent attack on that 
day is now in the form of legislation to attack our elections, to 
attack the right to vote, to make it harder to vote.
  So attacking democracy at an earlier stage was always met by the 
right response. Today, that right response--the correct response--is to 
pass the Freedom to Vote and the John Lewis Act to prevent these kinds 
of attacks on voting rights.
  It would protect election officials by criminalizing intimidation, 
threats, or coercion of election officials. It would mandate 
systematic, nonpartisan, risk-limiting audits to combat against the 
unfounded partisan approaches by Republicans.
  It would create national standards for early voting, mail voting, 
voting restoration, voter identification, and voter registration. It 
would also include some of the provisions of my bill--the Accessible 
Voting Act--to create an accessible voting experience for every voter, 
ensuring that the needs of people with disabilities are met.
  That is another category of Americans whose votes will be 
suppressed--people with disabilities--if these Republicans get their 
way.
  This bill we are trying to pass reflects feedback from State and 
local officials to ensure that people responsible for implementing 
these reforms can do so effectively.
  And, furthermore, it would restore the full strength of the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965 after the Supreme Court gutted several of the Voting 
Rights Act provisions in recent years.
  These provisions work hand in hand to improve access to the ballot 
and protect against election subversion. We should restore the Senate 
at the same time, by allowing plenty of time for debate, as well as a 
robust amendment process, so the minority party in the Senate has full 
opportunity to debate issues like voting rights.
  So we have got to do more than just simply move a bill forward 
tomorrow on voting rights. We should also change the Senate rules 
appropriately to allow that bill to be passed by a majority after we 
have a robust debate. Debating voting rights has never been more 
important. The time to do that is now.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hassan). The Senator from Utah.

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