[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,
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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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