Freedom to Vote Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am very proud to stand with my colleagues on the floor to talk about the Freedom to Vote Act. I was proud to work with my colleagues over many months--really, my purpose beginning in May--to help negotiate the bill to a place where it could do what needs to be done to accomplish the objectives my colleagues have described so well.

I want to offer just a few words from the heart about why I am so impassioned about getting this bill done. By my count, there have been 1,994 people who have served in the U.S. Senate--1,994.

One hundred of us share a unique experience. One hundred of us were here on the only day in the history of this body when we were attacked by violent insurrectionists attempting to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. So from whatever State we represent or whatever our background, we are unified in having shared an experience never to be imagined, never to be forgotten, and never to be repeated.

I believe the fact that we shared this experience together with the Senate staff who were here with us, this puts a unique responsibility on our shoulders.

First, let's understand what that day was about, that there are some who are trying to kind of downplay it--it was tourists visiting. We can laugh that off because we know that wasn't the case. There are others who are trying to downplay it in other ways--it was a riot, it was a protest, even that it was a violent protest. That is not what it was.

If it had happened on January 5, it would have been a violent protest. If it had happened on January 7, it would have been a violent protest. But it didn't happen on January 5. It didn't happen on January 7. It happened on a day established by law, at a time established by law, for a purpose established by law to disrupt that purpose.

It was a violent protest organized and inflamed by a President to occur at precisely the moment that the Congress of the United States was carrying out the constitutional duty to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President of the United States.

It was designed to disrupt that certification, and it succeeded. For 5 or 6 hours, we were locked out of the Chamber while the rampagers tried to stop the certification of the election. We were barricaded in the midst of the peak of the COVID pandemic side by side with staff in a room as the insurrectionists tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

Those words ``peaceful transfer of power,'' ``disrupting,'' what does that mean?

Let's unpack it further. It was an effort to disenfranchise more than 80 million people in this country who had voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It was the single largest effort to disenfranchise voters in the history of the United States. That is what happened as we were barricaded first in this building.

And how glad I am that you pages were not here. How glad I am I told my staff not to come to work that day. No one should have had to experience that. But it was an effort that succeeded for a period of hours to disenfranchise more than 80 million people.

Here is a powerful story. On that day, we knew who had been elected President and Vice President. We knew what the House majority would be, but we did not know what the Senate majority would be. The Senate majority wasn't clear in November, and it wasn't clear in December, and it wasn't even clear on January 5, when my colleague who just spoke, from Georgia, had his race called that he had won a special election in Georgia. As we were under attack, it was still in doubt as to who would be the majority party in the U.S. Senate.

As we were barricaded for hours in the midst of COVID in a room, side by side with television monitors showing us what was happening at the Capitol, there then came a breaking news report that the last Senate race had been called in Georgia for Jon Ossoff, and so Democrats would now have a Senate majority.

I am a religious person. Things happen for a reason. It was unclear who would be the leadership in the Senate. But in the midst of a pandemic that had unnecessarily killed 600,000 Americans, and now with an ongoing attack against the Capitol of the United States--unique in American history--by people trying to disenfranchise 80 million people, the news suddenly came: We want new leadership. We need new leadership.

There is a reason for that. There is a reason that it happened in the middle of this attack. We have a burden on our shoulders to live up to the responsibility that we--100--uniquely share. That responsibility is to make sure that no voter--not 80 million, not 10 million, not a million, not 10, not 1--that no voter is disenfranchised in this country.

That is why we have been given this unique opportunity to lead at this moment in time. That is what being victimized by that attack means in terms of our responsibility to this country and to our history. We have to carry out that responsibility.

Now, if this were a Hollywood film, what would happen is the Democrats get the majority, and then all of a sudden we put to rest disenfranchisement--Democratic majority, we can stop the disenfranchisement of voters.

But, no, the Big Lie didn't stop. The Big Lie didn't stop when we found out we had the majority. And this is often the case in powerful stories in human history. Like, you know, when Moses leads folks through the Red Sea to the other side, it is not all great as soon as they get there. They still have work to do.

We got the majority, but we have work to do because in State after State after State, as my colleagues indicated, legislators in States where there are Republican Governors and Republican legislative Houses have thrown up one burden after the next to disenfranchise people, just as there was an effort to disenfranchise 80 million on January 6.

Let me be clear. These State legislators, they may not be wearing ``Camp Auschwitz'' T-shirts. They may not be carrying Confederate flags around. They may not be beating up police officers with flag poles or fence rails, but they are acting out of the same Big Lie that President Trump repeated ad nauseam when he encouraged people to come and be wild at the U.S. Capitol to overturn the peaceful transfer of power.

And so the States are embracing these strategies so well described by my colleagues to make it harder for people to vote, to enable partisan politicians to take the power to count votes away from electoral officials if they don't like what that count would show, to even criminalize people who are trying to help their neighbors vote.

Imagine this: making it a crime to give somebody water as they are waiting to vote, a crime punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, by up to a year in jail. This is the same Big Lie tactic that led to the attack on this body, and it is happening all over this country. There is a burden uniquely on our shoulders, if we were paying attention on January 6, to stand boldly to stop it and to stop it once and for all.

That is what the Freedom to Vote Act is about. It is about ensuring that these mass efforts of disenfranchisement, which reached their most vivid and flowering in the violent attack on our Capitol, don't occur and that people have the ability to get access to a ballot and to have confidence that their ballots will be counted with integrity and that weird schemes and stunts and penalties and criminal punishment won't be thrown in their paths by one high hurdle after the next to keep them from participating in a democracy that we proudly proclaim ourselves to be. That is why I am so proud to be one of the cosponsors of this bill with my colleagues.

I was a civil rights lawyer for 17 years. You might think that is why I like this bill. No. The thing that makes me passionate about the bill is I was an eyewitness to the biggest disenfranchisement effort in the history of the United States, and I don't think we can say: Yes, we were here, and we were eyewitnesses to it. It happened to us and the people we care about, but there is nothing we can do.

We can't say, after having seen what we have seen and done what we have done and been where we have been, that there is nothing we can do. We can't. We have to act.

Let me just conclude and say this: I have been on 10 ballots and been sworn into office many times as a city councilman, as a mayor, as a Lieutenant Governor, as a Governor, and as a U.S. Senator. When you get sworn in, you always say some version of this--it varies slightly in local and State office, as the Presiding Officer knows, who was also a mayor and a Governor, and it also has some version of this within it--a pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I had an epiphany in the days after January 6, and the epiphany was this: When I would take that oath of office, it was just kind of like the thing you would say so you could do your job. If you had asked me, ``Hey, Senator Kaine,'' or ``Hey, Governor Kaine,'' or ``Hey, Councilman Kaine, what is your job?'' I would have given you a job description, and the job description would have been that I want to build schools; that I want to make sure that our troops have the resources they need to keep our country safe. I mean, I always had a job description in my mind. I have been in elected office for 27 years now. I have always had a job description in my mind: education, healthcare, defense--the next thing on my ``to do'' list. I always had a job description in my mind.

Never did I think, until after January 6, that my oath of office was my job description. We say that oath of office, and we sometimes don't think about it. No. That oath of office is my job description, and I am kind of sorry that it took me 27 years to figure that out: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Those who would disenfranchise 80 million or those who would disenfranchise 1 are domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States.

I have pledged to support and defend that Constitution. This bill-- the debate that we will have and the vote that we will have--is a test of whether we mean what we say. I so look forward to engaging in this most important debate with my colleagues in the days to come.

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