Elections

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on a different matter. Last week, Senate Democrats announced what was marketed as a compromise on carving out a bigger role for Washington in elections all across our country.

It was hardly the first time our Democratic colleagues had given their takeover of 50 States' election laws a makeover. Over the years, it has sometimes been sold as an urgent overhaul of our democracy; other times as just a set of narrow tweaks. But for all of their attempts to change up the pitch, the unfortunate fact is that the bones of the Democrats' proposal are still the same.

The latest version is only a compromise in the sense that the center left compromised with the far left. Under the hood is the same Frankenstein's monster that has been there since 2019, years--years-- before the State-level actions which Democrats now claim have made it all necessary.

It still makes Washington bureaucrats the de facto board of elections for all 50 States, dictating the terms of things like automatic and same-day voter registration. It still insists on impeding State efforts to ensure integrity of voter rolls through popular, commonsense voter ID measures. It still has government dollars going directly to politicians' campaigns--that is the public funds for bumper stickers and attack ads. It still empowers partisan regulators to circumvent the bipartisan FEC and engage in even more intimidation of private citizens who engage in political speech. And these, of course, are just to name a few.

Now, surely, as the Senate continues to do its job and strike down misguided ideas like these, we will hear plenty from folks who consider it evidence that this body is broken. But, of course, that simply is not true. The Senate is fully capable of taking landmark, bipartisan action that makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

Back in 2002, I was involved, along with my colleague Chris Dodd, in passing the Help America Vote Act. I was one of the leaders on that. We empowered State and local election systems to follow commonsense guideposts for integrity and accessibility. It provided basically a grant program to States to help them upgrade their voter systems after the Florida election in 2000. And the Senate passed it 92 to 2--92 to 2.

So if our Democratic colleagues really want to find common ground and act on common sense, the roadmap is right there. But, unfortunately, we know that has never been the case.

Unfortunately, this latest ``compromise'' is just a repackaging of what even reporters called a messaging bill that was headed nowhere. The substance is not really changing, so neither will the result.

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