Voting Rights

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, in June, our Democratic colleagues voted on their first and initial efforts to nationalize our State-run and local-run election system. That bill--this legislation, this effort-- had been years in the making. You know, in some ways, it is interesting to think about because back when our country was founded, there was a big debate on whether we should have a national government or whether we should have a Federal system. And, of course, we opted for a Federal system where the States retained their sovereignty within their authority, and all powers not delegated to the Federal Government were retained by the States and the people. That is the very definition of a Federal system.

So our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle have sort of renewed that debate again, trying to upend our Federal system of governance in favor of a national government, basically a command and control run out of Washington, DC.

When it comes to the takeover of our elections or to try to nationalize our elections, the initial proposal surfaced as a messaging bill in 2019 but over the years has undergone a number of makeovers. Each time, our colleagues have tried to sell this radical change in the way that our elections are run by different appeals.

They have talked about, well, this is important for election security. Remember the 2016 election, obviously--big concerns about Russian misinformation campaigns and cyber attacks, and election security was obviously at top of mind.

Then it was sold as a matter of regaining the voters' confidence that their vote would actually count.

Then it was sold as a way to remove the obstacles that prevented people from voting, which appears to be the current message.

Well, in 2020, in my State alone, but not just in Texas but across the country, we saw a record voter turnout. In my State, we said 66 percent of registered voters cast a ballot--11.3 million people.

The last time I had been on the ballot, 6 years previously, we only had 4.8 million voters, but we went from 4.8 to 11.3 in just 6 years. Now, part of that is because my State has been growing. Between 2010 and 2020, we have seen 4 million new Texans, either born or moved or made their way one way or another to our State.

But the 2020 election saw the largest voter turnout in 120 years--120 years. Well, clearly, if people are voting--including people of color, minorities--are voting at record levels, it is time to come up with a new sales pitch to try to sell this hijacking, really, of our State- and local-run elections.

So a number of States, including my State, have recently passed legislation to address voter confidence, to make sure that elections are fair and that people have an opportunity to vote who are legally qualified to do so. The phrase many of them used in that process was, they tried to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. So that now has been the focus of our Democratic colleagues in trying to nationalize our State- and local-run elections, which, by the way, is ensconced within the framework of the Constitution itself.

So our Democratic colleagues then attacked the State election laws and really just went over the top in terms of their description of what exactly was happening. Certainly it was not factual, but they said, in a number of cases, these changes in State election laws--and I am thinking of Georgia, Arizona, and Texas in particular--they said that they are the most sweeping attacks on the right to vote since the beginning of Jim Crow, and they said the only way to change that was to pass their election law.

Our colleagues talked about the bill in terms of protecting the right to vote and strengthening our democracy. Who could be against that? But the reality of the situation is very different, and the far-reaching provisions of the Democratic election takeover bill look nothing like the safeguards of democracy; they look more like a partisan power play.

In the end, the only thing bipartisan about the bill was the opposition. In both the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats voted against the initial legislation, but our Democratic colleagues still refuse to recognize the reality of the vote and throw in the towel.

After the failed vote this summer, our colleagues on the Democratic side went back to the drawing board and came back with a new bill they call the Freedom to Vote Act. Well, if we needed any more proof that this is not a good-faith effort to strengthen our election but, rather, a partisan power play, the bill was introduced 1 week ago, and the Senate could end up voting on it as early as this week. That is hardly what I would call a deliberative process, one that even invites bipartisan debate and consideration.

So we may end up being required to vote on the bill--that is certainly the prerogative of the majority leader--with no real committee hearings, no real testimony from experts, and no indication that this bill is really being taken seriously other than to check a box and to send a message.

What has really been interesting is our colleagues on the left have said--they have tried to brand this as a compromise bill. I think that is primarily because of the objection of the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Manchin, who said he couldn't support the original bill. So they tried to come up with something that maybe looked more like a compromise but really isn't, and I will talk about that more in a second.

But this bill was not the result of bipartisan deliberations or consultation or communication even. As the Republican leader has noted, this so-called compromise bill is a compromise between the left and the radical left, which is hardly a compromise at all. But that is apparently the way that Leader Schumer decides to run the Senate, after all, passing a $1.9 trillion spending bill right after Joe Biden became President, with no Republican support, under the auspices of being COVID relief when only 10 percent of it actually had anything to do with COVID.

Well, the good news is we have done a few bipartisan things. We passed the Endless Frontier Act--our way of trying to address the challenge of China. We passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill. But now our colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to do it alone again, and they are trying to pass a bill that could end up costing taxpayers as much as $5.5 trillion. A nominal figure is $3.5 trillion, but right now, they are experiencing a lot of differences of opinion within their own ranks as to what is acceptable and what is not, and they certainly aren't talking to us.

But all the while, they have continued to work on a partisan effort to overrun our constitutional delegation, really, of the election system to State and local government. So no one should be fooled. This bill is not a compromise in any sense of the word. Just like its predecessor, this bill hijacks State constitutional power to make decisions on things like voter registration and early voting.

Actually, this morning in the Constitution Subcommittee, the Senator from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, was talking about the fact that his State, Connecticut, did not have early in-person voting, but they have now passed a bill that provides for a referendum in Connecticut. If the referendum passes, then the State legislature may actually provide for early voting in person.

I would just tell you that the contrast between the rhetoric and the reality is pretty amazing because the Texas election law, passed by the State legislature just recently, provides for 17 days of early voting in person. In other words, there is a fulsome opportunity for anybody who is qualified to vote to cast their ballot in person or by mail if you qualify or on the day of the election. As you can see, with 66 percent of the registered voters actually taking advantage of that generous opportunity to cast their ballot, they did in historic numbers.

Well, there is a saying that ``if it is not broke, don't fix it,'' and there is nothing broke about our State- and local-run election systems. Certainly the guardrails are in place. If, for example, someone were to deny a minority voter the opportunity to cast a ballot or to make sure their ballot counted just like anybody else's, there is section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In fact, the Biden Department of Justice has filed such a lawsuit against Georgia based on the changes in their voting laws. So there is plenty of opportunity to raise these issues in court should the Federal Government and should the Biden administration wish to challenge them, but the truth is, they are going to lose because what they have tried to do is to change through litigation what they cannot do constitutionally through legislation.

Well, this so-called compromise bill, which is no compromise at all, contains invasive disclosure requirements that would attack the privacy of voters and chill free speech. It places handcuffs on States when it comes to drawing new legislative lines in redistributing, and it threatens action from the Attorney General if those standards aren't met. It makes it too difficult to root out fraud and protect the integrity of the vote by prohibiting voter ID for mail-in ballots and mandating drop boxes for ballots to be dropped by partisan advocates.

You know, people act like there is no such thing as voter fraud, but actually we have a famous case in Texas called Box 13 in Duval County, TX, where Coke Stevenson and LBJ--Lyndon Baines Johnson--were running for the Senate.

You know what they found is, because of the manipulation of the voter rolls by the county judge in Duval County, literally, they had people who were already buried in the cemetery vote in favor of Lyndon Baines Johnson in alphabetical order once they figured out how many votes they needed to cast.

That is just one famous example of voter fraud. Our Democratic colleagues act like it doesn't exist.

But what we did here in the Judiciary Committee a few months ago was the secretary of state for New Hampshire--he is a Democrat, and they don't have any early voting. It was interesting to hear him say that he thinks the single most important factor when it comes to people casting their ballot is people's confidence in the system that their ballot will actually be counted the way they voted. So all of these different times and conditions under which people can cast their ballot, he says, really don't have nearly as big an impact as just the confidence they have that their vote will be counted as they cast it.

And why our Democratic colleagues are opposed to voter ID is beyond me. We know Jimmy Carter and James Baker III--of course, Jimmy Carter, a former Democratic President; and James Baker III, a former prominent Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary. They had a commission to look at things like voter ID, and they actually recommended that voter ID would be one way to instill public confidence in the integrity of the vote.

You have to show your ID when you go through the Transportation Security Administration--TSA--to get on an airplane. You have to show an ID if you are going to buy a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store or six-pack of beer. I mean, we are accustomed to people being required to identify who they are. If you want to get into a Federal building, you have to show an ID.

So the idea that we should prohibit voter ID, to me, is ridiculous, and that is one of the provisions in the Democrat substitute bill which is before us. It would prohibit the use of voter ID through mail-in ballots.

But that is just the beginning. One of the most outlandish--or I should say on top of what I have already talked about--provisions of this bill is the use of taxpayer funds for campaigns. Well, a lot of companies have matching programs for charitable giving. That is a positive, good thing. If an employee donates to a charity of their choice, many times their company will match that donation dollar for dollar. That is a positive thing.

But, here, what happens is, instead of a charity getting the money, it is a political candidate. In other words, our Democratic colleagues are recommending that for every dollar that is donated to a political candidate, the taxpayer kick in an extra 6 bucks.

Well, I know some of these campaigns that we have already run in recently get to be pretty expensive campaigns. But can you imagine that the taxpayers be asked to pony up $6 for every $1 that is contributed to the campaign? And is it really fair to ask taxpayers to subsidize the election of somebody they may disagree with?

It makes no sense to me. Well, this means that if someone donates $200 to the preferred congressional candidate, the Federal Government could match with $1,200. And it is not the Federal Government; it is the taxpayer, by the way.

Then there are the campaign vouchers, which will provide eligible voters with a $25 voucher to donate to the campaign of their choosing. I am not making this up. This is what is in the legislation that, unfortunately, I don't think many people have read or understand.

It is easy to imagine a better use of taxpayer funding, whether infrastructure, help for people who still are in need as a result of the COVID pandemic. It could go to crime victims or support a response to a humanitarian crisis at the border, like we are seeing in Del Rio, TX. But, no, our Democratic colleagues want to put it into the political campaigns of the candidates of their choice.

Well, in addition to the rotten provisions that are maintained from the previous bill, there is even more. The bill places immense power in the office of General Counsel of the Federal Election Commission. He is an unelected official. It lowers the legal standard to overturn voting laws. And it makes election day a Federal holiday, even though the bill mandates 15 days of early voting, which, again, by the way, is less than the State legislature has provided for in Texas. We have 17 days of early voting.

Well, the truth is this is a so-called solution in search of a problem. The truth is there is no voter suppression epidemic.

During the Obama administration, their Justice Department brought four lawsuits--four lawsuits--under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. If you thought there was an epidemic of voter suppression, don't you think the Obama administration would have been more active and more vigilant?

Again, there is the fact that the 2020 elections saw the highest turnout in 120 years for all racial and ethnic groups. Over the last 4 years, States across the country undertook efforts to keep their elections free from fraud and foreign interference.

By the way, one of the conclusions following the 2016 election by the intelligence community was that the dispersed and diffused nature of our elections actually made it harder for Russia to impact the outcome because they would have had to do so in all 50 States.

If this was all run out of Washington, DC, and one black box appeared, it would probably be easier for them to concentrate their efforts on one location rather than 50 locations and increase the likelihood of their ability to influence the outcome.

Well, we have kicked in--here in Congress--hundreds of millions of dollars to help the States keep their elections free from fraud and foreign interference.

But under the Constitution, as currently written, each State has a constitutional authority to govern how their elections are run, and I think it is a good thing--subject to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act if someone commits a foul.

In my State, 29 million people are spread out across major cities and small towns alike. And what works well in our State may not make as much sense in a small, densely populated State like New Jersey, or large, sparsely populated State like Alaska.

That is why it is important that the States be the laboratories of democracy and try to be responsive to the needs of the people in their particular State, because we are not all the same. I believe the leaders in each State know best the unique circumstances of their constituents, and they are best suited to craft voting laws that prioritize both access and security.

A Federal Government hijacking of our State- and local-run election laws will not improve voter confidence in our elections. In fact, it will stir the very fears that Democrats claim they are trying to alleviate. But this isn't really new. It is just a repackaged and new effort to do the same thing, which is to nationalize our elections and run all of them out of Washington, DC, and to discourage commonsense measures, like voter ID, that help bolster public confidence in our elections and diminish the opportunity for people to cheat.

Well, no matter how many times we see this rebranded and new version of this Federal takeover of elections, I will continue to fight any effort to take the constitutional authority given to my State to run our own elections. I certainly am not going to turn it over to the National Democratic Party.

The Senate will never green light politically motivated attempts to take over America's elections, and that is good thing. And we are not going to go down this road on this new, rehashed, modified, substitute effort to nationalize our Federal elections.

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