Election Security
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the senior Senator from Vermont, for his courtesy.
Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on the latest iteration of what has come to be known as the Democrats' partisan power grab over our elections conducted overwhelmingly by the States--actually, exclusively at the State and local level.
The legislation that prompted this discussion first popped up in 2019, when the newly elected majority in the House went on a messaging bill spree. Over the last 2 years, they have tried a number of different marketing strategies to convince the American people that this overhaul was needed.
This latest version is proof that Congress isn't buying what they are selling, and that is for good reason.
Those who were advocating for a national takeover of our State-run elections, at one point they said it was a matter of election security. Then they said this was designed to help restore voter confidence. Then they said this is a way to remove obstacles that prevented people from voting.
But facts are stubborn things. In 2020, we saw record turnout. Two- thirds of eligible voters cast a ballot, and that was the highest turnout in 120 years.
I was on the ballot in 2020. The last time I had been on the ballot, 6 years previously, there were 4.8 million voters in Texas. In 2020, there were 11.3 million voters in Texas. Compared to the 2016 Presidential election, 17 million more Americans cast a vote, and we saw historic turnouts by Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic voters.
So facts being stubborn things, clearly it is time for the advocates for this Federal takeover to come up with a new sales pitch. So our Democratic friends attacked election integrity bills being passed by State legislatures, like Texas, all across the country.
The Constitution itself gives States the power to determine how their elections should be run, and States are using that authority to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.
Our Democratic friends have tried to frame these new State laws as somehow suppressing voting rights. As we have seen, if that is the objective, they certainly are doing a lousy job at it because people are voting in unprecedented numbers.
Well, it is interesting to contrast some of the changes that our Democratic colleagues, including the Merrick Garland's Department of Justice, comparing the reforms they have attacked and those that they believe are just fine.
The Georgia law, which the Department of Justice has sued under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, actually expanded early voting in person to 17 days. But if you live in Massachusetts, you can only vote for 11 days. I haven't heard many complaints about the Massachusetts voting laws restricting people's access to the polls. And the President's home State of Delaware, they don't even offer in-person early voting, but they will in 2022. But even then, they are even more restrictive than Massachusetts. It will only be for 10 days.
So somehow a short period of early voting in Delaware is acceptable-- actually, currently is not available but soon to be acceptable for 10 days--but 17 days of early voting in Georgia is an assault on voting rights. Both cannot be true.
Of course, our Democratic friends believe the only answer to this manufactured assault is an unconstitutional, partisan power grab that they have been pushing for years, as I said. Well, the initial iteration of this came up for a vote in June, and it was sadly rejected, for good reason. The bill would have turned the bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-controlled Commission. This is supposed to be evenly split and nonpartisan, but that would change under the proposal that we voted on in June.
It would have also allowed ballot harvesting--a dubious practice that is a recipe for mischief and wrongdoing, as a ballot could be harvested by paid campaign staffers, political operative, or anyone who had a stake in the outcome of the election. Just go to your closest nursing home or community center, get people to sign a ballot, and harvest away. That would have been permitted. And, actually, prohibitions against ballot harvesting would have been prohibited under the Democrats' bill.
And the bill would have commandeered States' constitutional authority to draw their own congressional districts. The only thing this proposal would have done for the people, as it is called, would be to help make sure that the outcome of virtually every future election meant that Democrats win and Republicans lose; thus, Republicans would be relegated to a permanent minority status. That was the goal.
If this bill weren't so dangerous, it would have been laughable. Nobody would have taken it seriously. It is no surprise that the only thing bipartisan about this legislation is the opposition. In both the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats voted against this legislation.
Still, our Democratic colleagues--I admire their perseverance--they refused to throw in the towel. They decided to work on what they now call a compromise.
Well, generally, a compromise indicates that you have found common ground with somebody who holds a different view. But the so-called compromise bill we are scheduled to vote on tomorrow isn't the result of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats; it is a compromise between the left and the radical left. You really can't call something a compromise when your negotiating partner is sitting on the same side of the table with you.
All this is done to create the illusion or a narrative that the partisan pieces have been stripped out of the bill and it now includes mainstream reforms. But that is far from the truth.
Just like its predecessor, this bill seizes States' constitutional authority to make decisions on matters like voter registration and early voting. It contains invasive disclosure requirements that would undermine citizens' privacy and chill free speech. It places Federal standards on States for redistricting, and threatens action from the Democratic-controlled Attorney General's Office if those standards aren't met. And it makes it harder to root out election fraud, and easier to cheat.
If that is not bad enough, it also takes tax dollars from the American taxpayer and would require it be given to candidates for public office that those taxpayers disagree with. They call that public funding of elections.
Nothing about the bill is a compromise. They may have stripped out some of the most outrageous provisions, but certainly overtly partisan provisions remain.
Republicans uniformly oppose the first attempt at this partisan power grab, and it is no surprise we will oppose this one as well.
This is not a good-faith attempt to ensure our elections are secure from fraud and interference and accessible to all eligible voters. It is rather a political stunt and statement designed to mislead the American people and appeal to the most radical members of the Democratic base.
I am certainly not one to tell the majority leader how to do his job, but it seems like show votes ought to be pretty low on our list of priorities.
Our Democrat colleagues narrowly averted a debt crisis 2 weeks ago, and they have less than 2 months to figure out how to increase the debt ceiling and avoid an economic disaster.
In the coming months, the Senate needs to do what has become an annual tradition, which is to pass the National Defense Authorization Act to give our troops the support they deserve and our commanders the predictability they need for the future. And we need to pass a full slate of appropriations bills to avoid a government shutdown just before the holidays. Those are the things we need to do, at a bare minimum.
We should also be advancing legislation to avert--or to address the border crisis, which has been raging on since January. We need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. We need to bring down sky- high drug prices, and approve accountability and transparency in policing.
There is a lot we should be doing to solve real problems that deserve action from the country and which our constituents deserve as well.
There is a strong appetite for bipartisan work on both sides of the aisle, but the leadership of the Democratic Party has effectively stonewalled bipartisan legislating in favor of a completely partisan approach. It is really a head-scratcher.
Our Democratic colleagues don't have the kind of majorities that FDR had during the New Deal. We have a 50-50 Senate, with the Vice President as the tie-breaker. Common sense ought to tell you that that demands and requires bipartisan legislating, not these kinds of show votes.
We have a long list of tasks that are far more important than virtue signaling. So I hope our colleagues will reevaluate the wisdom of this parade of partisan bills and spend time working with us to find where we have common ground, where we can actually pass legislation and make a difference for our country.
Until that time, we will continue to oppose partisan attacks on our Nation's elections and any other damaging, politically motivated bills Democrats bring to the Senate floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, if I may respond to the Senator from Maine.
I am always interested in working on bipartisan bills and finding common ground. I think my record--and as the Senator knows, we have worked together on a number of things. The fundamental problem with our Democratic friends' approach to election reform is they want to nationalize the election. They want to take the authority away from the States, which is clearly given to the States under the Constitution.
But if we can take that off the table and talk about some other areas, we could work together in that area, I would be more than happy to work with my friend from Maine.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source