Election Security
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today is the 1-year anniversary of an election that was judged the most secure in the history of America. Let me say that again. The election that ended November 3, 2020, 1 year ago, was judged the most secure in American history. That is not my opinion; that is the official conclusion, under the Trump administration, of his Department of Homeland Security, which coordinates with the Nation's top cyber security and voting infrastructure experts to protect our elections. They released that assessment 10 days after last year's election, and they did it in the face of a dangerous and unprecedented avalanche of attacks and tweets from the enraged President Donald Trump, who claimed falsely that the election had been stolen from him.
Those election security experts were not alone. President Trump and his loyalists filed more than 50 lawsuits in State and Federal courts, repeating their false claims of voter fraud and stolen votes--50. Every crackpot theory that Rudy Giuliani could glean or spawn on the internet was tested in court. How did they do? Fifty lawsuits. No evidence to back their claims in the courts; only bizarre conspiracy theories and far-right internet gossip, which they accepted as gospel. Well, the lawsuits were all dismissed, some even by judges President Trump had nominated. It was not a great day for the theory of a stolen election in the courts of America.
What happened next? What happened was documented by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I chair. We brought witnesses before us to really explore stage 2 of President Trump's effort to overturn the last election.
When he couldn't win in the courts, he decided to go to the Department of Justice. William Barr, his honored, loyal Attorney General, resigned after announcing he could find nothing wrong with the election, and then President Trump took it in his own hands. With a few of his allies, one of them Jeffrey Clark in the Department of Justice, they tried to pressure the Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, to send a letter out to the attorneys general and other State authorities across the Nation to tell them to suspend reporting the electoral college vote count.
Well, Jeffrey Rosen and others stood up to the President even when he threatened to dismiss him and replace him. In fact, when that happened, a number of people in the Department of Justice, many of whom were appointees by President Trump, said that they would resign en mass if that happened.
So the Trump approach to take this to the Department of Justice and to railroad his way through there failed, but the Big Lie continued. We all know about the death and destruction of the Big Lie in this Capitol Building, in this Senate Chamber, on January 6. In this Capitol Building, 5 people lost their lives, and over 100 law enforcement were attacked by the mob that descended on this building. The entire world looked on in disbelief to think that a President would send a mob up to overrun the Capitol and to stop the electoral college vote count.
The Big Lie is also corroding America's faith in our electoral system. A new poll released this week disclosed that only one in three Republican voters trusts that the 2024 elections will be fair--only one in three.
One year ago, Americans braved a lethal pandemic to cast their ballots. Many stood in line, some for hours. The 2020 general election saw the highest voter turnout in more than a century, according to the Brennan Center. And as I said, it was our most secure election ever, as judged by President Trump's Department of Homeland Security and his Attorney General, William Barr. We ought to be proud of that.
Sadly, however, instead of telling people the truth and defending our elections, lawmakers in many States are using the Big Lie, propagated by former President Trump, as a pretext to undermine America's right to vote. We need to use examples here so you understand what we are saying.
Remember the runoff election for two senatorial seats in the State of Georgia? It was an important election, and there were unprecedented numbers of voters participating in it. The law in Georgia at the time said that people could register to vote between the official election count on November 3 and the runoff election count in January. Then the Georgia Legislature, after two Democratic Senators were elected, changed that and said: No, you can't register to vote in that interim period of time. They reduced the amount of time that people would have to cast absentee ballots.
Since the January 6 assault on the Capitol, more than 425 bills have been introduced in 49 States to make it harder to vote and in some cases easier for some politicians to overturn elections if they don't like voters' choices.
This is exactly how democracies wither. If we undermine the most fundamental concept of democracy--the right to vote and the right for people in that electorate to choose its leaders--we are going to weaken this democracy that we were honored to inherit.
Three times this year on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Republican Senators have used the filibuster, which historically has been the favorite tool of segregationists--and I might add, many of those segregationists were Democrats--to prevent this Senate from even debating voting rights. Let me say that again. Republicans have used the filibuster to prevent the Senate from even debating both the For the People Act twice and the Freedom to Vote Act.
The other day, I looked up the cloture vote on another of our Nation's great laws, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On June 10, 1964, Senators voted to end the longest filibuster in history and allowed the Civil Rights Act to move forward. The vote tally is important. Among Republican Senators, 27 voted for cloture to end the filibuster, and 6 voted not to, to support the continuation of the filibuster--27 to 6 on the Republican side. The vote by Democratic Senators, as history judges it, and I stand by that judgment, was less noble. Forty-four Democrats voted to end the filibuster on the Civil Rights Act, and 23 voted to sustain it.
So if the Republicans voted with such a strong majority in favor of ending the filibuster that was propagated by Democratic Senators at the time against the Civil Rights Act, what has happened since? What has become of this Republican Party, this party of Abraham Lincoln? In fact, what has become of the party of Ronald Reagan?
You see, 40 years ago this week, President Reagan proudly signed a bill extending the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for 25 years. This is what Ronald Reagan, Republican President of the United States, said: ``For this nation to remain true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted, or defiled. The right to vote,'' he said, ``is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished.''
What a statement--as powerful and decisive as one might ask from a Republican President when he extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
So I want to commend my friend, and she is my friend, Senator Lisa Murkowski, the senior Senator from Alaska, for remaining true to the values of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan even in this hyperpartisan age.
Later today, the Senate will vote on whether to begin debate on the compromise version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The compromise is the result of months of good-faith negotiation involving Senator Leahy, the lead Democratic sponsor, my office, as well as Senator Manchin, Senator Murkowski, and others who support this legislation. It will restore the original intention and protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, before misguided rulings by the Supreme Court gutted that magnificent law and rendered many of its critical protections vulnerable.
When a narrow conservative majority in the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act enforcement provision 8 years ago, it concluded that Congress could come up with a new enforcement formula for our times. Well, we did. This is it. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act contains that new formula. It is fair, it is bipartisan, and we need it urgently to stop the nationwide assault on voting rights that is being justified by President Trump's Big Lie.
Years ago, in one of the most memorable experiences in my public life, early on a foggy Sunday morning, I stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, with my friend John Lewis. The two of us looked across at that piece of territory just at the bottom of the bridge where John Lewis nearly died when he was beaten during that march.
John Lewis risked his life so poor people and Black people in the Deep South could vote.
John Lewis had more moral courage than anyone I have known.
Many of our Republican friends say they revere him too. Well, today is the chance to show it. John Lewis championed the Voting Rights Advancement Act in the months before he died. He knew it would protect the America he loved and the cause he nearly died for.
The bill we will vote to begin debating later today is based on the same foundation as the Voting Rights Act extension that passed the Senate unanimously in 2006. Unanimously, it passed. But that was then, and this is now.
Do you know who voted in 2006 for the protections that we seek to restore with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act?
Senator Lisa Murkowski was one of those who did. But also at that time in 2006, the Senate Republican Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell; the Senate Republican Whip, Senator John Thune--they voted for it too. It was a bipartisan, unanimous undertaking.
Next week, Americans will pause to honor the courage and sacrifice of our veterans. Before we vote on whether to allow the Senate to even begin debating voting rights, I urge my Republican friends to remember the words spoken by another President, President Johnson.
He spoke in the Capitol Rotunda, surrounded by Republican and Democratic Senators of the day and the Reverend Martin Luther King and other heroes of the long struggle to secure voting rights. President Johnson called the passage of the Voting Rights Act ``a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield.''
For all those--the thousands--who have risked their lives to defend this country, they were defending not just a name, not just a piece of geography; they were defending our rights as Americans and they were prepared to die for it, whether on the foreign battlefield or on a bridge in Selma.
I urge my Republican colleagues to let the Senate debate voting rights. Vote ``yes'' for cloture.
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