Freedom to Vote Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Minnesota. She is an extraordinarily talented legislator and works well in a challenging political environment, and she has tackled this issue with a ferocity and intensity which is seldom seen in the U.S. Senate. It is fitting that she did and that she continues even to this day because of the gravity of the issue, but we are fortunate to have her leadership--extraordinary leadership--to bring us to this moment where we are facing the issue of voting in America.

Mr. President, I started on Capitol Hill at the lowest possible level, as an intern, in the office of U.S. Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois. I was a college student at Georgetown University.

Senator Douglas had served in World War II. He volunteered at the age of 50 to enlist in the Marine Corps and worked his way into a fighting position in the South Pacific. And on the island of Okinawa, he was shot up, and his left arm dangled by his side the rest of his life, much like Bob Dole. He used to refer to that left arm as his paperweight.

He had a way of running a Senate office which would be impossible in these days, but he insisted on signing every letter that went out of his office. And he would read them and make notes, which I thought were illegible, but they were his efforts to send personal greetings along with the letters.

Well, you can imagine that they stacked up the letters each day--his staff did--as they typed them and used carbon paper back in the day. And he would come in at 5 o'clock at his conference table with a large stack of letters and start to fold them. Of course, with one arm, he needed help. That is where I showed up--and the other interns. We sat next to him and pulled the letters as he signed them.

And we were told by the senior staff in the office that, as interns in that capacity, we weren't supposed to talk to this great man because he had important thoughts going through his mind and we shouldn't interrupt him. But, lo and behold, he would open the conversation with me and others, and we felt really fortunate to have a chance to just speak to him for a few minutes.

So I would prepare, every time I was going to play that role, to read even more about his background so I knew what he had been through. I can recall the day when I worked up the courage and said--they called him Mr. D.--Mr. D., I read somewhere that before Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, that you were a socialist and a follower of Norman Thomas, another American socialist. Why were you not a Democrat?

He said: Dick, in those days, the Democratic Party was the party of southern Democrats who were not good on civil rights and big-city bosses, whom I always fought in the city of Chicago. So socialism was a good alternative for a progressive like me.

I think he used the word ``liberal''--``a liberal like me.''

But then came Roosevelt and opened the door for a lot of us on the liberal side to become part of the Democratic Party--the new Democratic Party--under his leadership.

I always remember that and thought that in the course of American history, so many times, tables have turned, and they are turning on this very issue of voting rights, because if you look at the history of voting rights in this country and the suppression of voting rights, particularly toward African Americans, I am sorry to report that it is my Democratic Party--one I am very proud of today--which was guilty of so many sins in the past when it came to discrimination against voters when it came to voting.

And that, to me, was a reality that is now interesting today because the tables have turned. The Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, was the party, by and large, that fought for voting rights for the recently liberated African-American populations after the Civil War and the Democrats in the South that resisted it.

I want to commend a book to those who are following this debate. It is entitled ``One Person, No Vote.'' And the book is written by Carol Anderson, who has become a friend of mine. Carol is a professor in African-American studies at Emory University in Georgia, and she writes the history of reconstruction and Jim Crow.

I want to read just a small section of this book to put in perspective what was happening. Here it was, a Civil War in this country, with over half a million Americans dead, with inflamed feelings on both sides of the war. And, afterward, for the first time, African Americans, because of the war and because of constitutional amendments, were going to be enfranchised--actually be allowed to vote. And, of course, when they did turn up in great numbers, they ended up electing their own and electing people who were sympathetic to their cause.

Well, there was a backlash, primarily among Democrats in the South, and that backlash led to Jim Crow during Reconstruction and the suppression of the right to vote.

It was horrible.

I want to read one part of this book, Carol Anderson's book, ``One Person, No Vote.'' She writes:

That became most apparent in 1890 when the Magnolia State passed the Mississippi Plan, a dizzying array of poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding clauses, newfangled voter registration rules, and ``good character'' clauses--all intentionally racially discriminatory but dressed up in the genteel garb of bringing ``integrity'' to the voting booth. This feigned legal innocence was legislative evil genius.

Virginia representative Carter Glass, like so many others, swooned at the thought of bringing the Mississippi Plan to his own state [of Virginia], especially after he saw how well it had worked. He rushed to champion a bill in the legislature that would ``eliminate the darkey as a political factor . . . in less than five years.'' Glass, whom President Franklin Roosevelt would one day describe as an ``unreconstructed rebel,'' planned ``not to deprive a single white man of the ballot, but [to] inevitably cut from the existing electorate four-fifths of the Negro voters'' in Virginia.

One delegate questioned him: ``Will it not be done by fraud and discrimination?''

Glass [answered]:

``By fraud, no. By discrimination, yes.'' ``Discrimination! Why, that is precisely what we propose . . . to discriminate to the very extremity . . . permissible . . . under the Federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.

Well, the Mississippi Plan was picked up by other States. In Louisiana, for example, where more than 130,000 Blacks had been registered to vote in 1896, after the application of these laws, the number dropped from 130,000 to 1,342. African-American registered voters in Alabama plunged from 180,000 to fewer than 3,000 in just 3 years.

I am sorry to say that these were Democrats in the South who were leading that charge. I am sorry to say that that was part of the history of my party. But it is history. It does reflect what is going on today.

Now there is a conscious effort by the other party--then-party of Abraham Lincoln--to find ways to reduce the opportunity to vote. And why? Why would they do this? In the last Presidential election, in 2020, we had the largest turnout in the history of the United States, exactly what a democracy should celebrate. And, instead, we find State after State dominated by Republican legislatures and Governors trying to find ways to reduce opportunities to vote. Why? Why wouldn't we make it as easy as possible for every eligible American to vote?

Justice Roberts, in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I remember, talked about voting being the right that is the preservative of all other rights. It is so fundamental. You would think that we could accept the premise that if this democracy is to work, the electorate should speak and as many as possible should participate. But today we have the opposite: an effort by nearly 20 States or more to reduce opportunities to vote, and in reducing those opportunities, many people will be denied their chance to speak when it comes to the election.

Congress and our Nation marked the first anniversary of one of the darkest days in America history yesterday: the January 6 insurrection, the day American democracy was nearly lost. That day, an embittered, defeated President Trump sent a murderous mob to attack this Capitol and overturn the election he had lost.

I was honored to join my colleagues yesterday to speak to the bravery of the Capitol Police, the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police, and the National Guard, who battled not only to defend this building but to defend our way of life and our government. Those defenders of democracy faced down violent extremists for hours. They endured vicious attacks with fists, chemical sprays, baseball bats, flagpoles, steel bars, and other weapons.

It is because of their courageous sacrifice that our democracy survived. Five police officers who battled the mob on January 6 died over the following days, weeks, and months. Most of them continue to protect us, even as they heal from the wounds of that day.

As these officers will tell you, January 6 was not a normal day for tourists in the Capitol, despite what Congressman Andrew Clyde, Republican of Georgia, claimed. And the threat of January 6 is not over.

For a few short hours after the insurrection, many of our Republican colleagues denounced the violence and the former President who provoked it. But sadly, Republican lawmakers throughout America quickly changed their tune. In a matter of days, more and more were intimidated to embrace the former President's Big Lie that the 2020 election somehow was not legitimate. Since January 6, we have seen a torrent of bills introduced in Republican-controlled legislatures to restrict voting rights and undermine the integrity of our democracy. Republican lawmakers in nearly 20 States--including Georgia, Arizona, and Florida--have passed laws making it harder for millions of Americans to vote, and in some cases, making it easier--and this is so critical--for politicians to overturn election results they don't like.

Let's be honest. These laws aren't about preventing voter fraud. They are about giving politicians the power to pick and choose the votes they want to count.

Does that sound like an echo of the history that we lived through right after the Civil War in the 19th and 20th centuries?

Instead of denouncing these efforts, our Republican colleagues have resurrected the age-old battle cry that they were using in those days: States' rights. They insist--falsely--that Congress has no authority to protect citizens whose voting rights are under attack. They are wrong. They have not taken the time to read history or the Constitution.

Inside the desk in this Chamber of every single Senator is a little book: the U.S. Constitution. I commend it to my colleagues, particularly in light of this debate.

It is article 1, section 4 of that Constitution which says: ``The Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.''

When you think about what we are trying to do here, as the Senator from Minnesota has described it, we are setting out to establish the standards by law for the choosing of Federal election.

Fast forward about 80 years after that sentence was written. The Civil War had come to a close, and the 15th Amendment was ratified to protect the rights of newly freed slaves, including the right to vote. What does that section of the Constitution say? Section 2 of the 15th Amendment:

Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

It couldn't be stated any more clearly. Preventing States from denying citizens their right to vote is not constitutional overreach. It is urgent, constitutional obligation, and we must honor it.

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance is a think tank in Sweden. Every year, for more than 50 years, it has ranked the world's nations according to their commitment to democracy. In 2021, for the first time ever, the United States' ranking fell to what the group calls ``a backsliding democracy.'' The report said: ``A historic turning point came in 2020-21, when former President Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 elections in the United States.''

We call it the Big Lie. If we in this Senate fail to denounce that Big Lie, do you know what America's future is going to look like? It won't be a government of and by the people. It will be a government ruled by political strongmen with weak principles.

These new voter-suppression laws are a coup in slow motion. They are the continuation of the January 6 assault on this building and our Constitution. They are designed to bring your right to decide your future--and deny it.

Ask yourself this: If the American people don't decide the outcome of elections, who will? I will tell you: political partisans, special interests, the rich and the powerful.

This Senate has the responsibility to protect the power and the rights of American voters in our democracy. And right now, there are two commonsense proposals before the Senate to do just that. I am honored to cosponsor both. The first is the bipartisan--thank you, Senator Murkowski, of Alaska--John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It would strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crown jewel of the Civil Rights Movement.

For decades, Republicans and Democrats have worked together--on a nearly unanimous basis--to reauthorize and update the Voting Rights Act. As Senator Klobuchar mentioned earlier, there were times when more than 90 Senators would vote in favor of the reauthorization of that act. It reached a point in the House of Representatives where I believe the only Republican Congressman who would stand up and continue to vote for the reauthorization of that act was Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. He has since retired.

This new version, named in honor of the great John Lewis, our friend and colleague, would restore the full strength and authority of that legislation, which has been dangerously weakened by a series of misguided decisions from the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. I worked with Senators Leahy, Murkowski, and Manchin to craft this compromise bill.

The second bill, which Senator Klobuchar spoke to--the Freedom to Vote Act--would preserve the integrity of our elections by establishing minimum standards for voting access in all States, including same-day voter registration and establishing election day as a Federal holiday.

What is behind all that? Just a very basic premise: Eligible voters should not face obstacles in voting. We ought to make it easier for them. Isn't it an embarrassment to you--it is to me--to watch the newscast show people standing in line--literally, hours to vote? Bless them for their determination to exercise their rights as citizens in this country. But shame on us--this great Nation--that we would make it so inconvenient and so difficult. And now State legislatures across the Nation are doing even worse.

I am grateful to Senator Merkley, who is here, and Senator Klobuchar, for leading the efforts on this critical legislation. Both of these measures are simple, sensible, and popular. Together, they will protect every eligible voter's access to the ballot box.

There is no guarantee that more people turning up to vote are all going to vote for Democrats--or even for Republicans. But isn't it the nature of democracy to leave it to the American people to make that choice, not to those of us in legislatures, either State or Federal?

So why is it that our colleagues on the other side are once again using the filibuster to prevent the Senate from even beginning debate on these bills? It goes back to that old States' rights argument. I mentioned it earlier. Some Republicans have claimed that our proposals would amount to ``a Federal takeover of our election system.''

To those Republicans, I would say: Open your desk, and open this book, and read.

It is a baseless claim. These measures are about preventing partisans from poisoning the well of democracy. We cannot stand idly by as Republicans State legislatures enact a wave of unprecedented voter suppression, returning to that grim, dark period in American history of suppression of voting. We cannot accept that the Senate is powerless.

Later this month, we are going to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a champion of democracy in our lifetime. Throughout the civil rights movement, Dr. King would quote a phrase from Thomas Carlyle, the historian, who wrote in his account of the French Revolution: ``No lie can live forever.''

So how much longer will we allow Mr. Trump's Big Lie to tear our Nation apart? How much longer will we accord a simple Senate rule more protection and respect than the Constitution--a Senate rule that began as a clerical error and has been changed 160 times?

Right now, the only obstacle standing in the way of stopping this voter suppression is the filibuster. But let's be clear. There is no Senate rule more important than our constitutional right to vote. Americans have given their lives to defend our constitutional rights. No one has ever been asked to risk their life to defend the Senate filibuster rule.

For our Republican colleagues to feign outrage about preserving the rules and norms of this Senate, I would ask them to think back a year ago this week. Where were these precious rules and norms when the leader of the Republican Party--then-President Trump--plotted an overthrow of the government by disrupting the Senate business? Where were these rules and norms when some of our colleagues echoed the Big Lie that led to that bloody insurrection? And where were these rules and norms when some members of the Republican Party openly endorsed installing Donald Trump to the Presidency against the will of the American people?

Right now, this is not just another political debate; the future of the American democracy is at stake.

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