For the People Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, this Saturday was Juneteenth, the first official Juneteenth recognized by the Federal Government as a national holiday--the official end of slavery in America. I commemorated and celebrated Juneteenth with my colleague Senator Van Hollen at a meeting of the NAACP chapter in Randallstown, MD, and we reflected on the progress that we have made since the end of slavery and the challenges that still remain.
It has been a long path toward justice and equality in this country, and I think we all recognize the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with his famous quote that ``the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.''
I think we all believe that, but in recent actions taken by State governments to restrict voting rights, we see some very disturbing trends that would take issue with Dr. King's statement that the moral universe is bending toward justice. It seems like it has taken a detour.
Voting rights is a fundamental issue of importance to a democratic country.
After elections are over and we win, we celebrate. We celebrate the fact that we have gotten the support of the majority of the voters, and that is what democracy is all about. If we don't win--and I think many of us have been involved in campaigns where our candidates have not been successful--we go to work to try to attract more voters in the next election so we can celebrate a victory. That is what participation in a free society is all about. That is what democracies are about.
In repressive autocratic regimes, they will never accept the will of the people. So they look at ways in which they can undermine the voter record--what the voters want to do, the voters' will. In the 2020 election, we should all celebrate the record number of people who cast their ballots. It was a record--the most ever casting their votes for the Presidency of the United States. There were repeated reviews done by both Democrats and Republicans at the national level and at the State level and at the local level. It verified the simple fact that there was no widespread corruption, that the will of the people prevailed, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected President and Vice President of the United States.
But that did not stop former President Trump in promoting the Big Lie. As a result of that, several States have now taken action to make it harder for people to cast their votes. The Brennan Center has pointed out that we have seen the worst assault on voting rights since Jim Crow. Fourteen States have enacted 22 new laws to make it more difficult--more difficult--for people to vote. This is unprecedented in modern times.
So what have those laws done? Made it more difficult for voters to vote by mail, recognizing that for many voters, they prefer to vote by mail. We have States that have 100 percent voting by mail. There has been no indication of fraud in voting by mail.
States have shortened the time for requesting mail-in ballots for voting, making it more difficult for individuals to be able to vote by mail, requiring certain requirements to vote by mail, making it more difficult to deliver their mail-in ballots, limiting the availability of mail ballot drop boxes. All of that had been included. Why? Because it makes it more difficult for people who are likely to vote for my opponent to vote. That is what the State legislatures are doing-- stricter signature requirements, making in-person voting more difficult, and purging voter rolls simply because a person did not vote--again, making it more difficult for people to vote. And it goes on and on and on in the type of legislation that has already passed or is currently being considered by many State legislatures around the country, making it more difficult to register to vote, making it more difficult to vote, targeting potential voters more likely to vote for their opponents, targeting minorities, young voters, and older minority voters.
Let me give just one example. Using Georgia as a specific example, their recently enacted changes will disproportionately hurt Black voters. The Georgia State law imposes voter identification requirements on absentee ballots, makes it hard to request an absentee ballot, and makes it a crime for groups to provide food and water to voters waiting in line.
Georgia is basically restricting mail voting in response to a shift in the racial demographics of the voters who use it. On the other hand, Georgia wants to keep mail voting available for older, White mail voters.
Voter suppression is always unacceptable, and the razor-thin political margins in Georgia may mean that suppression efforts like these will change political outcomes. Rather than imposing barriers to casting the sacred right to vote, Georgia should be looking at ways to improve voter access.
As the New York Times pointed out, the Georgia law comes on the heels of a major upset for Republicans in the traditionally red State, after voters picked Joe Biden in the Presidential election and elected Democrats to both of the State's U.S. Senate seats. The paper noted that the new Georgia law ``will, in particular, curtail ballot access for voters in booming urban and suburban counties, home to many Democrats.'' President Biden was right to call this legislation the ``Jim Crow in the 21st century.''
There are many other examples. Georgia is not unique in the efforts we are seeing to suppress voter participation at elections.
Look, it is fair game to try to persuade voters to vote for your candidate. It is not fair game to suppress their right to vote.
So what is the vote this week all about, the vote we are going to have on bringing forward the opportunity to debate voter suppression legislation to protect the right to vote? It is simply a motion to proceed with a debate on the Senate floor. Let me repeat that. We are not voting on S. 1, the passage of it. We are not voting on any specific proposal. I know my friend from West Virginia has offered a proposal. We are not voting on that. We are voting on the right for the Senate to take up this critically important issue or whether it should be filibustered so we can't bring up a voter issue to protect the integrity of the right to vote.
Now, I support S. 1. I am a cosponsor of S. 1, For the People. I am proud to support the provisions of that bill. To me, it is carefully drafted legislation to deal with the modern threats to voter participation. I am extremely proud that my colleague from Maryland, Congressman John Sarbanes, is the principal sponsor of H.R. 1 in the House that already passed the House.
It provides a basic Federal floor on protection of the right to vote--on voter registration, on vote-by-mail, no-excuse balloting, 2 weeks of early voting, including weekends, no notary requirement for absentee ballots, drop-off boxes. That is a simple voter protection against the actions being taken by State legislatures that are aimed at certain demographic groups, a Federal floor.
It ends political gerrymandering. I don't know how any of my colleagues can defend the way legislative and congressional lines are drawn today. I came from the State legislature. I am a former speaker of the house. I was responsible for one of the redistricting plans of Maryland when I was speaker of the house. It is just a horrible, partisan, political process we use today to draw congressional lines.
I have been accused by my congressional colleagues in the House from Maryland that I ran for the Senate to avoid having to deal with congressional redistricting. There may be some truth to that, but I can tell you this: It is time to end political gerrymandering. Congressional districts should represent the communities' interests, not an individual Congressman's interest. S. 1 takes a major step forward in ending political congressional redistricting by gerrymandering.
It provides a commitment by Congress to advance a preclearance formula that was in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that now is not operative because of the Shelby County decision. It puts us on a path to once again have that important tool available in order to deal with the freedom and right to vote.
It promotes voter security, S. 1, by eliminating the paper ballot--by requiring the paper ballot, I should say, not eliminating it, by requiring a paper trail. I think we all agree that we want to be able to verify votes. The only way you can is if there is a paper trail, and it provides for that paper trail.
It puts an end to the dominance of big money in the political system. They do that in a couple of ways: one, disclosure--how can anyone be against the disclosure of who is putting money into our political system?--and secondly, providing a way in which we can get rid of the dependence upon large special interest dollars.
It includes, S. 1, two provisions that I authored. One is a deceptive practices act that deals with false or misleading advertisements which are aimed at targeting minority communities to confuse and mislead their votes.
It includes the Democracy Restoration Act, which I authored, which deals with laws passed after the end of slavery in an effort to prevent African Americans from voting, for, you see, there are States that passed laws back then that are still on the books that disqualify for a lifetime a person convicted of a felony.
The definition of ``felony'' is pretty general in many States, so we have States where one out of five African Americans has been disqualified from voting because of their conviction of a felony. Even though they are fully part of our society today, they don't have the right to vote. We need to remove that disqualification on voting.
My friend, our former colleague, John Lewis--the two of us were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on the same day. In an editorial published after his death, our former colleague John Lewis recalled an important lesson taught by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I quote our former colleague:
He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part.
Well, we cannot take action if we don't start, and we can't start unless my colleagues allow us to proceed to this issue on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
There is a reason why there are so many groups behind us taking action. I have a Facebook Live that I do every 2 weeks with my constituents. Jana Morgan from the Declaration for American Democracy, which represents over 180 groups, from labor to racial justice groups, faith groups, women's rights groups, environmental and good-governance groups--all telling us that we need to move forward to protect our democracy, that the Senate needs to act on this issue.
One of my guests, Virginia Kase Solomon from the League of Women Voters--now, the League of Women Voters--you can say a lot of things about them, but you can't accuse them of being partisan because they are not. It is one of our premier nonpartisan institutions in America with a proud history. They are telling us to take this bill up and act for the sake of protecting our democracy.
We then have a chance to act, to take up amendments and vote on amendments and vote on concerns, whether they are offered by a Republican Senator or a Democratic Senator. That is what the motion to proceed allows us to do, to take up these issues so we can vote on them. But if you vote to filibuster the motion to proceed, we can't even bring the issue up on the Senate floor for action.
I urge my colleagues not to filibuster the right of the U.S. Senate to start the debate on protecting voter integrity, where each Member will have an opportunity to debate the issue, and collectively we can come together, as many of my colleagues have offered suggestions about how we can improve S. 1, how we can make it a broader consensus, but we can't do that unless we have the right to proceed to a debate.
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