MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Amy Klobuchar
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Let me go to you, Ms. Butler. You saw many voters with ballots, as a former election official in rural Morgan County. Do you agree the new law will result in fewer voters casting ballots in future elections and how do you think it`s going to impact the citizens in your county?
HELEN BUTLER, GEORGIA COALITION FOR THE PEOLE`S AGENDA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: It definitely will make it more difficult. Various hurdles that they will have to get across to even exercise their right to vote. It will take away the ability of people to have more polling locations, drop boxes inside, the hours that they`ll be able to vote.
KLOBUCHAR: What do you mean hours?
BUTLER: The farmers. You have people that do farming. They work late hours. They won`t be able to get there by 5:00. If they do they lose revenue.
So those are the kinds of things that will happen as a result of these barriers that are put in place. They may be able to get over the hurdles. But my God, what kind of barriers will they have to do to get there?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Senator Amy Klobuchar today chaired a U.S. Senate hearing that was uprooted from Washington and moved to Georgia and held in Georgia instead. This is the first time the rules committee in the Senate has held a field hearing in 20 years.
But Senator Klobuchar decided that the issue of voting rights was worth hitting the road for.
[21:30:01]
To go understand in person what new Republican-installed voting restrictions mean on the ground in states where they are being enacted.
So the committee, at least the Democrats on the committee who showed up, Republicans didn`t show up for this, but Democrats on the committee heard testimony from Georgia voters and elected officials including Helen Butler who you just heard from there. Ms. Butler served on the board of elections in her rural county in Georgia for more than ten years until this year, when a provision in Georgia`s restrictive new voting law allowed local Republican officials to remove her from the board this month so they could take full partisan Republican control of her county`s elections administration.
Helen Butler called the takeover of local elections boards the most egregious part of Georgia`s restrictive new voting laws because these new partisan boards can potentially overturn any election results they don`t like.
Helen Butler and other witnesses at the hearing today urged senators that they need to pass federal voting rights legislation to backstop voting rights nationwide. In Georgia, to block Georgia`s new restrictions. Not to mention those passed in 16 other Republican-controlled states just since the 2020 election.
That said, there is still no clear path to getting that voting rights legislation through the United States Senate. At least it doesn`t appear that way tonight.
But joining us now is somebody who knows better than we do. She`s the chair of the Rules Committee in the Senate, Minnesota Senior Senator Amy Klobuchar.
Senator, it`s great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us.
KLOBUCHAR: Thanks, Rachel.
MADDOW: So the Rules Committee does have responsibility for things related to federal elections. Lots of rules committee chairs in the past have sort of ignored that part of the purview, ignored that part of the committee`s remit and focused on other things that are like administrative things for the Senate.
You`ve decided to max out basically what the committee can do in terms of that part of its purview. Tell us how that led to this decision today, this remarkable decision, for the first time in 20 years to take the Rules Committee out on the road, out to Georgia.
KLOBUCHAR: Rachel, over 400 bills introduced across the country, 28 of them signed into law. And exhibit A is the one in Georgia. And as we learned today, the devil is in the details. It`s yes, about the water that will be denied voters in line, non-partisan volunteers as we learned yesterday, Stacey Abrams and I did an event in Cobb County, and voters had waited for seven hours, for five hours.
But what we also learned today, and I want to thank incredible committee members, Senator Padilla, Senator Merkley, Senator Ossoff, as well as Senator Warnock, the other senator from Georgia, who testified today.
This is what we learned -- the runoff period, 28 days. Used to be nine weeks when Ossoff and Warnock won, reduced to 28 days. And guess what, Rachel, you can register to vote 29 days. So, no new voter can register and you cannot vote on weekends in the runoff but you can in the general. Everything is done to sow confusion.
Limited hours for the ballot drop boxes. Less ballot drop boxes. Limited restrictions when it comes to mail-in balloting. It`s one thing after another.
And you brought up one of the most egregious things, and Senator Warnock has a bill to fix it, that basically takes the power that was instilled in the local officials and the local election boards and then basically says hey, state election board, we`re going to throw off 2/3 of your members, we`re going to replace them with our own, so it`s a Republican legislature and then if we find a few technical violations, we`re going to get rid of your local election officials.
This is a pure smackdown of voting rights, and it`s why we went there and it`s why the solution is the For the People Act. Basic national vote --
(CROSSTALK)
MADDOW: The For the People Act obviously is the subject of all sorts of activism and strategizing and work and speechifying, and we`re seeing sort of pressure in all the different ways that it comes including this increasingly dramatic direct action events, people engaging in peaceful civil disobedience, blocking traffic to try to -- including today in Washington. Dozens of women arrested trying to do anything they can to move people`s conscience to pass this thing.
Is there any movement where it counts inside the U.S. Senate among your colleagues who haven`t been willing to either change the Senate rules to get to a place where Democrats can pass this without Republican votes or to potentially change minds in terms of turning no votes into yeses?
KLOBUCHAR: There`s many paths. First of all, I would abolish the filibuster, and I know some of my colleagues aren`t yet in the same place. There is the possibility of carving out an exception for voting rights, such a key constitutional value. As Reverend Warnock said at Ebenezer Church on Sunday, every vote is a prayer. You could also, and Senator Manchin has indicated willingness to look at a standing filibuster where we force our colleagues to stand there day after day after day. That is ultimately how civil rights legislation passed.
There is the John Lewis Act and the House is starting hearings right away this fall to get the data we need to put forward an expansion of the Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court shot it down in the Shelby decision, major pieces of it. You could also add to that bill.
Then we have right in front of us the two infrastructure packages. I`m not talking about the bipartisan one. I`m glad that`s continuing to proceed. But this is the one that will include housing and child care. You can include election infrastructure, Rachel. And you can tie incentives for voting with that package.
And then finally, we have the Justice Department. You know, with Vanita Gupta there, Kristen Clarke, this isn`t Bill Barr`s Justice Department anymore. And there is a big focus on going after these egregious discriminatory laws.
MADDOW: The type of election infrastructure you were just describing there that could potentially be put in the infrastructure bill but again can pass through reconciliation, can pass with 50 Democratic votes even if Republicans decide not to support it, is there agreement among Democrats about including election infrastructure as you describe it in that bill?
KLOBUCHAR: I don`t think you`re going to see opposition. Remember, Senator Manchin and I have been working on the product and it`s not finished yet. But we had a lot of provisions in there for basic federal voting rights. This is one that Stacey Abrams, Barack Obama were supportive of, and it didn`t have everything in for the people but it did have some really good provisions.
So if you`re for that you`ve got to be for election infrastructure and you could tie some incentives to that election infrastructure. So I`m not as concerned about that as I am about the limitations we have with reconciliation, as I am about our colleagues. I think they`re going to be good on it.
And so that`s what we are working through right now. And let me make clear, it is no substitution for basic federal voting rights and for the For the People Act or for that matter, the John Lewis bill.
MADDOW: Minnesota senior senator, the chair of the Rules Committee, again, who just chaired the first field committee for that hearing in 20 years, Senator Klobuchar, it`s great to have you here. Thanks for being here tonight.
KLOBUCHAR: Great to be in Georgia. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Rachel.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source