On the recordJune 22, 2021
just a short time ago on this Senate floor, we witnessed a low point for this body. We witnessed every Republican Senator voting against moving forward to consider legislation to strengthen our democracy. We witnessed all 50 Republican Senators voting to block consideration of the For the People Act. I don't know why people are afraid of debating this issue, which is so fundamental to our country at this particular point in time. This bill, the For the People Act, has many important provisions. One of them, of course, is to establish minimum national standards, to make sure that every eligible American voter can access the ballot box. That should be something we all want. We should want every American eligible to vote to be out there exercising his or her right to vote, to participate in the decision making in our democracy. And yet not a single Republican Senator voted to proceed with that debate, even though this bill is more important now than ever before because we see, as we speak, Republican State legislatures, in so many places around our country, voting to erect barriers to the ballot box. We see this in State after State, a pure partisan power play to rig the rules, to win elections by subtraction--not to win elections through the hurly-burly debate over the issues of the day, not to win elections by talking about the agenda that somebody is advocating and why someone should vote for a particular candidate. That is the way it is supposed to be.…
