Chuck sez GOP opposition to elex bill like ‘Jim Crow’
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a sharp-tongued rebuke Wednesday of GOP legislators seeking to make it more difficult to vote in several deep-red states, charging that their efforts “smack of Jim Crow” as Democrats in Congress forge ahead with legislation to expand voting rights.
The New York Democrat, speaking at the first Senate hearing on the House-passed “For the People Act,” tied the Republican attempts to chip away at voting rights to former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was rigged.
Schumer went on to list off some of the right-wing efforts, including a proposal in Georgia to prohibit early voting on Sundays, when Black churches in the state often hold “Souls to the Polls” drives, and a measure in Arizona to require notarized signatures on all absentee ballots.
“How are poor people going to pay for a notary, when there’s virtually no indication of fraud? This is one of the most despicable things I’ve seen in all my years. Shame, shame, shame,” Schumer said, his voice rising. “I would like to ask my Republican colleagues: Why are you so afraid of democracy? ... These voter suppression laws in Georgia and other Republican states smack of Jim Crow rearing its ugly head once again.”
Republicans involved in pushing legislation to restrict voting on a state level are doing so under the guise of election security, fueled by Trump’s false insistence that President Biden’s election was the product of rampant Democratic cheating.
However, election experts, local officials in all 50 states and even Trump’s own former administration officials have concluded that voter fraud, especially on a widespread, meaningful level, is extremely rare.
Schumer suggested the real reason for the GOP push to curb voting is purely political.
“If one political party believes that when you lose an election the answer isn’t to win more votes, but rather to try to prevent the other side from voting, we have an existential threat to democracy on our hands,” he said.
Schumer’s blistering criticism was an opening salvo in a push by Senate Democrat to pass the “For the People Act,” which would federally codify some voting rights that Republicans are seeking to quash on a state level.
The bill, which passed the House earlier this month without any Republican support, would set a national standard for voter registration and early balloting.
The standard would require the top voting official in every state — usually the secretary of state — to automatically register all eligible voters, using data available to the government.
The only way eligible voters would not be registered is if they explicitly opt out.
The bill would also guarantee eligible voters the ability to register on Election Day and require at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections, with polls mandated to be open at least 10 hours per day.
Other components of the measure would reform redistricting laws to counteract gerrymandering and implement more transparency in campaign financing.
But the bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
At least 10 Republicans would likely have to join all 50 Democrats in the chamber to overcome a procedural filibuster hurdle — a steep prospect, with GOP senators rigidly opposed to expanding voting rights.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, one of the chamber’s only conservative Democrats, suggested he might even vote against the bill, telling reporters he’s concerned about doing “anything that’ll create more distrust” in the U.S. electoral system in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), speaking at the same hearing as Schumer, claimed the “For the People Act” is simply unnecessary. “This is a solution in search of a problem,” McConnell said. “States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever.”