It’s a compromise between the left and the radical left.
Republicans uniformly opposed the first attempt at this partisan power grab, and it's no surprise we'll oppose this one as well.
WASHINGTON –U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) spoke about his opposition to Democrats’ most recent iteration of legislation to allow a federal takeover of local elections. Excerpts from Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.
“The Senate will vote on the latest iteration of what has come to be known as the Democrats’ partisan power grab over our elections conducted overwhelmingly by the states.”
“Over the last two years, they’ve tried a number of different marketing strategies to convince the American people that this overhaul was needed. This latest version is proof that Congress isn’t buying what they’re selling, and that’s for good reason.”
“Those who were advocating for a national takeover of our state-run elections, at one point they said it was a matter of election security.”
“Then they said this is a way to remove obstacles that prevented people from voting. But facts are stubborn things. In 2020, we saw record turnout. Two-thirds of eligible voters cast a ballot, and that was the highest turnout in 120 years.”
“The Constitution itself gives states the power to determine how their election should be run, and states are using that authority to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Our Democratic friends have tried to frame this – these new state laws – as somehow suppressing voting rights. As we’ve seen, if that’s the objective, they certainly are doing a lousy job at it because people are voting in unprecedented numbers.”
“The Georgia law, which the Department of Justice has sued under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, actually expanded early voting in-person to 17 days. But if you live in Massachusetts, you can only vote for 11 days. I haven’t heard many complaints about the Massachusetts voting laws restricting people’s access to the polls.”
“The bill would have turned the bipartisan Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-controlled commission… It would have also allowed ballot harvesting… And the bill would have commandeered states’ constitutional authority to draw their own Congressional districts.”
“The only thing this proposal would have done ‘for the people’ as it is called would be to help make sure that the outcome of virtually every future election meant that Democrats win and Republicans lose… That was the goal.”
“It’s a compromise between the left and the radical left.”
“They may have stripped out some of the most outrageous provisions, but certainly overtly partisan provisions remain. Republicans uniformly opposed the first attempt at this partisan power grab, and it’s no surprise we’ll oppose this one as well.”