Sam Levine reports from The Guardian:
In a very unusual move, senators Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, their respective Democratic and Republican leaders, both spoke at the first hearing in the Senate about a broad bill on voting rights, underscoring how the struggle for the right to vote exploded at the center of American politics.
As Senate leaders for their respective parties, Schumer and McConnell rarely speak during hearings. Both gave long opening speeches on Wednesday.
ABC news
(@ABC)Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader: “If a political party believes that when you lose an election, the answer is not to win more votes, but to try to prevent the other side from voting, we have an existential threat to democracy in our hands. “https://t.co/xY8G8YiI04 pic.twitter.com/qYSYlXcM9t
Schumer repeatedly referred to the fact that there are hundreds of bills pending in state legislatures that would restrict voting rights, saying they were “one of the biggest threats we have to modern democracy in America”.
“That’s annoying. I would like to ask my Republican colleagues, why are you so afraid of democracy? Why, instead of trying to win over the voters you lost in the last election, are you trying to stop them from voting? ” he said.
Observing a series of measures that make it more difficult to vote, Schumer was particularly furious at a measure from Arizona that would require voters to have certified ballots by mail.
“How are the poor going to pay for a notary?” he said. “It is one of the most despicable things I have seen in all my years.”
McConnell played down Democratic concerns about suppressing voters as a hyperbole. He said the law was not necessary, pointing to a high turnout for the 2020 elections and that the new federal law would cause chaos.
“States are not making any effort to try to suppress voters in any way. This is clearly an effort by a party to rewrite the rules of our political system, ”he said.
But McConnell’s comments are undermined by many members of his own party, who have openly said that they are trying to prevent people from voting.
“Everyone shouldn’t vote”, John Kavanagh, an Arizona Republican, told CNN earlier this month. David Ralston, the mayor of Georgia, said last year that more postal voting would be “devastating for Republicans.” Donald Trump also last year it rejected efforts to make it easier to vote, saying, “You would never have an elected Republican in this country again.”