The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“VOTING RIGHTS” mentioning Charles E. Schumer was published in the Senate section on pages S908-S909 on March 1.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
VOTING RIGHTS
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on another matter entirely, voting rights, the story of American democracy is a long and messy one, full of contradictions and halting progress. It was a century and a half after our founding before women got the right to vote, another half century before African Americans could enjoy the full rights of citizenship. It took mighty movements and decades of fraught political conflicts to achieve even those basic dignities and establish the United States as a full democracy worthy of the title.
But any American who thinks that today, in 2021, that fight is over--
that the fight for voting rights is over--is sorely and, unfortunately, sadly mistaken.
In the wake of the most recent election, an election that the former President has repeatedly lied about and claimed was stolen, more than 253 bills in 43 States have been introduced to tighten voting rules under the pernicious, nasty guise of election integrity.
In Iowa, the State legislature voted to cut early voting by 9 days. Polls will close an hour earlier. And they voted to tighten the rules on absentee voting, which so many--the elderly, the disabled, the frail--depend on.
In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers have proposed limiting ballot drop boxes to one per municipality--a municipality of hundreds of thousands, and a tiny one gets the small one. I wonder why. I wonder why.
In Arizona, one Republican legislator wants to pass a law allowing the State legislators--listen to this--to ignore the results of the Presidential election and determine their own slate of electors. One legislator in Arizona wants to pass a law allowing State legislators to ignore the results of the Presidential election and determine their own slate of electors. That doesn't sound like democracy. That sounds like dictatorship.
The most reprehensible of all efforts might be found in Georgia, where Republicans have introduced a bill to eliminate all early voting on Sundays, a day when Black churches sponsor get-out-the-vote drives known as ``souls to the polls.''
We have, supposedly--supposedly--come a long way since African Americans in the South were forced to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to be allowed to vote. But it is very difficult to look at the specific laws proposed by Republican legislatures around the country, designed to limit voter participation in heavily African-
American and Hispanic areas, to lower turnout and frustrate election administration in urban districts and near college campuses, to gerrymander districts to limit minority representation ``with almost surgical precision,'' to specifically target and thwart Black churches from organizing voting drives--it is difficult, very difficult not to see the tentacles of America's generations-old caste system, typically associated with slavery and Jim Crow, stretching into the 21st century and poisoning the wellspring of any true democracy--free and fair elections.
We see a lot of despicable things these days, but nothing that seems to be more despicable than this. When you lose an election in a democratic society, you update your party platform and appeal to more voters. You don't change the rules to make it harder for your opponents to vote, especially not African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other voters who have been historically disenfranchised. That response is toxic to democracy and, indeed, is the very opposite of democracy.
Make no mistake, these despicable, discriminatory, anti-democratic proposals are on the move in State legislatures throughout America. They must be opposed by every American--Democrat, Republican, Independent; liberal, conservative, moderate--who cherishes our democracy.
This is just incredible what they are trying to do--incredible. We must do everything we can to stop it.
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