On Senate floor, Senator Coons comes out in favor of adjusting filibuster to pass critical voting legislation

January 20, 2022

WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced in a speech on the Senate floor that he will support a narrow exception to the filibuster to help enact needed voting rights legislation. The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act would ensure fair access to the ballot for eligible American voters and restore key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was gutted by the Supreme Court in the 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder.

“If I must choose between a fundamental principle learned through five congressional civil rights pilgrimages spent with John Lewis – that voting is a moral question – or continue to hold to [the filibuster], I will choose the former,” Senator Coons said. 

Sen. Coons: Madam President, why are we here? Why is this Senate dedicating this entire day to a debate on the floor? We are here to talk about, to debate and consider two critical voting rights bills. It’s our fourth try. It’s our fourth try. The three previous times we have tried to get on this bill, there’s been a filibuster on the motion to proceed, an obscure procedural standing that prevented us from getting to this bill. We are finally on it.

And there is a challenge in this chamber and this country to explain and articulate briefly why this is such an important moment and why it justifies, in a tension between two of my core principles – one of which is making sure that we work across the aisle and find bipartisan solutions as much as possible – and the other that we protect foundational principles, the right to vote, and through that right to make progress towards justice and inclusion in our society, that I choose the latter.

We have seen, Madam President, across our country in recent months and years, ever since Shelby County, a Supreme Court case, blew a hole in the center of the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, the most powerful civil rights law in the history of our country, a whole series of laws at the state and local level eroding and undermining access to the ballot. And in the months since the 2020 election tragically, we’ve also seen now state legislatures take up and pass laws designed to change who counts the ballot, who certifies an election.

Voter suppression and voter subversion, access to the ballot box and who counts the votes.

Every one of us here is here because we were elected. Every one of us wants to know or should want to know that we want a free and fair election in which as many Americans in our state as possible voted. Why would we want barriers to Americans with disabilities, Americans speaking different languages, Americans working full time and strained by their work and family commitments, Americans who are Black or brown, Native American, or Hispanic, or African American? Why would we want to have any suspicion that our election to this body relied in some part on suppressing or miscounting those votes?

Madam President, today I’m going to speak just briefly, if I can, about how today is really about a frayed bipartisan consensus. Some of my Republican friends and colleagues have spoken about how we have to continue to hang on to and respect the rules of this Senate, especially the 60-vote threshold to moving forward on policy changes, and I’ve long defended that and respect that concern. But we are also principally here because of a forgotten consensus here about working together to protect access to the ballot box.

We heard just now from a colleague the accusation that this is a partisan federal takeover of elections, yet several of my colleagues have read and reminded us the Constitution itself explicitly gives this Congress the power and even the responsibility to ensure that federal elections are conducted in a way that is free and fair.

When the first Senate gathered, think about who was in the room. Think about the qualifications to vote, how narrow they were. Propertied white men. Think about the arc of change in our nation and how year after year, generation after generation, with a huge amount of struggle, ultimately the moral question of who can vote of who counts and whose vote should be counted has slowly, painfully through sacrifice changed.

There was for 50 years­ – from 1965 when earned through blood and sacrifice on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by a former senator from Texas, President Lyndon Baines Johnson – there was for 50 years of consensus in this body that the Voting Rights Act was a critical, even a sacrosanct protection. It was re-authorized five times: in 1970, in 1975, in 1982, in 1992 by strong bipartisan majorities, and in 2006 unanimously. No wonder then that my friend and predecessor at this desk, our president, seems to struggle to comprehend how a Republican party that included Strom Thurmond when he chaired the Judiciary Committee voted over and over and over to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. Yet today, as we debate the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, we sadly do not have a single vote across this aisle to move this forward.

How did this happen? How did this consensus so hard-won fray so quickly? In short, it’s because of a lie, it’s because of a misrepresentation that millions of illegals are voting, famously said by our immediate past president. But a widespread belief that voter fraud was undermining the very credibility of our elections has been adopted across our country and spread and caused a fundamental break. There’s also been action by the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court, first in 2013 in Shelby County where they took out the Section 4b formula that then eviscerated Section 5 pre-clearance to provide pre-election protection against voter suppression and then just last year in Brnovich v. D.N.C., when six conservative judges concluded that a state law in Arizona that had a demonstrable disparate impact on Hispanic, Native American, and Black voters could be allowed to stay on the books and proceed.

Now let’s be clear. We should make sure there is no widespread voter fraud. And on the Judiciary Committee, my colleague from Illinois and others have led hearings to confirm that there is no widespread voter fraud, as my colleague, from California, the former secretary of state, spoke eloquently to earlier and the Freedom to Vote Act, which is the other bill in front of us, benefited from modifications by Senator Manchin of West Virginia, also a former secretary of state, to ensure that we protections in terms of voter I.D.

I will also briefly, and I know I need to conclude, respond if I can to accusations by several of my colleagues that Delaware’s voting laws are not yet at the highest standard, and I will say it is true my state has a long, brutal, tragic history of race relations that were not their best, and our voting laws have just now come to be up to the federal standards we are hoping to make the standard for our whole country.

Let me ask this question. In the midst of a pandemic, when state after state has adopted changes to voting ballot boxes and no-fault vote by mail and same-day registration, why would states be moving those back? The pandemic isn’t over. In November, millions of medically vulnerable Americans will be looking to vote. Why would we end these new provisions to provide access to the ballot box?

Let me make two last points and conclude. As I have traveled to a dozen countries in the last year, I have heard from allies and adversaries concerns about the health of our democracy. We must take action to protect the right to vote in this country. And last, we should not make the last casualty of this dreaded pandemic rolling back voting access.

If I must choose between a fundamental principle learned through five congressional civil rights pilgrimages spent with John Lewis – that voting is a moral question – and continue to hold to a rule, I will choose the former and embrace a change that is as narrow and temporary as possible and will restore debate on this floor.

As I marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the last time with John Lewis, he stopped and turned and said to all of us in his halting voice knowing he was in his last weeks, “never give in, never give up, never become hostile. Hate is too great a burden to bear. Stay hopeful and keep marching.”

It is my hope, Madam President, that our debate today, our votes today will give strength and lift and truth to the service and the life and the sacrifice of Congressman Lewis. Thank you.