Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/Senate/Counting of Electoral Ballots/Arizona Objection Debate/Hawley Speech
Mr. Hawley. Mr. President, I want to begin this evening by saying thank you to the men and women of the Capitol Police, the National Guardsmen, the Metropolitan Police, and others who came to this Capitol and put their lives on the line to protect everybody here who was working inside. I want to thank law enforcement all across this country—in my home State of Missouri and everywhere else—who do that day in and day out.
I just want to acknowledge that, when it comes to violence, it was a terrible year in America this last year. We have seen a lot of violence against law enforcement, and today, we saw it here in the Capitol of the United States. In this country, in the United States of America, we cannot say emphatically enough: Violence is not how you achieve change. Violence is not how you achieve something better.
Our Constitution was built and put into place so that there would be, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, no appeal from ballots to bullets, which is what we saw, unfortunately, attempted tonight. There is no place for that in the United States of America, and that is why I submit to my colleagues that what we are doing here tonight is, actually, very important because, for those who have concerns about the integrity of our elections and for those who have concerns about what happened in November, this is the appropriate means. This is the lawful place where those objections and concerns should be heard. This is the forum that the law provides for—that our laws provide for—for those concerns to be registered, not through violence—not by appealing from ballots to bullets—but here, in this lawful process.
So to those who say that this is just a formality today—an antique ceremony that we have engaged in for a couple of hundred years—I can’t say that I agree. I can’t say that our precedent suggests that. I actually think it is very vital, what we do. The opportunity to be heard and to register objections is very vital because this is the place where those objections are to be heard and dealt with, debated, and finally resolved—in this lawful means, peacefully, without violence, without attacks, without bullets.
Let me just say now, briefly—in lieu of speaking about it later—a word about Pennsylvania, which is a State that I have been focused on and have objected to, as an example of why people are concerned—why millions of Americans are concerned—about our election integrity.
I say to Pennsylvania, quite apart from allegations of any fraud, you have a State constitution that has been interpreted for over a century to say that there is no mail-in balloting permitted except for in very narrow circumstances, which is also provided for in the law. Yet, last year, Pennsylvania’s elected officials passed a whole new law that allowed for universal mail-in balloting, and they did it, irregardless of what the Pennsylvania Constitution said.
Then, when Pennsylvania’s citizens tried to be heard on this subject before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, they were dismissed on grounds of procedure and timeliness, in violation of that supreme court’s own precedent.
So the merits of the case have never been heard. The constitutionality of the statute, actually, has never been defended. I am not aware of any court that has passed on its constitutionality. I actually am not aware of anybody who has defended the constitutionality, and this was the statute that governed this last election in which there were over 2.5 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
This is my point, that this is the forum. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court hasn’t heard the case, and there is no other court to go to, to hear the case in the State, so this is the appropriate place for these concerns to be raised, which is why I have raised them here today.
I hope that this body will not miss the opportunity to take affirmative action to address the concerns of so many millions of Americans—to say to millions of Americans tonight that violence is never warranted, that violence will not be tolerated, that those who engage in it will be prosecuted, but that this body will act to address the concerns of all Americans across the country.
We do need an investigation into irregularities, fraud. We do need a way forward together. We need election security reforms. I bet my friends on the other side of the aisle don’t disagree with that. We need to find a way to move forward on that together so that the American people from both parties and all walks of life can have confidence in their elections and so that we can arrange ourselves under the rule of law that we share together.
I yield the floor.