Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/Senate/Counting of Electoral Ballots/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Markey Speech
Mr. Markey. Mr. President, first, I want to thank all of the first responders who helped to protect this sacred Chamber today and protect those electoral college ballots.
Today is a special day. On a day when some 2,500 or more Americans will lose their lives to the coronavirus, when another 130,000 will be hospitalized with it, when hundreds of small businesses will close their doors and put thousands of Americans out of work—on this day—the U.S. Senate is not debating how to get more lifesaving vaccines into Americans’ arms or how to put 2,000 badly needed dollars into their pockets. No. Instead, we are using the first days of the new Senate and Congress to give time to our radical Republican colleagues’ baseless and damaging claims of election fraud—all in an attempt to keep Donald Trump in office in violation of the U.S. Constitution. There is a word for this. It is called “sedition.” All of these unfounded objections to State electors are seditious. They are nothing short of an insurrection against the established order of the U.S. Constitution and our democratic Republic.
This is a historically shameful day for the Senate and for our country. To be clear, the notion that there is any meaningful voter fraud that has been identified in the 2020 Presidential election is a dangerous, anti-democratic, treasonous fiction. Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost—period—but that hasn’t stopped the President and his supporters from making allegations of voter fraud in some 60 legal challenges across the country, heard by some 90 judges, including Trump judicial appointees. Not one of these challenges succeeded—not one. Despite this reality, my radical Republican colleagues claim we must have a commission to investigate the fraud.
Well, we do know one of the most undeniable instances of substantial and significant election fraud ever. We even have a recording and a transcript of it. It is of President Trump, talking like a Mafia boss to the Georgia Secretary of State—a Republican no less—pressuring and threatening him to fix the election in Trump’s favor, and holding out the prospect of criminal prosecution if he doesn’t.
“Find me 11,780 votes,” Trump said. Well, someone should find Donald Trump a real lawyer and measure him for an orange jumpsuit, because the list of statutes that this latest, shocking Presidential phone call may violate is too long to recite. The President’s words on that phone call—indeed, his conduct since his election—demand a serious response, one much more serious than the sham before us today.
First, Federal and State law enforcement authorities should investigate Donald Trump for election fraud, extortion, conspiracy, and whatever other charges fit the bill and, if warranted, indict and try him for any crimes he has committed.
Second, we must recognize that Donald Trump is and will remain a danger to our Constitution and our democracy. So, while time is certainly limited, we should impeach Trump again and bar him from holding office in the future.
Finally, we should abolish the electoral college. It is a vestige of a racist Jim Crow America, and we have outgrown it. Every person’s vote in every State should count just the same—one person, one vote.
Election fraud and reform are very serious issues. Election reform absolutely should be debated in Congress, which is why, instead of today’s Kabuki theater, I invite my Republican colleagues to stand up and say: Yes, we need to protect and expand voting rights and election security. We need automatic voter registration. We need online voter registration. We need same-day voter registration. We should make election day a Federal holiday. We should restore voting rights to people with prior felony convictions. We should support independent redistricting commissions. Let’s spend our time debating that on the floor—debating how to reduce the influence of big money in our political system, to slow the revolving door between government officials and lobbyists, to stop gerrymandering and voter suppression. That is the real election reform that we should be debating and supporting, not these shameful, craven, baseless objections.
More than 350,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus. That is the truth. Nearly 8 million people have fallen into poverty because of the economic crisis caused by this virus. That is the truth. Wearing a mask saves lives. Vaccines are safe and effective. That is the truth. Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost. That is the truth.
I urge all of my Senate colleagues to vote against these objections, affirm our democracy, and recognize that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will rightfully be sworn in on January 20 as the President and Vice President of the United States.