Senate Democrats are pushing forward with their complete election reform bill they claim is needed to protect voting rights that are “under siege” by Republicans. But the GOP has promised to combat the bill which they have called a Democratic “power grab” to take over local elections.
The clashing opinions will meet on Tuesday morning when the Senate Rules Committee holds a hearing to push through the election overhaul measure that is numbered S.1 to show it is the Democrat’s top priority in the chamber.
Given the last hearing about S.1, tensions will be sky-high as Dems attempt to pass the legislation from committee and send it to the floor of the Senate. During the previous hearing on S.1, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had a heated discussion on the issue.
“Shame, shame,” Schumer said about Republican efforts to protect election security at the state level.
“When you lose an election, you should try to win over those people in the next election, Republicans are instead attempting to disenfranchise these people,” Schumer said. “Shame on them.”
McConnell hit back and said Democrats were “forcibly rewriting” election laws in every state and turning the Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-ran body.
“If anyone should be feeling shame, it’s turning the FEC into a partisan group, to intimidate and harass the other side,” McConnell responded during the previous hearing. “That’s what you should be ashamed over.”
Republicans say the new rules would force all local and state election officials to alter their voting procedures to fit Democrats’ wishes and lead to more distrust.
“This bill would force these changes very quickly — so fast that should this bill be passed, chaos will reign during the next election and Americans will have even less trust in their elections than they do now,” said Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
Author: Scott Dowdy
