Republican Committee members continued to defend voter suppression, dark money
Tiffany Muller, President of End Citizens United // Let America Vote Action Fund, testified at today’s Senate Rules Committee hearing on the For the People Act (S. 1/H.R. 1). The For the People Act is the subject of the Senate Rules Committee’s first legislative hearing, highlighting the package as a centerpiece of the Democratic agenda in Congress following the 2018 and 2020 elections when Democrats took and held the House and won back the Senate running on a platform of cleaning up corruption and unrigging the system in Washington.
A wave of Republican-led voter suppression bills across the country designed to help the party hold onto power has increased the urgency to pass the bill quickly. Despite an overwhelming majority of Americans supporting the For the People Act, Republicans on the committee continued to defend voter suppression tactics and dark money in politics, with Senator Ted Cruz blatantly misconstruing the facts of the bill during today’s hearing.
You can read Tiffany Muller’s testimony here and view it here at 3:45:00.
KEY POINTS FROM HEARING:
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Tiffany Muller, President of ECU // LAV Action Fund:
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“The American people deserve to know who is trying to influence their vote and their representatives in government. Not only are these dark money forces preventing progress on important policy issues, but they have launched an assault on the right to vote with an intensity not seen since the Jim Crow era. In the run up to the 2020 election, dark money groups funded dozens of lawsuits across the country, attempting to disenfranchise millions of Americans. After the election, they spent millions more to spread the “Big Lie” about fraud and that the election had been stolen. Now, they are funding an unprecedented attack on voting rights at the state level. This all underscores the urgent need to pass the For the People Act – and to pass it quickly.”
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“The fact that more and more of that money is undisclosed and untraceable just further erodes that confidence in government and who it’s working for.”
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“Are we going to allow our elections to be controlled by just a few big interests, or are we going to give the power back to the people and make sure that we take corrective action to make sure that the government is working for the people again?”
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Senator Amy Klobuchar: “As well as some very important anti-corruption reforms, [the For the People Act] is about strengthening our democracy by returning it to the hands of its rightful owners, the American people.”
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: “These [state voter suppression] laws could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, the most sweeping contradiction of ballot access in the united States since the end of reconstruction. If one political party believes that when you lose an election, the answer is not to win more votes, but rather to try and prevent the other side from voting. We have an existential threat to democracy on our hands if we do not stop these vicious and often racist actions.”
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Senator Jeff Merkley: “The dark money flowing through our campaigns, the big money, is the source of such cynicism to Americans that this unidentified, massive hundreds of millions of dollars is drowning out their voice.”
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Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder: “To many Americans, and particularly people of color facing discriminatory and onerous barriers to vote, the For the People Act is a necessary and appropriate response to both the erosion of voting rights and the advancement of special interests.”
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Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson: “Our experience underscores that voters on both sides of the aisle want reforms like those in the For the People Act, and it shows how with sufficient funding, partnerships, leadership and political will, it is entirely possible to efficiently and successfully implement those reforms.”
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Trevor Potter, Former Republican Chair of the FEC and Founder and President of Campaign Legal Center: “I do not believe this bill benefits one party over the other, but it does benefit the American people by making our government and election process more accessible and transparent.”
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Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice: “This legislation would stop this wave of voter suppression cold, it stops it in its tracks, and Congress has the power, the right, the authority — constitutionally and legally — to do this.”
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Fred Wertheimer, Director of Democracy 21: “The current system may benefit the interest of the donors, the nonprofits, and the candidates being supported. But it does not benefit the interests of the American people as well. S. 1 addresses this problem.”
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