'Democrats Do Not Believe In Democracy': Ted Cruz Goes On Tear Against Dem Voting Bill

in the fundamental right to vote and under the elections clause thank you senator cruz thank you mr chairman it's an unfortunate reality of today's politics that that democrats do not believe in democracy they believe in power it speaks volumes that s one the very first bill introduced by chuck schumer and the democrats in this senate is a bill for the federal government to take over elections and to strike down virtually every reasonable voter integrity law adopted across the country it is likewise the case that h.r won the first bill introduced by nancy pelosi is the same bill a federal takeover of elections designed to strike down virtually every reasonable voter integrity law in the country the priority of democrats is not covet as the rhetoric might suggest the priority of democrats is not jobs the priority of democrats is not our national security the priority of democrats is to ensure that democrats stay in power no matter what no matter what the voters think this bill before us is designed to prevent those pesky voters from ever making a decision other than electing democrats and it's a long tradition jim crow was exactly the same thing democratic politicians writing laws changing the election laws to ensure the voters could only elect democrats sadly there are decades of ugly history behind this you know before i was in the senate i was a constitutional litigator and supreme court litigator i didn't do a lot of redistricting law but i did in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 represent the state of texas and the redistricting litigation that occurred then i have to say i agree with chief justice roberts who described in one voting rights case it is assorted business that's divving us up by race because that is much of what redistricting law is right now it is focused on in that case we heard testimony we heard testimony actually from african-american elected democrats in texas about the racist history of democrats in texas and in particular when the state legislature in 2003 passed a new congressional redistricting map it was replacing a map that had been passed by democrats in texas that had been widely described as the most egregious gerrymander in the country it was a map that even though a substantial majority of texans were voting consistently republican elected democrats and a large majority of congressional democrats despite the views of the voters and democrats fought tooth and nail including fleeing to ardmore oklahoma including fleeing to albuquerque new mexico to try to keep their partisan gerrymander in place to elect democrats even though the voters didn't want to elect democrats the testimony we heard at trial from african-american elected democrats was that the strategy of white democrats to elect white democrats was very simple a moment ago we heard about thresholds of minority representations in districts the testimony were heard at trial is the white democrats knew that if you put a sufficient number of african-american voters in a district but not too many and a sufficient number of hispanic voters in a district but not too many that in the primary that the african-american democratic voters would join with white democratic voters in voting against an hispanic democrat and that the hispanic democratic voters would join with white democratic voters in voting against a black democrat and the result would be exactly what happened in texas white democrats would win the primaries and though then those minority voters would vote for democrats in the general and it would ensure that white democrats stay in power in perpetuity texas legislature the republican legislature eliminated that gerrymander and resulted in a map that actually elected a congressional delegation that reflected the views of the voters of texas and democratic activists viewed that as an abomination why because their objective is to elect democrats the state of texas i'm the first hispanic ever elected as a u.s senator the activists who are engaged on these issues did not celebrate that issue because you are not hispanic if you are not democrat in their view never mind that every time i've been on the ballot in texas over 40 percent of hispanics have voted for me never mind that texas is the only majority minority state in the union that consistently elects republicans that arouses the ire of democratic activists because we minorities aren't supposed to think for ourselves in fact we're told by enlightened democrats that we hispanics are too dumb to figure out how to get a driver's license i'll be damned we can't drive a car we can't get in a plane we can't get married we're just not smart enough it's offensive and it's ridiculous it's why the overwhelming majority of americans support photo id because they know the democrats they don't even believe what they're saying they know that this is about political power that's what it's all about and what does this bill say if you believe in democracy what do you want if you believe in democracy you want the voters to be able to vote for policies they support that would mean if the voters support for policies like photo id you should have a photo id law that this bill says no no no you voters are not smart enough to know that we're going to take the power away from you by giving it to unelected bureaucrats who can strike down what an entire state legislature in texas our legislature is elected by 29 million people one bureaucrat at the department of justice has more power under this bill than 29 million people in the state of texas you want to talk about something offensive to democracy saying one bureaucratic doj has more power to enact laws than 29 million voters going and exercising the democratic franchise you know earlier in this hearing we heard testimony about discrimination against asian americans i agree there's a lot of discrimination against asian americans some of the most egregious discrimination against asian americans occurs in elite academic institutions like harvard and yale and princeton that discriminate against asian americans that have quotas against asian americans i'm a graduate of princeton and harvard the chairman is a graduate of yale all of those institutions have quotas that are every bit as noxious as the quotas in the 50s and 60s against jews they were enforced against jews we don't want too many jews as what those academic institutions said now they say we don't want too many asian americans we're going to have reverse quotas what's one of the very first things the biden department of justice did the civil rights division they dismissed the lawsuit from the u.s department of justice against yale university for discriminating against asian americans because politically they support that discrimination and i would note by the way earlier this year when voting on a bill on asian american discrimination i introduced an amendment one paragraph amendment that said federal funds shall not flow to any educational institution that discriminates against asian americans in admissions or in granting scholarships it was straightforward it was simple and every single democrat in the united states senate voted against it every single democrat said in effect we support discriminating against asian americans when it suits our politics this ain't about protecting the rights of voters this is about keeping democrats in power ms reardon you've served in the civil rights division of the department of justice can can you tell this committee the extent to which that division has exercised partisan decision-making in your experience one of the most egregious um situations that i have observed is when the city of kinston north carolina submitted a change for pre-clearance wherein they were not no longer going to run on a party they wanted to run nonpartisan and this is an african-american majority city so the african-americans controlled um you know the the city council who wanted to make that change and the department objected to the change because um it felt and in its letter it said basically that if there was no d next to the name of the candidates then the african-americans would no longer get elected and they would not know who to vote for so they were clearly protecting the democrat party and they were also insulting the african-americans that live within the city of kinston as well as the elected officials well unfortunately there's a lot of protecting the democratic party and insulting african-american voters and hispanic voters in the process mr chairman i have in front of me a statement from steve marshall who's the attorney general of alabama who has submitted a statement that describes responds to charges that voter integrity laws are unnecessary and sites among other things two alabama mayoral elections in 2016 that were overturned because of voter fraud so i ask unanimous consent that this statement be included in the record without objection we ought to be protecting democracy we shouldn't be neither party should be engaged in partisan efforts to stay in power but i would note it is the democrats in congress who have set their very first priority keeping democrats in power democracy be damned uh we are here because we want more people to vote we want to remove obstacles to vote we want to increase access regardless of how they vote what party they're in that is the narrowly tailored and targeted purpose of the measure before us uh i'd like to give you an opportunity mr science to respond to some of what you've heard here well i would first point out that i2 was their proportion of the trial in 2003 on texas redistricting and apparently senator cruz disagrees with the u.s supreme court which subsequently heard the case after remedial orders were put in place because of what the legislature in part did which included packing latino voters into a limited number of districts in order to prevent them from having the opportunity to direct elect additional congress members to the texas delegation i also just want to point out that i know from personal experience that this is a nonpartisan issue maldives is a nonpartisan organization the very same decade that we were in texas litigating against a republican-led texas legislature's maps i was in california in 2001 that's the same decade litigating against a california legislature led by democrats that had similarly chosen to in this case split latino voters in order to protect incumbents and by doing that they prevented latino community in california from electing another member of their choice to the california congressional delegation so i know from that experience back then too today this is not a partisan issue as you said this is about enabling every voter to have their opportunity to express their preference and the outcome of the election is then determined by the collective preferences of those in a community it's about ensuring that we don't have structures including the way we redistrict that prevents voters all eligible voters from having their views reflected much as i would love to talk about harvard and yale i'm going to bring us back to the reason that we're here the court in shelby county made clear that congress has to show it's done due diligence that's why we're here to do the due diligence that the court in shelby county said we must do for a pre-clearance provision in the voting protection provisions here uh the known practices pre-clearance provision in the house version of the john lewis voting rights advancement act identifies seven specific practices that have historically been shown their known practices to diminish the voting rights and power of minority voters uh mr science i'd like to ask you to talk about those practices identified in this bill practices that continue to be used to disenfranchise minority voters thank you sorry we've talked about some of them already today but they include for example a reversion to at-large seats because of historically recognized by the supreme court going back to the thornburg versus jingles decision that at-large seats often play a role in disenfranchising minority voters they include annexations de-annexations at the local level because historically those have been used to expand the electorate to include more white voters to contract the electorate to eliminate more minority areas they include redistricting in a context where there has been significant growth of a minority community of any race in a particular jurisdiction so not all redistricting but a recognition that where you've had significant growth of the prior decade of a minority community that's often where you see a failure to create new seats to answer the changes in the electorate it does include voter id provisions where they are adjudicated either by the department of justice or importantly at the jurisdiction's choice at a district court here in washington where they conclude that it cannot meet the standard established it includes a reduction in multilingual voter materials while section 203 is a powerful protection for those voters who need non-english language materials this is to prevent a retrogression or reversion in jurisdictions that may look at that as an easy way to lower the minority vote it includes those changes in voting locations precinct changes polling place relocations that we know often are a barrier to those who've consistently voted over time at a particular place but it includes those changes where they have a demonstrated despaired impact discriminatory effect on minority voters and finally it includes certain voter purges we have seen at maldives problems with voter purges just recently the state of texas engaged engaged in a targeted attempt to purge voters based on citizenship information provided years earlier to the motor vehicles department recognizing that those folks almost all of them had already naturalized but had no reason to go back and tell motor vehicles that they had naturalized because it was of no moment or significance to that bureau so those are the practices identified all of them have a continuing and historical demonstrated effect in being used particularly to reduce the threat perceived by those in power from a growing minority electorate historically demonstrated effect based on facts not republican facts or democratic facts based on adjudications by and large communications by judges appointed by president of both parties and confirmed by the senate as ronald reagan is said to have remarked i'm not sure it was originally him but facts are stubborn things especially in a courtroom let me ask you finally mr yang um could you explain to us why pre-clearance and practice based pre-clearance specifically is so crucial at a time of rapidly increasing diversity in the united states the 2020 census results are beginning to show that the united states is diversifying even faster than has been predicted in particular hispanic and asian americans are some of the fastest growing demographics at the same time this white non-voter the non-white voter gap has been drastically increasing in the years immediately following shelby county why is pre-clearance important so perhaps jumping off of mr science's testimony and talking about the specific provisions that we're talking about specific practices that we're talking about when we're talking for example about methods of elections specifically when you're talking about early voting and all the polls that we have done asian americans prefer early voting prefer mail-in ballots if you look at georgia for example 40 of asian americans which is above the the average in in georgia voted by mail voted early by mail 32 voted early by mail in the the runoff election whereas only 24 of the general population voted uh by mail so that would be a that would be a practice that would be of concern if you're looking at a reduction in multilingual voting materials asian americans approximately one-third i think it's actually about 30 percent of asian-americans are what we consider limited english proficient english is not our first language well we're now no we are no less of a citizen simply because english is not our first language the the notion of disenfranchising voters simply based on language is something that we we should not be countenancing with respect to voter purchase i think uh mr science has testified about it very well again one of the problems here is notification in language in a culturally appropriate way for the asian american population recognizing that asian americans are lower propensity voters the other thing about all of these practices that we're talking about is essentially we're asking many of these voters communities of color in particular to essentially re-prove their voter registration or re-prove their eligibility to vote whereas we are not asking that of other people and here i'm talking about how it is specifically applied i gave two examples in my initial opening statement about how it's been applied disparately to the asian american community by asking only asian americans about their about their citizenship or suggesting that asian americans should adopt a more american sounding name to avoid any problems with respect to voter id laws so those are some of the ways in which practice-based pre-clearance specifically affect our community and which why it is so important for our community thank you i'm going to close this hearing documents for the record may be submitted the record will remain open for one week mr chairman submission of questions uh or statements um and i'm happy to hear you in a moment senator cruz uh i asked unanimous consent to enter the record a report entitled practice-based pre-clearance prepared by maldef a jec and the national association of latino elected officials education fund testimony from dr louis fraga and dr bernard frega and three reports on voting discrimination prepared by the southern poverty law center hearing no objection senator cruz thank you mr chairman i just want to briefly make an observation in response to the exchange between you and mr signs mr science made reference to the texas redistricting case and and the fact that it went to the u.s supreme court uh he is of course right as he now knows i'm the lawyer that argued that case before the u.s supreme court and mr signs observed the supreme court raised concerns about one district that is true the supreme court also upheld the redistricting map upheld revoking the democratic gerrymander that had kept democrats in power despite the large majority of texans voting for republicans consistently of the 36 congressional districts the u.s supreme court upheld 35 of them there was one district in which the supreme court required some modifications that was cd 23. i would note even that district the only district with which the supreme court found any concerns that district today cd23 is represented by an hispanic republican and so the efforts of the democratic plaintiffs to insist that the supreme court somehow ensure that texans keep sending a large majority of democrats to congress even though the voters disagreed the supreme court thankfully rejected that claim and and followed the law instead as it should have uh this hearing is going to close i'll invite any of the witnesses who want to respond in writing to any of the comments that have been made you have an open invitation a general question uh i apologize that we can't let you do it now because senator cruz and i are about to miss a vote uh and uh i am very very grateful to every one of you for your very helpful and informative testimony we are here to do our due diligence you evaded us very very significantly we thank all of you thank you this hearing is a journey you

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Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021