Democrats claiming Republicans standing for election integrity is “some evil anti-voting conspiracy,” “fake hysteria,” and “the left’s Big Lie,” according to a memo Sunday from the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
McConnell’s memo warned Democrats intend to break the filibuster and ram through election reforms that would permit their party to “take over” elections.
Democrats will “try to use fake hysteria to break the Senate and silence millions of Americans’ voices so they can take over elections and ram through their radical agenda,” the memo read, according to The Hill.
“Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans have repeatedly stood up to the left and their Big Lie that there is some evil anti-voting conspiracy sweeping America.”
Democrats, who have had President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better Act stalled since late last year, have refocused their efforts on passing election reforms before the 2022 midterm elections.
Senate Republicans blocked two Democrat-pushed reforms last year, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, rebuking those as federalizing states against the constructs of the Constitution.
Without Republican support to back those bills, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has threatened to vote to break the filibuster if Republicans do not support Democrats’ voting bills by Jan. 17.
The filibuster requires 60 votes to pass legislation in the Senate, but Democrats hold just 48 seats to Republicans’ 50. Two independents caucus with Democrats, but it still leaves the party 10 votes shy of being able to pass legislation on a partisan basis.
McConnell’s memo Sunday led Schumer’s office to recirculate their own memo demonizing their political opponents for “pursuing and passing legislation that would dramatically restrict voting, putting our democracy at risk.”
After the contested 2020 presidential election, according to the Brennan Center, at least 19 states passed 34 laws codifying election law that was skirted under the guise of COVID-19 protocols.
