Alex Padilla U.S. Senator for California

“We must rise to this generational moment of challenge, in the spirit of Dr. King, and pass this voting rights bill.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following Martin Luther King Jr. Day, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary and Senate Rules committees, delivered a speech on the floor of the United States Senate urging his colleagues to take action to pass critical voting rights legislation — the bipartisan John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Padilla reiterated his position that in the face of Republican obstruction, Senate Democrats must change the filibuster rule to protect voting rights for every American.

Padilla co-led the introduction of the Freedom to Vote Act, legislation to improve access to the ballot for Americans, help strengthen our election system, and protect our democracy from relentless voter suppression attacks in state legislatures across the country. And he is a strong advocate of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act which restores and strengthens the voting rights protections in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Key Excerpts:

• The clock is turning back on voting rights—and too many people, inside this building and outside it, are ignoring or denying the alarm bells. Madam President, To truly honor Martin Luther King we must rededicate ourselves to the cause of freedom and equality. We cannot wait for a convenient season to act. We cannot wait for another Bloody Sunday. Look around. This is our moment.
• Make no mistake, Republicans will deny the intention but the effect is clear. These changes disproportionately disenfranchise the votes and the voices of people of color.
• The clock on Dr. King’s victories is already turning back. The alarm bells of our democracy are ringing.
• […] the Senate has failed three times this last year alone to even debate a voting rights bill.We’ve failed to debate because of the filibuster rule—which allows a minority of Senators to obstruct the voice of the American majority. Republican Senators claim that our legislation is partisan and divisive. But what goal could be more American than securing the fundamental right to vote for all Americans?
• We must change the filibuster rule to protect voting rights for every American.
• In recent decades, the Senate has made more than 160 exceptions to the filibuster to do what’s best for people. Today, it’s time for us to do so once again.
• Colleagues, we must rise to this generational moment of challenge, in the spirit of Dr. King, and pass this voting rights bill.

The full transcript of Padilla’s remarks as prepared for delivery below:

Madam President, yesterday we celebrated the moral vision and exceptional courage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Born and raised under the violent oppression of Jim Crow segregation, Dr. King deeply felt the lasting wounds of slavery and segregation.

And yet, he believed in the promise of America’s highest ideal: a system of democracy that recognizes that we are all created equal.

In 1957, Dr. King told a crowd of civil rights leaders, “Our most urgent plea to the federal government is to guarantee our voting rights… Give us the ballot and we will creatively join in the freeing of the soul of America.”

Time and again, from a bridge in Selma to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King—and the civil rights movement collectively—forced this country to confront the brutal injustice of white supremacy.

Dr. King kindled a movement of peaceful protest, voter registration, and legal revolution.

His leadership helped secure the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—a monument to freedom, and a guardian of our multiracial democracy.

As important a step that was, Dr. King also understood that the path of progress, the road to freedom, would not be linear.

It would not be direct.

And it would be threatened by setbacks.

Recent years have illustrated just how right Dr. King was.

The clock is turning back on voting rights—and too many people, inside this building and outside it, are ignoring or denying the alarm bells.

Madam President, To truly honor Martin Luther King we must rededicate ourselves to the cause of freedom and equality.

We cannot wait for a convenient season to act.

We cannot wait for another Bloody Sunday.

Look around. This is our moment.

The threats to democracy today may look different than Bull Connor with a bullhorn—but they are no less real.

Now, when Republicans claim this is all hyperbole, consider this:

In the year since our nation’s most secure election ever, with record voter turnout, Republican state legislatures have passed 34 laws to restrict access to the ballot, and threaten election security.

Just look at Georgia, where Republicans passed an elections bill, SB 202, on a purely partisan basis last spring.

In the 2020 election, Georgians voted in record numbers.

Many voted by mail or used early voting options to cast their ballots safely and securely during this once in a century global health pandemic.

Those ballots were processed, counted, audited and certified.

So how did Republicans respond?

They wrote SB 202 to cut the number of early voting drop boxes in Atlanta by more than 75 percent.

To make it harder for voters who go to the wrong polling place to cast a ballot and have their votes for statewide contests counted.

To stop new voters from being able to register to vote in time for a runoff election.

Make no mistake, Republicans will deny the intention but the effect is clear.

These changes disproportionately disenfranchise the votes and the voices of people of color.

And, when voters end up standing in line for hours to cast their votes on Election Day—as voters of color disproportionately have to do—SB 202 will prevent volunteers from offering them food or water.

Think about that.

Someone stands in line outdoors for hours to do their patriotic duty.

And Georgia Republicans make it a crime to give that person a bottle of water.

SB202 isn’t about election security or voter fraud.

It’s about erecting barriers for low-income voters, voters of color, and younger voters to participate in our democracy.

As a member of the Senate Rules Committee, I traveled to Georgia last summer for a field hearing on voter suppression.

Last week, I traveled there with President Biden and Vice President Harris.

So when Minority Leader McConnell tries to tell you that no state in America is making it harder to vote, he’s wrong. The people of this country deserve to hear the truth.

Not just from Georgia, but in Texas, where a new law empowers partisan poll watchers to threaten election officials with lawsuits.

In Arizona, where a new law will unnecessarily cut tens of thousands of voters from the Permanent Early Voting List.

34 new state laws, in the past year alone, will raise new obstacles for people who simply want to cast their ballots.

And that is to say nothing of the hundreds more that were proposed, and will surely be reintroduced, if we do not act.

The clock on Dr. King’s victories is already turning back.

The alarm bells of our democracy are ringing.

They’ve been ringing since 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in their decision in Shelby v. Holder.

And yet, the Senate has failed three times this last year alone to even debate a voting rights bill.

We’ve failed to debate because of the filibuster rule—which allows a minority of Senators to obstruct the voice of the American majority.

Republican Senators claim that our legislation is partisan and divisive.

But what goal could be more American than securing the fundamental right to vote for all Americans?

If Republican Senators are sincere about opposing partisan changes to election laws, they should join us in condemning partisan voter suppression in Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and across the country.

Instead, Republicans only complain about and obstruct our efforts in the Senate to respond to these laws.

In doing so, they leave Democrats no choice.

We must change the filibuster rule to protect voting rights for every American.

Madam President, the Senate exists to serve American democracy.

The Senate rules exist to help the Senate serve American democracy.

When those rules endanger our democracy, the answer is simple—we change them.

It’s not unprecedented.

The Senate changed the filibuster in 1917, to protect our nation from the threat of World War I.

The Senate changed the filibuster in 1975, to try to restore the function of this body.

In recent decades, the Senate has made more than 160 exceptions to the filibuster to do what’s best for people.

Today, it’s time for us to do so once again.

With all due respect to the history and traditions of the Senate, our job is to protect the future of this country, starting with our democracy.

As Martin Luther King once told us, “America is essentially a dream—a dream yet unfulfilled.”

And today, it falls on each of us to take up Dr. King’s lifelong struggle.

This is our moment.

Once again, we must work together to pass a voting rights law that secures the vote for every American—regardless of race, religion, ability, or gender.

Sometimes, progress requires that we change the rules—as we did last month, when we changed the filibuster to protect our economy.

Sometimes, progress requires that one party acts alone—as the courageous architects of the Fifteenth Amendment did, a century and a half ago.

Look around this Senate, and think how surprised the men who created the filibuster in the early 1800s would be to see Senator Warnock, Senator Baldwin, myself, and others serving in this chamber.

But change that strengthens our democracy is change for the better.

Colleagues, we must rise to this generational moment of challenge, in the spirit of Dr. King, and pass this voting rights bill.

Thank you, Madam President; I yield the floor.

###