Democrats' Big Lie Runs Into Reality

Statement

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding voting laws:

"Five months ago, Democrats and the media were saying the sky was falling because of some states' mainstream voting laws.

"Georgia passed a voting law that was more open than the rules on the books in blue states like New York and Delaware.

"Texas passed a law that switched off some one-time COVID exceptions like keeping polls open in the middle of the night.

"These mainstream laws brought a torrent of hysteria from the far left. Corporate America, Hollywood, and the corporate media rushed to condemn laws they hadn't even read. It was totally untethered from reality.

"One poll a few months back found that less than half of one percent of Americans said voting laws were the country's most important problem. More Americans actually believe current voting laws are too lax than believe they are too restrictive. But the far left bubble became fixated on this non-issue. The manufactured outrage just kept coming.

"At the peak of the crescendo, a few months back, 48 of 50 Senate Democrats voted to break this institution to ram through a three-year-old voting takeover bill on a partisan basis.

"Fortunately, a bipartisan majority saved the Senate. And now we're seeing hard evidence that, as we all knew, the hysteria was never based in fact to begin with.

"Georgia's primary election day is today. But we already know a lot thanks to early voting figures.

"And here was a Washington Post headline a few days ago: "Voting is surging in Georgia despite controversial new election law.'

"The story goes on: "Record-breaking turnout is undercutting predictions that the Georgia Election Integrity Act… would lead to a falloff in voting. By the end of Friday, the final day of early in-person voting, nearly 800,000 Georgians had cast ballots -- more than three times the number in 2018 and higher even than in 2020, a presidential year.'

"Turnout is up despite the fact that fewer Georgians are availing themselves of the state's no-excuse mail-in voting.

"Georgians are getting back to in-person voting, a return to pre-pandemic norms, and doing so in huge numbers.

"The reporter quoted one 70-year-old Black voter who was stunned by the easiness of the voting process after all the disinformation that had been thrown around. She said, "I had heard that they were going to try to deter us in any way possible… [so] to go in there and vote as easily as I did… I was really thrown back.'

"Shame on the Democrats who pushed the Big Lie that a grand scheme was afoot to prevent millions of Americans from voting.

"It was never true. It was just to push their pre-existing policy agenda.

"The fake hysteria was just a pretext to push a sweeping national takeover of election laws that Democrats had already had on the shelf for several years.

"Now the rhetoric is proving false before our eyes. These commonsense Republican laws appear to be achieving just what the American people want: Making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

"This whole episode proves exactly why our democracy still needs its cooling saucer. This is exactly the reason why the Senate exists. So that one party cannot lose its head to a short-term fever and upend massive federal laws on a partisan basis under false pretexts.

"Thank goodness a bipartisan majority stopped Democrats from destroying the Senate over this fake issue a few months back."

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