Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., on Tuesday criticized the Democratic voting rights bill that would overhaul how Americans cast ballots as legislation that “would make our elections more chaotic and less secure” shortly before Republicans killed the bill.
“This bill contains a number of alarming provisions that would have a devastating impact on our nation’s electoral process,” Shelby said on the Senate floor Tuesday in opposition to the legislation, S.1. “It would make our elections more chaotic and less secure.”
Republicans stopped the bill from advancing in the Senate on Tuesday, when they voted to block S.1 from being debated on.
The legislation offered by Democrats was written to combat what they viewed as voter disenfranchisement in states like Georgia that they said passed voting bills that suppress the minority vote.
Among S.1′s provisions were expanding automatic and same-day voter registration to all states, requiring states to set up independent redistricting commissions for congressional seats and allocating funding to improve cybersecurity of election systems.
But Shelby said the bill would have given too much power to the federal government.
“This legislation contains more than 800 pages of bad policies that I believe America does not need and does not want. I believe that the strength of our election system is in its diversity – allowing each state to determine what’s best for them,” he said. “Each state should be left with the freedom and flexibility to administer their own respective elections, without interference from the federal government.”
Alabama’s senior senator also decried provisions of the bill that would allow felons to get their voting rights back after they are released, make it harder for voting lists to be purged, among others.
“While this is a bad bill all around, I believe that these are the top worst provisions – and the provisions the American people oppose the most: gutting state voter ID laws, spending taxpayer dollars on political campaigns, allowing unlimited ballot harvesting, and turning the Federal Election Commission into a partisan operation,” he said. “This bill is nothing but a partisan effort by the majority to take over all American elections at the federal level. The American people do not want this, and they do not deserve to be the recipients of such harmful policy.”