Klobuchar holds Georgia field hearing in voting rights push

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar tried Monday to bolster Congressional Democrats' stalled push on elections legislation by bringing her Senate committee to Georgia, home to a fierce debate over voting rights.

The rare field hearing by the Senate Rules Committee largely focused on the election law signed by the state's Republican governor earlier this year. The changes, which Democrats have derided as an attack on voting rights, followed former President Donald Trump's outrage over losing Georgia in last November's presidential election and his false claims about widespread election fraud.

"We shed a light on a really bad law that was specifically intended to disenfranchise voters and make it harder to vote," Klobuchar, a Democrat, said in an interview following the hearing that was held in Atlanta at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Georgia Republicans have strongly defended the law, which is being challenged in court by the U.S. Department of Justice. A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's campaign dismissed the hearing as "nothing more than political theatre" ahead of the event. In a press call during the hearing, Kemp accused Democrats of lying and championed the Georgia law as "a common sense reform measure."

"It doesn't matter if it's the DOJ, the DNC or the Senate Democrats, we aren't backing down," Kemp said. "We're going to continue to fight for the truth and we're going to stand up for secure, accessible and fair elections."

In her opening remarks, Klobuchar highlighted parts of the Georgia law she objects to, including what she described as limits on ballot drop boxes and changes to the state's election runoff practice. For Senate Democrats, the GOP changes have only added to their push to pass what Klobuchar describes as "basic federal standards" for elections.

But the partisan tensions in Georgia also reflect the opposition Democrats are seeing in Washington.

"Over the last year, Georgia has become ground zero for the sweeping voter suppression efforts we've seen gain momentum all across our country," said U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from the state.

While Klobuchar and others have pointed to the Georgia law as an example of voter suppression, there remains no clear avenue for Congressional Democrats to pass legislation to try to stop the changes coming from Republican statehouses. Klobuchar supports getting rid of the Senate's legislative filibuster, which Republicans used to block Democrats' wide-ranging election bill known as the For The People Act back in June, but Democrats lack the votes to get rid of the Senate practice.

Monday was the first time in 20 years the Rules Committee held a field hearing, according to a news release from the committee. Among the witnesses who appeared in front of the committee was state Sen. Sally Harrell, a Democrat, who testified about how the Georgia bill became law. She said during her time in the General Assembly she had "never seen such blatant disregard for the legislative process as I did with Senate Bill 202."

"We need your help, we desperately need your help," Harrell told the committee. "But there's no one solution to this problem, and it's not a static thing where you're going to be able to pass one bill and solve it all, because the methods keep changing."

No GOP Senators who serve on the Rules Committee attended the Georgia hearing. The most prominent defense of the state's law came not during the hearing, but from the GOP press call that included Kemp and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also criticized the hearing in a statement.

"This silly stunt is based on the same lie as all the Democrats' phony hysteria from Georgia to Texas to Washington D.C. and beyond — their efforts to pretend that moderate, mainstream state voting laws with more generous early voting provisions than blue states like New York are some kind of evil assault on our democracy," said McConnell, a member of the Rules committee.

During the November 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden pulled off a surprise upset over Trump in Georgia as he won back the White House for Democrats. Trump blamed fraud for his loss in Georgia, despite having no clear evidence. He raged against Kemp and feuded with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over his loss.

By the end of March, the new election legislation was signed into law. Last month, the U.S. Justice Department announced its lawsuit against Georgia, saying in a news release that "the United States' complaint contends that several provisions of Senate Bill 202 were adopted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race." Kemp countered in a statement that "this lawsuit is born out of the lies and misinformation the Biden administration has pushed against Georgia's Election Integrity Act from the start."

Near the end of Monday's hearing where Georgia's law was discussed at length, Klobuchar noted that "the devil is in the details in these bills."

"We've got to be as sophisticated in Washington as the people who are trying to mess with us," Klobuchar said.

Hunter Woodall • 612-673-4559

Twitter: @huntermw