Ron Johnson: 'Americans are not looking for election reform'

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Sunday accused Democrats of trying to radically change the country through voting legislation and of being "willing to destroy the institution of the Senate to pass a bill that's a non-solution looking for a problem."

In a Sunday interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM, Johnson criticized Democrats' push for voting rights legislation, claiming that voting is "incredibly easy" and voter suppression is not occurring.

"Show me somebody in the recent past that has wanted to vote that couldn't," he told Catsimatidis. "We've made voting incredibly easy. Nobody's suppressing the vote."

"There's nothing racist about voter ID," he added.

Democrats' focus on voting rights grew following the 2020 presidential election as a number of Republican-dominated state legislatures enacted restrictive election laws. At least 34 laws restricting access to voting were passed in at least 19 states between Jan. 1 and Dec. 7 of last year, according to the Brennan Center.

House Democrats passed voting rights legislation last year, only to be stymied by a GOP filibuster in the evenly divided Senate.

Another voting rights bill passed through the House on a party-line vote earlier this month, with Democrats pushing to change the filibuster for the legislation as it moved to the Senate.

But two Democrats - Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) - joined all 50 Republicans in the upper chamber in voting against the rules change, marking a defeat in the months-long push for voting rights legislation.

Johnson criticized the attempt to change the filibuster rules. "We have a 50-50 Senate. There was no mandate to fundamentally change this country," he said. "And yet Democrats, except for two, were willing to destroy the institution of the Senate to pass ... this election bill."

Johnson said that "Americans are not looking for election reform," and the effort to pass the legislation shows that Democrats want to "turn this into a one-party state."

"It's just something Democrats want to pass ... so they can literally turn America into a socialist paradise," he said.

The senator also criticized Democrats and the Biden administration for rising inflation, issues regarding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year and other concerns.

"This is the direct result of Democrat governance," he said. "Americans can see with their own eyes."