I yield the floor.
The Presiding Officer. The Senator from Hawaii is recognized.
Ms. Hirono. Mr. President, it has been hard, at times, to find the words to describe the full harm that Donald Trump has inflicted on our country. We can spend hours dissecting how his policies have made us less safe and less healthy, but his Presidency has also been a profound moral failure.
Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, a father from Hawaii joined me at one of my talk-story sessions in my office, and he asked me a question that struck me hard at that time and has stuck with me until today. He said: How can I tell my son that lying is not OK when the President of the United States lies every single day? I struggled to answer his question then, and I am not sure I could offer an adequate answer now.
But this conversation remains a clear example of how we do not live in normal times. How is it normal as we and the world watched in horror as an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol? Blood was shed. People were hurt. Vandalism occurred.
It is not normal when we have a President who lies every single day. And even in the face of this vandalism, this mob, he really doesn’t have much to say except: I love you. You should go home now.
It is not normal when, in the middle of a pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 350,000 Americans, which is nearly the combined population of the islands of Maui and the Big Island, we have a President who only seems to care about spreading conspiracies to undermine confidence in our elections and our democracy.
It is not normal when duly elected Senators who took an oath to uphold the Constitution pull a stunt to try and nullify millions of votes in six States so that Donald Trump can remain President. I call this effort a stunt because it is doomed to fail.
We have a strong bipartisan majority, as noted in the vote that we just took, in both Chambers of Congress who reject this stunt, and courts have ruled against Trump and his allies in more than 60 cases.
So whenever this farce ends, the result will be the same: Donald Trump will have lost the election, and Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States.
You can tell a lot about a person from the way they handle defeat. The way Donald Trump has handled defeat says a lot about who he is. Watching so many of our colleagues indulge the President tells us a lot about them too.
We don’t have to look back very far in history to find examples of candidates who lost tough races but demonstrated their character in defeat. Our colleague Senator Romney graciously conceded his defeat to President Obama in noting:
At a time like this, we can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work, and we citizens also have to rise to the occasion.
And in 2000, during an election with substantial irregularities and partisan intervention from the Supreme Court, Al Gore, nevertheless, put his country first and he said:
Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the Court’s decision, I accept it. … And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
As I reflect on the service of these distinguished public servants and the acts they took to maintain our democracy, I am also drawn to remarks President Obama made 4 years ago in his farewell address to the Nation when he warned that our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.
It is a particularly sage warning as we contend with the President of the United States seeking to nullify a free and fair election simply because he lost. We have to stand up, speak out, and fight back because our democracy itself is at stake.
American democracy has endured over these centuries in large part because our institutions serve as guardrails to keep us from going over the cliff. As elected officials, we can strengthen these guardrails by listening to our own conscience in moments of peril, by having what our friend John Lewis called “an executive session with myself.”
Before making a big decision, John would say: Listen self, this is what you must do; this is where you must go. Today, we can follow John’s example, listen to our conscience, stand up for our Constitution, and do what is right.
I yield the floor.
The Presiding Officer. The Senator from Maine is recognized.
Ms. Collins. Mr. President, let me begin my remarks tonight by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to the members of the law enforcement community and the National Guard whose hard work and courage made it possible for us to resume our deliberations tonight.
We return to this Chamber tonight undeterred by the violence we witnessed and strengthened in our determination to fulfill our constitutional duty. The Constitution is the foundation of our American democracy, and the Constitution is what must guide our decisions on the Presidential election.
The process the Constitution sets forth for electing Presidents through the electoral college is straightforward. The people vote. Electors are chosen. The electors vote. Then Congress counts the electors’ votes.
That final step in the process is why we have convened today. Counting the votes of the electors, a function that the 12th Amendment assigns to Congress, is an administrative and largely ceremonial act. Our job is simply to count the votes certified by each State—nothing more. We should not attempt to usurp the roles of the voters, the States, or the electoral college.
The American people have done their job, turning out in record numbers to vote in the midst of a frightening pandemic. Indeed, as a percentage of the voting-eligible population, the turnout was the highest in 120 years. Similarly, in the midst of this pandemic, hundreds of election officials and volunteers have done their job, staffing polling places and faithfully counting and often recounting votes. The States have done their job by certifying the election results.
Now, I have heard the proponents of these objections raise questions about whether the various States conducted their elections properly. When disputes over elections arise, candidates are able to appeal to our legal system, not Congress, for recourse.
In the 2 months since the 2020 election, the President’s lawyers and allies have had the opportunity to make their arguments and challenge election results before the courts. Notably, every one of nearly 60 lawsuits they have brought forward have been rejected. In fact, the Supreme Court has twice refused to hear their election challenges.
We must abide by these rulings. The time has now come for Congress to do its job. We should affirm the certified results of each State by counting the votes of their electors. Altering the results of the electoral college would set a terrible precedent in which the party in control of Congress could override the will of the voters and overrule our courts to unilaterally choose the next President. One Senator attempted such a maneuver after the election in 2004, and the Senate overwhelmingly rejected that effort. The Senate has demonstrated by its vote tonight that it will follow that precedent and do so again.
Today—tonight, Mr. President, I will continue to vote to reaffirm the foundation of our democracy, the Constitution of the United States. And I will reject these challenges to the electoral college.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The Presiding Officer. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
Mr. Merkley. Mr. President, I invite all of my colleagues to cast your eyes upon these three boxes sitting on the table in front of the dais. These three boxes contain the certified results from every State in our Union regarding how that State voted, how their electors have voted for the President of the United States of America.
You cast your eyes on these three boxes, and you know that there is something special. You see that there are straps on them holding the top on and straps around the side and they are engraved—beautiful handle, beautiful leather work, crafted in the cabinet shop of our very Senate to say to the world that their cargo is precious.
There are three of these boxes. The third box is brand new. It was crafted
