Klobuchar: ‘It is evil to make it deliberately hard for people to vote’

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has helped craft the Democrats’ latest voting rights bill, said on Sunday that it is evil to make it hard for people to vote. 

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart,” Klobuchar said the proposed Freedom to Vote Act will be a victory for all Americans, sharing the positive response it received from newspapers after being unveiled earlier this week. 

“But we’ve had rave reviews about the bill, positive editorials today about the substance of the bill in The New York Times, Washington Post. And for me, that was number one,” Klobuchar told Capehart. 

“Yes, we can get to the procedure, which I know we will, but right now you have over 400 bills introduced that are voter suppression bills, 31 have passed. Look at what just happened in Georgia.”

Sen. @amyklobuchar joined @CapehartJ to discuss the “Freedom to Vote Act” she helped introduce this week, and the need for Congress to protect voting rights. #SundayShow pic.twitter.com/P0DOc98S2O

— The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart (@TheSundayShow) September 19, 2021

Republicans in Georgie say the new state law, passed in March, is necessary to return confidence in elections after claims of fraud in 2020. However, Democrats say it’s a deliberate effort to suppress and disenfranchise voters, especially the people of color and young voters who helped propel Democrats’ recent statewide victories in the state.

Klobuchar said Sunday that she doesn’t understand how some of her colleagues in the Senate can oppose the Freedom to Vote Act, a scaled down version of legislation that Republicans successfully blocked over the summer. 

“But I just don’t know how my colleagues can, in good faith — some of them, I know and I like very well, on the other side of the aisle, how they can embrace what is essentially evil. It is — it is evil to make it deliberately hard for people to vote,” Klobuchar told Capehart. 

 “It is not consistent with Democracy,” she added. “And that’s coming from a state that you know well, Minnesota, highest voter turnout rate in the country every year. And who have we elected? Not always Democrats.”