Voting rights legislation has to be bipartisan — and a House proposal to expand those rights is not, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said Sunday.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” Sullivan said voting issues in individual states should not be a reason for federal legislation.
“I think it's really important to have this discussion on voting rights, on voting integrity, on access to the ballot,” he said. “It's also really important ... to be bipartisan in this.”
“What [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] is putting forward, that it immediately kind of devolves into an accusation that somehow we're supporting Jim Crow-like policies,” he said of the H.R. 1, which expands voting rights.
“This is an argument that is frequently coming from our Democratic colleagues. Speaker Pelosi, [Sen.] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and even the president, and it doesn't help advance the issue. It doesn't help bring unity. It doesn't help bring a bipartisan nature to this.”
Sullivan added that “individual voting issues in states is not normally the reason …the impetus to bring major bipartisan national federal legislation unless there is strong bipartisan support for this.”
“Right now H.R.1, the Pelosi bill from the House … not only doesn't have support from Republicans, it doesn't have support from many Democrats,” he said. “The key issue here is to work on this issue in a bipartisan nature.”
According to Sullivan, who recently visited the southern border to inspect the surge of migrants, called on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to go the border and see for themselves the alarming increase.
“What I have been calling for in a respectful way…is for the president, for the vice president to come down and to see what we saw, to hear what we heard from officials on the front lines,” he said.
“There is an open border policy, there is a ‘catch and release’ policy, and these were changes that the Biden administration instituted,” he added.
“They were warned. ….that if they undertook these major policy changes… then they would see this surge,” he said. “To me it was shocking. I think the president and vice president need to go down there, see what I saw, see what the other Republicans and Democrat congressmen are coming down there. There are things we can do immediately to address the challenges there, but right now it is open borders.”
“It's a humanitarian and also health crisis that we need to address,” he declared.
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