-Mr. President.
-Majority leader.
-We're debating a step that has never been taken
in American history.
Whether Congress should overrule the voters
and overturn a presidential election.
I've served 36 years in the Senate.
This will be the most important vote I've ever cast.
President Trump claims the election was stolen.
The assertions range from specific local allegations
to constitutional arguments to sweeping conspiracy theories.
I supported the President's right to use the legal system.
Dozens of lawsuits received hearings in courtrooms
all across our country.
But over and over, the courts rejected these claims,
including all-star judges,
whom the President himself has nominated.
Every election we know features
some illegality and irregularity,
and, of course, that's unacceptable.
I support strong state-led voting reforms.
Last year's bizarre pandemic procedures
must not become the new norm.
But, my colleagues, nothing before us proves illegality
anywhere near the massive scale -- the massive scale --
that would have tipped the entire election.
Nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break
when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence.
The Constitution gives us here in Congress a limited role.
We cannot simply declare ourselves
the national board of elections on steroids.
The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken.
They've all spoken.
If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever.
This election actually was not unusually close.
Just in recent history, 1976, 2000,
and 2004 were all closer than this one.
The Electoral College margin is almost identical
to what it was in 2016.
If this election were overturned by mere allegations
from the losing side,
our democracy would enter a death spiral.
We'd never see the whole nation accept an election again.
Every four years, there'd be a scramble for power at any cost.
The Electoral College, which most of us on this side,
have been defending for years, would cease to exist,
leaving many of our states with no real say at all
in choosing a president.
The effects would go even beyond the elections themselves.
Self-government, my colleagues,
requires a shared commitment to the truth
and a shared respect for the ground rules of our system.
We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes
with a separate set of facts
and separate realities with nothing in common
except our hostility towards each other and mistrust
for the few national institutions
that we all still share.
Every time -- every time -- in the last 30 years
that Democrats have lost the presidential race,
they've tried to challenge just like this.
After 2000, after 2004, after 2016.
After 2004, a senator joined and forced the same debate
and, believe it or not, Democrats like Harry Reid,
Dick Durbin and Hillary Clinton praised --
praised them and applauded the stunt.
Republicans condemned those baseless efforts back then.
And we just spent four years
condemning Democrats' shameful attacks on the validity
of President Trump's own election.
So, look, there can be no double standard.
The media that is outraged today
spent four years aiding and abetting Democrats'
attacks on our institutions after they lost.
But we must not imitate and escalate what we repudiate.
Our duty is to govern for the public good.
United States Senate has a higher calling
than an endless spiral of partisan vengeance.
Congress will either override the voters,
overrule them, the voters, the states,
and the courts for the first time ever or honor
the people's decision.
We'll either guarantee Democrats'
delegitimizing efforts after 2016
become a permanent new routine for both sides or declare
that our nation deserves a lot better than this.
We'll either hasten down a poisonous path
where only the winners of election
actually accept the results or show
we can still muster the patriotic courage
that our forebearers showed not only in victory but in defeat.
Framers built the Senate to stop short-term passions
from boiling over and melting the foundations of our republic.
So I believe protecting our constitutional order
requires respecting the limits of our own power.
It would be unfair and wrong to disenfranchise American voters
and overrule the courts and the states
on this extraordinarily thin basis.
And I will not pretend such a vote
would be a harmless protest gesture
while relying on others to do the right thing.
I will vote to respect the people's decision
and defend our system of government as we know it.