Evoking apartheid-era voting restrictions and warning of a dire end for America’s democracy, Senate Democrats on Tuesday passed a resolution urging Congress to pass comprehensive voting rights legislation to counteract actions by several states they believe have made it more difficult for voters to cast a ballot.

House Democrats replicated the Senate’s action soon after. 

“We have never seen a more dangerous attack on our democracy in modern times than what we have seen in the last two years,” Senate Majority Leader Stephen Fenberg, D-Boulder, said.

Sen. Chris Hansen, D-Denver, recounted his time in South Africa shortly after the county began dismantling the apartheid regime and effectively framed America’s debate on voting rights legislation as a choice between learning the lessons of the African nation’s history or embracing its worst manifestations.

“The top priority for the apartheid government was to restrict the right to vote,” he said, arguing that America’s experiment in representative democracy will not survive if Congress doesn’t act to reverse state laws that he said restrict people’s ability to access the ballot box.

“We cannot move backwards,” Hansen said. “We will not stand by silently while forces act to restrict the right to vote.”

At issue is two voting rights measures, Senate Memorial 1 and House Resolution 4. In addition to pushing for the passage of Freedom To Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the resolution also reasserts the “validity of the 2020 presidential election results as legitimate and verified.”

Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert, R-Douglas County, said he agrees with many points raised by the resolution, notably the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He would never condone actions that restricted Americans’ ability to cast a ballot, notably subjecting them to poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidation, he said. 

What he cannot agree with, he said, is the claim that Colorado’s electoral system “serves as an example to the rest of the nation.”

He said he has two problems with that claim: he cannot agree with a system that sends ballots by mail to addresses where the intended recipients no longer live and which relies on a simple declaration of intent to be able to vote on the same day.

“If you’ve been out walking door to door, have you ever met someone who says that person doesn’t live there anymore?” he said.

He also questioned the presumption that congressional actions are ultimately good for democracy.

“Do you know what Congress would pass? I don’t,” he said.

The measure passed on a 20-13 vote, with Sen. Kevin Priola, R-Henderson, voting with Democrats.

The same debate played out in the House, where Republicans and Democrats brushed aside House Speaker Alec Garnett’s opening day plea that lawmakers avoid using the “well of this chamber as your twitter handle” as they sparred over voting rights.

The conflict centered on HR 4, which took aim at restrictive voting laws adopted in Georgia and Texas. It also cited the Jan. 6 riot, and said “falsehoods and conspiracies regarding the integrity of the 2020 election have run rampant in our media and public discourse.”

The resolution concludes by calling “on the United States Congress, and specifically members of the United States Senate, to pass comprehensive voting rights legislation to protect the fundamental right to vote, which has been the cornerstone of our democracy since the founding of our republic.”

Rep. Tony Exum, a Black Colorado Springs Democrat who sponsored the resolution along with Rep. Kerry Tipper, D-Lakewood, focused on Black Americans’ history with voting disenfranchisement. He said things improved after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, but added that the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision “gutted a major part” of the VRA, which, in turn, made “it easier for states to begin passing suppression laws.”

“This is what those laws look like: In 19 states, 34 voter suppression laws are restricting voter registration, eliminating poll locations, cutting back on early voting and reducing voting hours,” Exum said. “They also criminalized and punished people who give food and water to people waiting in line to vote.”

But Republican lawmakers, led by Minority Leader Hugh McKean, R-Loveland, described the resolution as the latest example of “the totalitarian tactics of the Democrats, and their attempts to degrade all that we are.”

“States like Colorado with respected voting systems can shine because state law – not partisan federal edicts – determines how those systems work,” McKean said in a statement ahead of the proposition’s action on the floor. “The last thing we need is the federal government stepping in and nationalizing voting procedures. Democrats can not say in one breath that the system works, and in the next breath claim that we cannot trust and must instead change that same system.”

Republican Rep. Dave Williams of Colorado Springs introduced a series of amendments, but each was shot down. Those included language aimed at preventing dead people and those who are not citizens to vote, provisions Democrats noted are already in state law.

Rep. Ron Hanks, a Cañon City Republican who is seeking the nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, drew criticism during the 2021 session for joking about lynching and arguing that a constitutional provision that treated slaves as three-fifths of a human being wasn’t “impugning anybody’s humanity.”

Hanks’ views on the 2020 elections, a centerpiece of his U.S. Senate campaign, were on full display on Tuesday.

After praising King and civil rights leaders from the 1960s, Hanks dove into “election integrity.” That featured a defense of people who, like Hanks, were in Washington, D.C. for the Jan. 6 riot but did not participate in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“I am a little offended for some of the people I met in Washington, D.C.,” Hanks said. “These people did nothing wrong. They were afraid for their country.”

Hanks also ran an unsuccessful amendment seeking a non-governmental audit of the 2020 election.

McKean, in his final comments, acknowledged that President Joe Biden won the election in 2020, just as President Donald Trump won in 2016. He also voted against the Williams and Hanks amendments. 

One amendment called for supporting Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, which Garnett said is contrary to opposing election fraud. Another called for supporting the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Garnett said the resolution isn’t partisan or political, but that the amendments offered by Republicans are.

In a speech expressing rare anger, Garnett shouted, “In Colorado we cannot remain silent!”

He added: “The choice is clear between the two groups of elected representatives in this building. You have a choice. Your ability to vote is under threat.”

As he held up one of Republican amendments, the speaker said, “In these words … America, listen up. Your ability to vote is under threat! Pull the records and look at who voted for those amendments!”

House Republicans called for recorded voice votes on the resolution, as well as on their amendments. Roll call votes typically end up in campaign ads.  

The House resolution passed on a purely party-line vote. 

Meanwhile, state GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown weighed in on the resolution, calling it “a blatant political ploy by Democrats in the Assembly to distract from the fact that they have spent years increasing taxes, passing policies that have led to record levels of violent crime, and putting students and parents last.”

Nico Delgado, the spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said “two-thirds of the Republican House members voted to thank the U.S. Senate front-runner (Hanks), for being an insurrectionist. The GOP showed their true colors with this vote and it’s all part of an extreme agenda that only serves Donald Trump and hurts Coloradans.”