"We must pass legislation to protect our democracy to protect the right to vote," Schumer told the Senate in a session discussing the events of January 6, 2021.
Schumer said the efforts to topple the US democratic system in the storming of the Capitol a year ago was continuing in the efforts of Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass new measures empowering them to set aside the results of federal elections in their jurisdictions.
"We are seeing the most restrictive anti-voting measures since Jim Crow [the system of racial discrimination against African Americans) on the statute book in America and trying to succeed where the big lie failed," Schumer said.
The Capitol riot did not come from foreign soil, but was an attempt to reverse by violent means the result of a free and fair election and it was rooted in previous President Donald Trump's claim that the 2020 election was illegitimate - a claim that tens of millions of Americans still believed the election was rigged, he added.