Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for hosting this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order to discuss the issue at the heart of American democracy--our right to vote. This right is…
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for hosting this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order to discuss the issue at the heart of American democracy--our right to vote.
This right is fundamental to our democracy and a threat to it is a threat to America itself.
A crucial benchmark of progress and inclusion in this country has been the passage of one of the most important pieces of legislation in our nation's history--the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Signed in to law by President Johnson, this legislation helped to reinforce America's promise of a truly democratic Nation and our 15th Amendment prohibition on denying Black Americans the right to vote.
The Voting Rights Act served as a beacon for full political participation and engagement in our nation for all Americans.
Because of that law, I stand before you as Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, the first African American woman Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, and a Senior Member on the Judiciary, Homeland Security, and the Budget Committees.
On August 6, 1965, in the Rotunda of the Capitol and in the presence of such luminaries as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Roy Wilkins of the NAACP; Whitney Young of the National Urban League; James Foreman of the Congress of Racial Equality; A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis of the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee; Senators Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Everett Dirksen; President Johnson addressed the Nation before signing the Voting Rights Act:
``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.''
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was critical to preventing brazen voter discrimination violations that historically left millions of African Americans disenfranchised.
In 1940, for example, only about 3 percent of African Americans living in the South were registered to vote.
Poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats of violence were the major causes of these racially discriminatory results.
In 1964, the year before the Voting Rights Act became law, there were approximately 300 African-Americans in public office, including just three in Congress.
Few, if any, African Americans held elective office anywhere in the South.
Because of the Voting Rights Act, today there are more than 9,100 black elected officials, including approximately 60 members of Congress, the largest number ever.
Additionally, for the first time in our history, we have a Vice President, Kamala D. Harris, the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to be sworn into that role.
Furthermore, we have the first Black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson, serving as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Voting Rights Act opened the political process for many of the approximately 7,000 Hispanic public officials that have been elected and appointed nationwide, including 56 of whom serve in Congress.
Native Americans, Asians and others who have historically encountered harsh barriers to full political participation also have benefited greatly.
The crown jewel of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is Section 2, which prohibits the implementation of voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified in Section 4(f)(2) of the Act.
Historically, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act provided the crucial pre-clearance formula--a vital proactive measure to determine which states and jurisdictions were required to preclear new voting laws with the Department of Justice or a Federal Court.
For nearly 50 years, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and the preclearance formula outlined in section 4 moderated many of the
worst abuses and resulted in many states adopting voting laws and redistricting plans with an eye to satisfying the concerns of minority voters.
Despite Section 5's long history and crucial role in ensuring our democracy was by all the people and for all the people, 11 years ago the Supreme Court made a disastrous decision that crippled the Voting Rights Act and endangered voting rights nationwide.
In its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court gutted the VRA, striking down section 4's crucial preclearance formula, rendering the proactive protections of section 5 unusable.
No longer could the Voting Rights Act take a proactive, preemptive role to stopping discriminatory legislation.
Since then, the need to protect the right to vote and safeguard our democracy has never been more urgent.
Following the Shelby County decision, state legislatures have targeted voters and erected deliberate barriers to the ballot box in what amounts to the most concerted effort to restrict voting access in generations. These new restrictive, discriminatory voting laws have included closing polling stations and reducing their hours, curbing early voting and vote by mail options, imposing strict ID requirements, limiting access to multi-lingual voting materials, and making more difficult to register to vote.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 31 states have passed 103 restrictive voting laws since the Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013 (as of May 2024). These measures disproportionately impact voters of color, Native American voters, voters with disabilities, and the elderly.
A 2018 Brennan Center report concluded that states previously covered under the preclearance formula have purged voters off their rolls at a significantly higher rate than non-covered jurisdictions now that their new laws are no longer subject to the same level of oversight.
However, threats to voting rights nationwide have not stopped there.
The Supreme Court has continued to undermine key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
In July 2021, in its Brnovich v. DNC and Arizona Republican Party v. DNC, the Supreme Court upheld racially discriminatory voter restrictions in Arizona despite evidence that these laws were intentionally designed to target Latino and other minority voters.
In doing so, the Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act, making it harder to challenge discriminatory laws under Section 2's anti- discrimination provisions.
Yet, the threats have not stopped there.
With the 2024 election approaching, voting rights have never been more important and yet have increasingly come under fire.
Since January of 2024, at least six states have enacted seven restrictive laws.
Some states have spent the past few years piling on restrictions.
Voters in 28 states will face new restrictions that weren't in place in the last presidential election.
These include a new law in Alabama and Idaho that broadly criminalizes certain forms of assistance with absentee voting and mail ballots, limiting voting access for elderly voters, voters with disabilities, and those with limited access to transportation.
Indiana enacted a law that heightens the chances that naturalized citizens will be wrongly removed from the voting rolls.
A new law in Tennessee restricts the time frame voters have to request an absentee ballot.
A new Arizona law shortens the period during which voters may correct issues with their signatures on mail ballots.
A new West Virginia law now requires county clerks to cancel the registrations of voters who get out of state driver's licenses, creating a burden on students, military members, and others who temporarily reside outside the state but intend to return and therefore remain eligible to vote in West Virginia.
In my home state of Texas, new restrictions have been implemented on absentee voting and new legislation empowers the state to more freely purge voter rolls--a process that often results in legitimate voters unknowingly being removed and finding themselves unable to vote come November.
In the face of all these threats, what can be done to preserve voting rights?
One crucial step is the passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
This landmark legislation would restore and modernize the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In doing so, it would protect the right to vote and safeguard our democracy by preventing restrictive, discriminatory voting laws from taking effect.
It does so by establishing a new modern-day framework to determine which states and localities have a recent history of discrimination and require such jurisdictions to preclear new election changes, preventing restrictive and discriminatory voting laws from taking effect.
In other words, it revives and refreshes the preclearance formula for the modern era, enabling Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to once again preemptively prevent threats to voting rights.
It also restores Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by eliminating the heightened standard required to challenge discriminatory voting laws created by the Supreme Court in Brnovich v. DNC.
Voting rights should not be a partisan issue.
It is the duty and responsibility of Congress to safeguard voting rights across our Nation.
Our freedom to vote is our most sacred and fundamental right.
It is the right upon which all our other rights rest, and allows us to determine the future of our communities and families, and ensure opportunities for all.
Since enactment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been reauthorized five times with large, bipartisan majorities.
The VRA's most recent authorization occurred in 2006 when it passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate (98-0) and was signed by Republican President George W. Bush.
There is no reason that the effort to restore the VRA to its full strength should be any different.
While Republicans veered away from this bipartisan tradition last Congress, opposing the bill in the House and blocking debate in the Senate, this Congress provides a new opportunity to side with the American people and the fundamental principle that everyone has an equal opportunity to have their voice heard and vote counted.
We must reject the cynicism that Republicans at the highest level have espoused when talking about making voting more accessible for all.
Allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is not a ``power grab.''
For democracy to work for all of us, it must include us all, no matter our background.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore and modernize the essential portion of the Voting Rights Act that blocks discriminatory voting policies before they go into effect, creating a transparent process for protecting everyone's freedom to vote.
I have also repeatedly introduced legislation that further enshrines our voting rights.
H.R. 42--the Coretta Scott King Mid-Decade Redistricting Prohibition Act prohibits a state where the congressional districts have been redistricted after a decennial census from carrying out another redistricting until after the next apportionment of Representatives following a decennial census, unless a court requires the state to conduct a subsequent redistricting to comply with the Constitution or enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This legislation was also a response to the Shelby County decision, as after the 2020 census, many state legislatures redrew aggressive new measures now that they were no longer subject to preclearance.
For example, Republicans in North Carolina converted a congressional map that elected 8 Republicans and 5 Democrats into one that could elect 11 Republicans and just 3 Democrats.
The North Carolina map was skewed in a way that targets Black political power, meaning that a state that is 20 percent Black could have only a single Black member of Congress representing them.
Congressional maps in Texas, Ohio, and Georgia are also all considered severe partisan gerrymanders.
This redistricting cycle also saw unprecedented efforts to undermine the political power of Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native communities, especially in Southern states.
While redistricting after a new census is almost always a partisan process, this bill protects the redistricting process from being employed too often to skew the maps even further.
Under H.R. 42, once the first redistricting is complete after the new census, the state's maps cannot be redrawn again until the next census, unless a court mandates otherwise.
Like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, this is another vital piece of legislation that should receive broad support from my colleagues as it enshrines voting rights nationwide and preserves the legacy of the Voting Rights Act.
Mr. Speaker, for millions of Americans, the right to vote protected by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a sacred treasure, earned by the sweat and toil and tears and blood of ordinary Americans who showed the world it was possible to accomplish extraordinary things.
Let us honor their commitment and sacrifice by enshrining the legislative protections they fought for.
