110 HCON 424 IH: Calling on the Attorney General to protect
U.S. House of Representatives
2008-09-23
text/xml
EN
Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.
Whereas the 15th amendment to the Constitution provides
the right to vote to citizens and prohibits the denial or abridgement of this
right based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude;
Whereas section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
provides that no person, acting under color of law or otherwise, shall
intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce
any person for voting or attempting to vote or otherwise intimidating or
denying any eligible person from voting;
Whereas the Voting Rights Act of 1965 forbids any State or
political subdivision to enact any election law to deny or abridge voting
rights based on race or color;
Whereas the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits any
person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, from failing or
refusing to permit any qualified person from voting in general, special, or
primary Federal elections, refusing to count the vote of a qualified person, or
intimidating anyone attempting to vote or any one who is assisting a person in
voting under provisions of the Voting Rights Act;
Whereas the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended in 1970,
provides that a person otherwise qualified to vote shall not be denied the
right to vote in a presidential election because of an extended duration
residency requirement;
Whereas the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as
amended in 1975, added section 203 to increase the participation of language
minorities by requiring bilingual elections in certain circumstances;
Whereas as originally enacted, section 2 forbade any
jurisdiction in the country to enact an election law that denies or abridges
voting rights on account of race or color;
Whereas the 1975 amendments added minorities to this
section as a protected class;
Whereas the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended in 1982,
effectively overturned a 1980 United States Supreme Court ruling in Mobile v.
Bolden, and modified the standard of legal review to allow certain voting
rights violations under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to be proven
by showing that an election law or procedure was adopted with a discriminatory
purpose or had a discriminatory effect;
Whereas the National Voter Registration Act
of 1993 prohibits voters from being removed from rolls of registered voters as
an election is approaching and also prohibits States from engaging in any
effort to systematically remove voters from the list of eligible voters unless
that action was completed more than 90 days before the date of a Federal
election and is applied in a nondiscriminatory manner that complies with the
Voting Rights Act of 1965;
Whereas the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta
Scott King Voting Rights Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 affirmed
the existing statutory requirements and also prohibited any person, whether
acting under color of law or otherwise, from failing or refusing to permit any
qualified person from voting in general, special, or primary Federal elections,
refusing to count the vote of a qualified person, or intimidating anyone
attempting to vote or anyone who is assisting a person who is voting under
provisions of the Act;
Whereas he Voting Rights Reauthorization and Amendments of
2006 clarified the standard under section 5 for determining whether certain
covered States or jurisdictions have enacted or seek to administer any voting
qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, or practice, or procedure
with respect to voting that either has the purpose or will have the effect of
denying or diminishing the voting rights of United States citizens on account
of race or color;
Whereas the revision also instituted a cause of action in
the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for declaratory
judgment;
Whereas under the Help America Vote Act of
2002, failure to provide a ballot to a voter seeking to exercise the right to
vote is a violation of Federal law;
Whereas reports from throughout the United
States indicate organized, systematic efforts targeting vulnerable populations,
including residents displaced by foreclosure and victims of natural disasters,
are underway to attempt to exclude, prevent, deter, and discourage eligible
voters from exercising his or her right to vote;
Whereas complaints have been reported in Virginia, a State
that is covered, in part, under section 5, alleging voter suppression schemes
that have disseminated erroneous information regarding the impact of voter
registration on students’ eligibility for financial aid where they are enrolled
in school;
Whereas such a systematic scheme by party or local
officials to frustrate voters’ ability to exercise his or her right to vote
runs afoul of the goals of the Voting Rights Act of 1965;
Whereas complaints have been reported in Michigan of a
plan to systematically challenge voters whose names appear on State lists of
foreclosed properties in a voter suppression scheme referred to as “Lose Your
Home, Lose Your Vote”;
Whereas such a scheme would harass voters and potentially
impair the rights of thousands of voters, many of whom are racial
minorities;
Whereas evidence shows that a disproportionate number of
persons impacted by the current foreclosure and housing crisis are
African-American, Latino, minority, and low-income;
Whereas in 2008, there have been at least 739,000 people
in the United States who have entered foreclosure proceedings that may have
affected their residential status;
Whereas many of these people were targeted for predatory
loans that loan originators knew or should have known were unaffordable to them
over the life of the loan, particularly where the rate on the loan was
scheduled to adjust after an initial teaser rate;
Whereas others, particularly the elderly, were targeted
for reverse mortgages and refinancings that threatened the ownership of the
homes in which they have resided for many years;
Whereas in 2008, thousands of people in the United States
have had their residential status affected by Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
Bertha, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike, as well as related floods
and other natural disasters;
Whereas the payment of insurance claims and delivery of
government assistance are often delayed for months, even years, and leaves
displaced residents unable to return to their homes;
Whereas in Mississippi, efforts were made
to place the selection for the special election for a United States Senate race
near the bottom of the ballot among candidates for local office rather than
near the top among the Federal races such as President and the other United
States Senate race as required by State law in an attempt to cause the special
election race to be overlooked;
Whereas a State judge has ruled that the race be placed
higher on the ballot, in order to not disenfranchise voters, but that decision
was appealed to the State Supreme Court, which subsequently ruled such ballot
placement did not comply with the law;
Whereas complaints were reported in Maryland of fliers
distributed in minority communities with erroneous election information,
including incorrect election dates, for the purpose of suppressing minority
voting participation;
Whereas numerous complaints of deceptive
practices and voter intimidation have been reported in Florida in recent
presidential elections, including—
(1)purging the names,
disproportionately of African-Americans, from certain county voting
lists;
(2)eliminating, in
error, thousands of individuals from registration lists on grounds that they
were felons;
(3)failing to provide
bilingual ballots or access to translators and language assistance;
(4)intimidating
voters on their way to the polls by using unauthorized traffic checkpoints near
a voting precinct;
(5)intimidating
voters with inaccurate information that if they have not paid taxes or child
support that they cannot vote;
(6)changing
designated polling places without advance notice or without adequate notice to
the community;
(7)sending voters
from one precinct to another only for the individuals to find they were not on
the registration lists or that it was too late to vote; and
(8)failing to send
requested absentee ballots to individuals and then refusing to let these same
individuals vote when they appeared at the precinct to vote;
Whereas in 2008, new complaints have been reported in
Florida of a “No Match, No Vote” law which requires election officials to
verify applicants’ drivers license numbers or the last four digits of their
Social Security numbers by using government data bases and any errors,
including simple typos, clerical errors, or even middle name changes, could
lead to identification mismatches resulting in the invalidation of
votes;
Whereas press reports indicate that this new Florida “No
Match, No Vote” law will be enforced less than 30 days prior to the State’s
October 6, 2008, registration deadline for the November 4, 2008, elections, and
because Florida is subject to section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a
pre-clearance review under section 5 should be undertaken by the Department of
Justice before this new law is enforced to ensure that thousands of voters,
including minorities and the working poor, are not adversely affected or
disenfranchised by this new law; and
Whereas, voter caging, or the selection of
lists or databases of voters compiled for the purpose or intent of challenging
voters, and other schemes relying on inaccurate, incomplete, incorrect, or
otherwise misleading subject matter used to systematically challenge voters,
when done in a discriminatory manner, is a violation of section 2 of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965: Now, therefore, be it
That Congress calls on the Attorney General
to—
(1)protect the right to vote of every person
in the United States by promptly and thoroughly investigating complaints of
violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the National Voter Registration
Act of 1993, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002;
(2)exercise all the authorities and utilize
all the resources provided by Congress to fully enforce Federal voting and
civil rights statutes;
(3)enjoin any efforts by individuals or
organizations to violate Federal voting and civil rights statutes by means of
intimidation, suppression, or deceptive practices and to ensure that no
eligible voter is denied the right to vote on November 4, 2008, or in any early
voting periods prior to November 4, 2008, including voting by mail and absentee
ballots; and
(4)prosecute those
who violate Federal voting and civil rights statutes to the fullest extent of
the law.