[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 695 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
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116th CONGRESS
2d Session
S. RES. 695
Designating September 2020 as ``National Voting Rights Month''.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
September 15, 2020
Mr. Wyden (for himself, Mr. Merkley, Mr. Kaine, Mr. Jones, Mr. Bennet,
Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Carper, Mr. Markey, Ms. Klobuchar,
Mr. Durbin, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Brown, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Menendez, Ms.
Hirono, Mrs. Feinstein, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Booker, Mr. Udall, Mr.
Reed, Mr. King, and Ms. Duckworth) submitted the following resolution;
which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Designating September 2020 as ``National Voting Rights Month''.
Whereas voting is one of the single most important rights that can be exercised
in a democracy;
Whereas, over the course of history, various voter suppression laws in the
United States have hindered, and even prohibited, certain individuals
and groups from exercising the right to vote;
Whereas, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Native Americans and people
who were born to United States citizens abroad, people who spoke a
language other than English, and people who were formerly subjected to
slavery were denied full citizenship and prevented from voting by
English literacy tests;
Whereas, since the 1870s, minority groups such as African Americans in the South
have suffered from the oppressive effects of Jim Crow laws that were
designed to prevent political, economic, and social mobility;
Whereas African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other
underrepresented voters were subject to violence, poll taxes, literacy
tests, all-White primaries, property ownership tests, and grandfather
clauses that were designed to suppress the right of those individuals to
vote;
Whereas members of the aforementioned groups and others are currently, in some
cases, subject to intimidation, voter roll purges, bans on former
prisoners from voting, and financial barriers that act effectively as
modern-day poll taxes;
Whereas, in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301
et seq.) to protect the right of African Americans and other
traditionally disenfranchised groups to vote, among other reasons;
Whereas, in 2013, in the landmark case of Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529
(2013), the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated section 4 of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, dismantling the preclearance formula
provision in that Act that protected voters in States and localities
that historically have suppressed the right of minorities to vote;
Whereas, since the invalidation of the preclearance formula provision of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, gerrymandered districts in many States have
gone unchallenged and have become less likely to be invalidated by the
courts;
Whereas these gerrymandered districts have been found to have discriminatory
impacts on traditionally disenfranchised minorities through tactics that
include ``cracking'', diluting the voting power of minorities across
many districts, and ``packing'' or concentrating minority voters' power
in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts;
Whereas the courts have found the congressional and, in some cases, State
legislative district maps, in Texas, North Carolina, Florida,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin to be gerrymandered districts that
were created to favor some groups over others;
Whereas the decision of the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S.
529 (2013), calls on Congress to update the formula in the Voting Rights
Act of 1965;
Whereas some form of a restrictive voting law has been instituted in at least 23
States since 2013;
Whereas these restrictive voting laws encompass cutbacks in early voting, voter
roll purges, placement of faulty equipment in minority communities,
requirement of photo identification, and the elimination of same-day
registration;
Whereas these policies could outright disenfranchise or make voting much more
difficult for more than 80,000,000 minority, elderly, poor, and disabled
voters, among other groups;
Whereas, in 2016, discriminatory laws in North Carolina, Wisconsin, North
Dakota, and Texas were ruled to violate voters' rights and overturned by
the courts;
Whereas the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (referred to in this preamble as ``COVID-
19'') public health emergency has only exacerbated the state of
elections and the difficulties voters face in obtaining access to the
ballot;
Whereas a lack of fair and safe election policies threatens minority
communities, which have been disproportionately impacted and
disenfranchised due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and their access to the
ballot;
Whereas addressing the challenges of administering upcoming elections in 2020
and beyond requires increasing the accessibility of vote-by-mail and
other limited-contact options to ensure the protection of voters' health
and safety amid a global pandemic;
Whereas, as voting by mail becomes a safer and more accessible option for voters
to exercise their constitutional right to vote during the unprecedented
times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the work of the United States
Postal Service will be of paramount importance in successfully
conducting elections;
Whereas Congress must work to combat any attempts to dismantle or underfund the
United States Postal Service or obstruct the passage of the mail as
blatant tactics of voter suppression and election interference;
Whereas there is much more work to be done to ensure all citizens of the United
States have the right to vote through free, fair, and accessible
elections;
Whereas National Voter Registration Day is September 22; and
Whereas September 2020 would be an appropriate month to designate as ``National
Voting Rights Month'' and to ensure that, through the registration of
voters and awareness of elections, the democracy of the United States
includes all citizens of the United States: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) designates September 2020 as ``National Voting Rights
Month'';
(2) encourages all people in the United States to uphold
the right of every citizen to exercise the sacred and
fundamental right to vote;
(3) commemorates--
(A) the 100th anniversary of Senate passage of the
19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, which guarantees women the right to vote; and
(B) the legacy of generations of suffragists who
fought to protect women's rights at the ballot;
(4) encourages Congress to pass--
(A) the For the People Act of 2019 (S. 949 and H.R.
1 of the 116th Congress), to increase voters' access to
the ballot, prohibit the use of deceptive practices to
intimidate voters, end gerrymandering, create automatic
voter registration, limit the power of restrictive
voter identification laws, make critical investments in
election infrastructure and technology, and address
corruption in campaign finance and ethics;
(B) the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
of 2020 (H.R. 4 of the 116th Congress) (introduced in
the Senate as the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019
(S. 561 of the 116th Congress)), to restore the
protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C.
10301 et seq.) that prohibit discriminatory voting
practices, remove barriers to voting, and provide
protections for minority voters in States with a
history of voting discrimination;
(C) the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act
of 2020 (S. 4033 of the 116th Congress), to ensure that
every eligible voter in the United States is able to
exercise the right to vote safely and securely during a
declared state of emergency by, among other things--
(i) guaranteeing no-excuse absentee voting;
(ii) expanding early voting;
(iii) providing self-sealing return
envelopes with prepaid postage for--
(I) voter registration
applications;
(II) absentee-ballot applications;
and
(III) absentee ballots; and
(iv) providing accommodations for voters on
Indian lands;
(D) the Delivering for America Act (S. 4527 and
H.R. 8015 in the 116th Congress), to prohibit the
United States Postal Service from making changes to
operations or levels of service that would reduce those
operations or levels of service relative to those that
were in effect on January 1, 2020, establish
requirements for the processing of election mail, and
provide additional funding for the Postal Service Fund;
(E) the Securing America's Federal Elections Act,
or the SAFE Act (S. 2238 of the 116th Congress), to
provide funding for States to improve the
administration of elections, including by enhancing
technology and election security, replacing antiquated
voting systems, and meeting new standards for
administering elections; and
(F) other voting rights legislation that seeks to
advance voting rights and protect elections in the
United States;
(5) recommends that public schools and universities in the
United States develop an academic curriculum that educates
students about--
(A) the importance of voting, how to register to
vote, where to vote, and the different forms of voting;
(B) the history of voter suppression in the United
States before and after passage of the Voting Rights
Act of 1965; and
(C) current measures that have been taken to
restrict the vote;
(6) encourages the United States Postal Service to issue a
special John R. Lewis stamp during the month of September--
(A) to honor the life and legacy of John R. Lewis
in supporting voting rights; and
(B) to remind people in the United States that
ordinary citizens risked their lives, marched, and
participated in the great democracy of the United
States so that all citizens would have the fundamental
right to vote; and
(7) invites Congress to allocate the requisite funds for
public service announcements on television, radio, newspapers,
magazines, social media, billboards, buses, and other forms of
media--
(A) to remind people in the United States when
elections are being held;
(B) to share important registration deadlines; and
(C) to urge people to get out and vote.
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