[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
VOTING RIGHTS AND ELECTION ADMINISTRATION IN TEXAS
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A LISTENING SESSION
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 4, 2019
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
https://govinfo.gov/committee/house-administration
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
38-144 PDF WASHINGTON : 2019
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C O N T E N T S
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Page
WELCOME:
U.S. Representative Fudge........................................ 1
U.S. Representative Thompson..................................... 2
U.S. Representative Johnson...................................... 2
U.S. Representative Lujan........................................ 3
U.S. Representative Vela......................................... 4
U.S. Representative Jackson Lee.................................. 4
U.S. Representative Cuellar...................................... 5
U.S. Representative Green........................................ 6
PANEL TESTIMONY:
Rolando Rios..................................................... 7
George Korbel.................................................... 9
Matthew McCarthy................................................. 11
Chad Dunn........................................................ 12
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS OF PANEL:
U.S. Representative Fudge........................................ 14
U.S. Representative Thompson..................................... 15
U.S. Representative Johnson...................................... 16
U.S. Representative Cuellar...................................... 17
U.S. Representative Lujan........................................ 19
U.S. Representative Vela......................................... 20
U.S. Representative Jackson Lee.................................. 22
U.S. Representative Green........................................ 23
PANEL TESTIMONY:
Mimi Marziani.................................................... 26
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS OF PANEL:
U.S. Representative Thompson..................................... 28
U.S. Representative Johnson...................................... 30
U.S. Representative Lujan........................................ 30
U.S. Representative Veasey....................................... 31
U.S. Representative Jackson Lee.................................. 33
U.S. Representative Green........................................ 35
VOTING RIGHTS AND ELECTION ADMINISTRATION IN TEXAS
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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2019
House of Representatives,
Committee on House Administration,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., at
Cameron County Courthouse Commissioners Court, Hon. Marcia L.
Fudge presiding.
Present: Chairwoman Fudge.
Also Present: Representatives Lujan, Thompson, Vela, Eddie
Bernice Johnson, Jackson Lee, Cuellar, and Veasey.
Staff Present: Khalil Abboud, Deputy Staff Director; David
Tucker, Senior Counsel and Parliamentarian; Eddie Flaherty,
Chief Clerk; Peter Whippy, Communications Director; Veleter
Mazyck, Chief of Staff to Ms. Fudge; Elizabeth Hira, Elections
Counsel; Courtney Parella, Minority Communications Director;
Jesse Roberts, Minority Counsel; and Cole Felder, Minority
General Counsel.
Chairwoman Fudge. Good morning. This listening session of
the Committee on House Administration of the U.S. House of
Representatives will come to order.
My name is Marcia Fudge, and I'm the Subcommittee Chair,
and I want to thank all of you and all of my colleagues for
joining us today.
I especially want to thank Congressman Vela for welcoming
us to this district of his in a very, very warm way. We thank
you, sir.
I want to thank the staff, the Chairperson of this
Committee, Representative Zoe Lofgren, and the Speaker of the
House for having the insight to allow us to go across this
country to determine what is really going on as it relates to
voting rights.
I also want to thank our distinguished group of experts for
being here today, and for the statements that you will provide.
We are excited to hear from you. It is critical to have your
input, and we are excited to hear it.
We are here to talk about the Voting Rights Act. More
specifically, we are here to talk about why we still need its
protections and why it is so critical that Congress pass a new
coverage formula so that we can make Section 5 work again to
ensure all eligible voters have access to the ballot.
When the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder,
they struck down more than just a formula. They struck down the
idea that all eligible Americans should have the right to vote.
They allowed states to implement restrictive laws that denied
the most vulnerable among us. They took away their voice. They
enabled bad actors to deny Americans their fundamental rights,
and they allowed elected officials to pick their voters.
The record we compile today and in the coming months will
prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we still need the Voting
Rights Act. It will prove that while we've come so far, we have
so far to go.
Someone asked me why Texas and why Brownsville. I will say
it in the words of Dr. King. We are here because injustice is
here. It is our first step in making right the wrongs that have
disenfranchised too many for far too long.
I look forward to the valuable insight that will be
provided today and working with all the stakeholders that have
done so much good work around this issue.
I would now ask that our Members have a few words of
welcome. I would start with Chairman Bennie Thompson of the
Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
Let me welcome my colleagues who are on the dais with me as
well as the panel of witnesses today. I look forward to your
testimony.
And you wonder what would a Homeland Security guy have
anything to do with elections. As some of you might know, our
system of elections has been declared critical infrastructure,
and so it's in our best interest to protect that
infrastructure, which is also meant that we have to protect how
we elect our officials. But in any democracy, you have to be
fair and impartial. That's the real hallmark of any democracy.
So I look forward to the testimony.
My personal testimony is a long time ago, Bennie Thompson
ran for office, and the only reason he was able to win was
because of the Voting Rights Act protections. We couldn't even
register people to vote in my little community unless they were
federally registered. The local registrar wouldn't even
register them. So there are a lot of things that I have a real
commitment to, and--and this is one.
So the other thing is we produce the report--task force
report on our Committee talking about elections in this
country. It's not just the person down the street. The
Russians, the Chinese, North Koreans, other people would want
to compromise our systems also for election. So my mission is
election security.
So I'm happy to be here, Madam Chairwoman, and I look
forward to the testimony and the questions to follow.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very, very much.
We now move to Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson of the
Science and Technology Committee, and a Texan.
Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson. Thank you very much, Madam
Chairwoman.
And let me acknowledge our host, Mr. Vela, and my other
colleagues who are here, and--and to the distinguished
panelists, as well as the audience.
I'm a native Texan, and that says it all in terms of voting
rights. I'm delighted that this Committee has chosen this as
the first stop. I think it was the correct stop to make.
We have just been accused of allowing noncitizens in the
thousands to vote, which I think will be proven not to be
accurate. But we know that we must watch voters and voting of
minorities for protection very closely in Texas and in the
United States. But Texas is one of those states that's very
important to the fairness and justice of all voters, especially
minorities.
I'm delighted that the leadership of this Congress has made
this a priority, and I look forward to seeing the results of
all the hearings throughout the nation.
I don't see too many faces that are foreign, and I think
it's because those people who are interested in voting rights
will always show up when we need them. So thanks to all of you.
We are especially pleased to be the guests of Congressman
Vela, who is well known in this area with his mother having
been mayor of the city and his father having been a federal
judge. He has to stand up straight because he's from good
blood. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Now we will hear from the Assistant Speaker and my
classmate, Ben Ray Lujan.
Mr. Lujan. I thank the Chairwoman. I want to recognize her
leadership. I'm so grateful for the work that she's doing
across America on behalf of the American people.
I too want to join our two chairs, Mr. Thompson and Ms.
Eddie Bernice Johnson, in thanking our host today, Congressman
Filemon Vela, for inviting us to his congressional district for
this important conversation.
We have a lot of work to do here given the damage that has
been done over the last few years and continues today free from
constraints by the Supreme Court's conservative majority. In
cases like Shelby County and Citizens United, bad actors have
seized every opportunity to rig the rules of our democracy in
their favor.
We've seen the diminishing and suppressing of voters. In
many states across America in recent years, we saw polling
places get closed, the shortening of voting hours. We saw the
implementation of burdensome ID laws. And then those same very
actors made it more difficult to obtain the required IDs. They
purged registered voters from the polls, made registration more
onerous, and gerrymandered districts for political gain across
America.
So we're here because we need answers to these injustices
with reforms that restore and protect the voice of the American
people and our democracy. And I hope that our colleagues on the
other side of the aisle will come to the table and help us
restore power to the American people.
Here's something to remember. Presidents Richard Nixon,
Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W.
Bush all renewed and strengthened the Voting Rights Act. The
late Republican Senator John McCain joined with progressive
Senator Russ Feingold to pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform
Act, the most significant update of our campaign finance law
since Watergate.
In response to the lobbying scandals of the mid 2000s, 411
bipartisan members of the House and 83 bipartisan Senators
passed an ethics reform bill that President George W. Bush
signed into law. But make no mistake. If our Republican-led
Senate and the President choose not to help fix our democracy,
we'll look to the American people. I thank you very much for
your time today and very much look forward to the testimony.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
We will now hear from our host Representative, Filemon
Vela.
Mr. Vela. Thank you, Chairwoman Fudge, and I thank all of
my colleagues for joining us here in South Texas today.
I think this is probably one of the first--it's not
officially a congressional hearing because some of our
committees have not yet formed, but our first listening session
in this new session of Congress. And I think the idea that our
leader in this effort, Chairwoman Fudge, would be willing to
host this in my home county is--it's a great honor to have you
and everybody else here.
You know, I was born two years before the passage of the
Voting Rights Act, which occurred in l965. And I'm in a
building that I practically grew up in, because my father had a
law practice directly across the street. As a state trial
judge, he was in these buildings for about five years.
But like many good politicians, his political career began
in defeat. And that was back in 1962 when he had to confront
the poll tax. And so I remember over the years how my father
would--you know, he, of course, blamed his defeat on the poll
tax. It's difficult to tell whether that was the reason or not.
But those of us who came of age after the Voting Rights Act,
were raised in a different world.
And so the idea that we're at a place in this country where
there are people that think we should make it more difficult to
vote when we should be doing the exact opposite is just
striking, and it's unfortunate.
And I--with our new leadership in the House, with Speaker
Pelosi in charge, I am hoping that we can move forward and do
the right thing for the citizens of this country who face
obstacles in exercising the right to vote and that we can break
that wide open.
And thanks to all of our witnesses for being here as well
today. And finally, thanks to our hosts, the Cameron County
Commissioners Court, Judge Eddie Trevino, and our county
administrator David Garcia for allowing us to use this
beautiful space, and to our former county judge Gilberto
Hinojosa for being here as well.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Another Texan, my friend from Houston, Congresswoman Sheila
Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Let me thank the Chairwoman for her
astuteness of making this the first place to hold this very
crucial hearing and listening session.
I want to acknowledge the Chairperson of the House
Administration Committee Zoe Lofgren, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi
for recognizing the crucialness of voting for--there will be
many hearings thereafter. And Congressman Vela, thank you so
very much for being a host.
I'm delighted to be here with my colleagues Congressman
Green and Chairwoman Johnson, Chairman Thompson, and the
Assistant Speaker, as well as my colleague Mr. Cuellar.
I can say to you that the crucialness of this Committee
cannot be spoken enough of. As a senior member of the Judiciary
Committee, a senior member, the work that we will do will be in
collaboration with the important work of this great Committee.
I cannot speak without acknowledging the warriors that you
have selected, the experts Rolando Rios and George Korbel, as
well as Mr. Bledsoe, who was not able to be here, Mr. Dunn, and
certainly our representative from the ACLU who is present. All
of these gentlemen I have had the opportunity to work with. And
Ms. Marziani, we thank you as well for the leadership that will
be given to this hearing.
Very briefly, we are at the epicenter of voting
discrimination here in the State of Texas. And just two points,
many more to be offered, but certainly, those of us in the
United States Congress are the beneficiaries of the Voting
Rights Act, particularly Section 5 preclearance. We're in
voting rights districts. Many of us are in voting rights
districts.
The district that I am in now is a court-ordered district,
done so out of a long-standing discrimination that we had to
fight from the very time I came to the United States Congress.
I've never been totally in a district drawn by the state
legislature. I only survived, this district only came about,
Barbara Jordan was only elected because of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act.
So two points: Isn't it interesting that the Department of
Justice has now indicated that the State of Texas should be
withdrawn from any Section 5 preclearance; and, number two,
that the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund has to file suit
because the State of Texas decided this discriminatory voter ID
law which has seen the closing of polling places, but now that
they are holding up individuals whose driver's license may have
indicated that they were not a citizen, but, in fact, they are
a citizen. You get a driver's license in this state no matter
who you are, but you then process into citizenship.
If we want to believe in one person, one vote, government
of and by and for the people, then we must guard, protect,
hold, and fight for voting rights, including Section 5.
So thank you so very much. I close by acknowledging our
Chairman, a very active gentleman, Mr. Hinojosa. We're very
grateful for your leadership, and Ms. Velt, who is here. We're
very grateful for her service.
So thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, and I yield back.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
The Texan at the end of the dais, my friend Henry Cuellar.
Sir.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you so much
for having this hearing--this field hearing here in South
Texas. And I certainly want to say welcome to you and the other
members who are present here today that have come to visit
Texas and how special South Texas and the border is.
I certainly want to thank my good friend Filemon Vela for
being our host. Mr. Vela has been an outstanding Member of
Congress. As you know, he's part of the team that--if you look
at South Texas, you have Congressman Vela, Congressman
Gonzalez, and myself, three of us in South Texas, and we work
together as a team. So thank you, Mr. Vela, for hosting this
and for the great job that you're doing in DC.
And certainly, what I want to say is the--start off with
the--with the witnesses. I know some of these witnesses. We
worked for many years. In fact, a couple of them are my
redistricting attorneys, and if there's anybody that knows the
redistricting law, it's certainly Rolando Rios, who's been
working on it, I guess, since the '80s or so. And then you've
got George Korbel, my other friend there, who's been working on
this, I guess, since 1971, if I'm correct. So if--if there's
anybody that knows redistricting or--or--or the Voting Rights
Act, it's those two gentlemen.
But also, we have our experts from the ACLU. Thank you so
much for being here. Mr. Dunn, again, you worked for a good
friend of mine, Rodney Ellis--Senator Ellis and Donna Dukes and
other friends that I worked with in the State legislature, so I
certainly want to thank you. Gary Bledsoe is not here, but he's
another good friend that knows it very well. And I certainly
want to thank the witnesses.
Before I go into the two--to the judge and the former
county judge, let me just say the attorneys that are here were
the ones who were involved in another issue that was very
important, the citizenship question on the census. And they won
this first step. And I hope we can win it, because if there's
anything that's going to cost the State of Texas not only
Members of Congress or other areas, it's going to be the
billions of dollars that the State of Texas and other states
are going to lose.
And this is why it should be a no-brainer that we shouldn't
be doing that, but unfortunately, sometimes people will put
politics in front of what's right for the community. So I
certainly want to say congratulations for winning this
extremely important case itself also.
Certainly, the county judge, thank you so much, Judge
Trevino, for--for hosting us here, and send my best to the
County commissioners. And thank you for--for everything you do.
Former County Judge Hinojosa, we've known each other for a
long time. And thank you for what you do also for the State of
Texas. And--and certainly, they know--you know, these are the
folks that know South Texas very well.
So again, I want to hear from the witnesses. All I want to
say, Madam Chairwoman, thank you so much for hosting us here
and to your staff that's been working very hard to make sure
that we have this field hearing here in the State of Texas.
And, it's important to come down here to the border,
because, you know, Chairwoman, yesterday, I hosted as part of
the conferees three other folks. And, you know, they keep
talking about the wall, the wall, the wall, which we don't
want. This is the type of hearing we should have at the border,
so thank you so much.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
And last, and certainly not least, my other friend from
Texas sitting at the end of the dais, Representative Al Green.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I thank you for
your leadership. I thank you for your courage. And most
importantly, I thank you for just being a good decent person,
someone who has the ability to see wrong and to challenge it
consistently. So I thank you.
I thank all of my honorable colleagues. And I'm honored to
be here for this historic occasion. Proud to be a part of it.
I'm here because Dr. King was imminently correct. ``The arc
of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,''
but it doesn't do it on its own volition. It does it because
people of good will will take up the cause of justice.
I'm here with my colleagues to help bend the arc of the
moral universe towards justice. I believe that preclearance
paved the way for political inclusion. Without preclearance,
the face of Congress would be decidedly different. We have
benefitted greatly. And it's a shame that we find ourselves now
having to refight the fights that we won, but it's our duty to
do so.
Briefly this: No more than 24 hours after the decision was
made in Shelby, Texas immediately announced its intention to
implement a strict voter ID law. Mississippi and Alabama
followed quickly. And then, of course, two months later, we had
North Carolina.
We have a duty, a responsibility, and an obligation to the
people who made it possible for us to have these positions to
take up this cause of justice. And I promise you, I'm honored
to be here, but I'm honored to also be a part of the fight.
I yield back.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
As you can see, we have a distinguished group of Members
here who are very interested and concerned about what is
happening in this country today as it relates to voting rights.
I would now ask--at least introduce all of the panel.
You know your role. You've got five minutes each. You know
the light system. Green. When it goes to yellow, that means you
have one minute left. When it turns red, that means it's time
to wrap up.
Mr. Rolando Rios, who has concentrated his entire career
principally in--in federal and state election law, equal
protection, redistricting, and governmental affairs, we thank
you, sir, for being here. You will be first to testify.
Mr. George Korbel, who is a veteran civil rights attorney
who has fought for the minority voting rights of Texas for more
than four decades.
Mr. Matthew McCarthy from the ACLU Foundation of Texas. We
welcome you as well, sir.
And last to testify will be Chad Dunn, Chad Dunn has
handled numerous trials and appellate matters related to voting
and civil rights.
Mr. Rios.
Mr. RIOS. Thank you, Chairwoman Fudge and Subcommittee
Members. It's an honor to present testimony today in support of
amending and strengthening the Federal Voting Rights Act.
My name is Rolando Rios. I am a voting rights attorney in
private practice here in Texas. My practice in voting rights
started immediately after graduating from Georgetown Law. I
have been doing voting litigation for the past 35 years mostly
as a private practitioner working with the NAACP, MALDEF,
Southwest Voters, Legal Aid, and other public interest groups.
My office has been involved in over 250 voting rights cases
in Texas. The list of cases is attached to my testimony along
with a map identifying where that litigation occurred.
I hasten to add that we had a 95 percent success rate
because of the Voting Rights Act. The great success was not
because we're such great lawyers but because of the
effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act. The Act eliminated at-
large voting in Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Waco,
Lubbock, Midland, and Odessa, just to name a few cities in
Texas.
After the 2013 Shelby case, the success rate dropped
dramatically and turned the dogs loose, so to speak, on the
minority community by enabling the passage of some of the most
repressive state voting laws. We need immediate action from
Congress to combat the adverse effects of the Shelby case.
There is now a continued all-out assault on the right to
vote by the State of Texas against Latinos and African-
Americans. This all-out assault started in 1994 after the
effects of Ronald Reagan's immigration bill that allowed
millions of Latinos to become citizens. After the 1994
elections, the Republican Party realized that 70 to 80 percent
of the new Latino citizens were voting for Democrats. At that
point, the Republicans declared ``We have an immigration
problem.'' As the Republicans took over Congress for the first
time in 30 years, there has been a continued drumbeat of ``We
have an immigration problem.''
No, we don't. We do not have an immigration problem. The
problem is that the Republican Party refuses to address the
issues of importance to the minority community and instead have
decided to pursue a sinister and illegal strategy of denying
minorities the right to vote. This is why we need congressional
action.
Since the Shelby decision, the assault on the right to vote
in Texas has intensified as follows, for example, the City of
Odessa, whom we sued in 1985 challenging at-large elections and
won in federal court, ordered the creation of single member
districts. This year, as the minority community became stronger
and minority control was looming, the city passed a charter
amendment reinstating at-large voting. This would never have
happened before Shelby.
The voter ID law was passed after Shelby, and after years
of litigation, was declared unconstitutional by the federal
courts. This law would never have been passed in the first
place by Texas before Shelby.
Last, this--this--this past week, the Secretary of State of
Texas sent letters questioning the voter registration of 95,000
mostly Latino naturalized voters.
Texas went back to 1996 to identify naturalized voters.
These are individuals that were in this country legally and
obtained driver's licenses before they became naturalized.
After they naturalized, they registered to vote and have been
voting consistently.
With no substantive facts or factual basis, now Texas wants
them to produce naturalization papers. This is clearly an
intent to intimidate and harass Latino voters. I predict that
this strategy against naturalized citizens voters will continue
throughout the country.
Also, judicial findings of intentional discrimination have
increased since Shelby. A court declaring a state action as
intent to discriminate was a rare occurrence in this country.
Courts usually attempt to resolve voting litigation without
getting into Constitutional findings.
For example, in 2011, Texas congressional redistricting
plan split the African-American and Hispanic communities in the
Dallas-Fort Worth area into seven different Anglo-controlled
congressional districts. I have a map here just to illustrate
the point that the area in the--outlined in the dark line is
the minority area in the Dallas area. This minority area was
split into one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different
districts so they would get controlled by Anglo districts.
This area here, the court called it a lightening bolt that
went down here and picked up the Latinos from Tarrant County
and put them up in Denton so that they couldn't have a right to
vote.
In Congressional District 30--and we're familiar with
Congressional District 30--was already 81 percent Latino and--
and African-American, and they increased it to 85 percent,
basically eviscerating the minority community. This is the kind
of outward and aggressive action that--that is--is continuing
to occur.
Finally, in the Perez case, which is the congressional
redistricting case, the court found that the map drawers acted
with an impermissible intent to dilute minority voting
strength. The court found intentional packing and cracking
against minorities.
Every decade since 1970----
Chairwoman Fudge. It's time, please wrap it up.
Mr. Rios. Okay. All right. And I--I'll submit the rest of
my testimony.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Rios. We were--we had been told that it was going to be
ten minutes. That's why I went over. No problem. Thank you.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
I think we are saying a total of ten, but it would be five
minutes of testimony and five minutes of questioning.
Mr. Rios. Okay. No problem.
Chairwoman Fudge. Mr. Korbel.
Mr. Korbel. My name is George Korbel. I had the distinct
pleasure of being involved in the--putting the case together to
extend the Voting Rights Act to cover Texas back in 1975.
And I want to do two things here. I want to discuss what we
were facing in 1975, what the obstacles were, and then I want
to demonstrate that those obstacles are almost exactly the
same, that there's very little change.
I've had--also had the opportunity of preparing several of
you for testimony in various hearings, and I've handled--White
v. Regester, I was the lead counsel for the Hispanics in White
v. Regester, and I handled litigation for single member
districts in the City of Houston, the City of San Antonio, the
City of Waco, and several dozen other cities in the state.
The last time this Committee came to Texas was in 1982 for
the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 1982, and I sat
at a table like this in Austin, and sitting right here to my
left was the head of elections in Texas under--under our first
Republican governor since reconstruction, Doug Caddy. And Doug
and I--Doug Caddy and I came from a meeting with the Governor
earlier in the day, and the Governor said, ``Absolutely. We' re
in favor of continuing the Voting Rights Act.'' Doug Caddy was
one of the founders of The Federalist Society. He was a
consummate Republican conservative, but he believed that
everybody ought to have the right to vote.
There are several attachments that I have. One I want to
point out is that in 1975 when we put the pitch together for
Congress, we dealt with eight cases--eight cases or six cases,
depending on how you analyzed it, but at the most, eight cases,
and they had--and then another area, which was discouraging
people to vote.
Texas had--now I've attached to the statement a 350-page
list of cases. We now have more than 400 cases in which either
we have administrative findings of discrimination--voting
discrimination or judicial findings of voting discrimination.
And I urge you to take a look at a little bit of it. The first
85 pages deal with the previous 20 years in Texas, and it adds
about 110--110 of these cases. And when we looked at--when we
prepared the extension in 1975--in 1975, we looked at the 20-
year period before.
The next thing that I've attached is--deals with in fact, I
used--part of the document that I used back in 1975, the
question was Texas is not part of the South. Texas is very
different. And that's what the argument went.
Well, I've got a short list of all of the cases. Texas was
exactly the same as all the other jurisdictions in the South,
except we didn't have a grandfather clause. We didn't have
those sorts of things because we had a statute that said blacks
couldn't vote. And that was litigated up through the 1950s.
That issue was litigated up through the '50s.
The other thing I want to point out in the time that I've
got is that the other issue that we were dealing with was
discouraging people to vote, and there were two areas in that.
One was a complete purge. Texas had passed a complete purge of
all the registered voters which was going to take place in
1975. We stopped that. The same purge is going on now, exactly
the same thing. And I want you to take a look at the charts
that I put in.
In 1975 when we dealt with this the first time, Anglos, as
we call white people in Texas, Anglos, were two-thirds of the
population. Blacks and Hispanics made up a third. Today, blacks
and Hispanics are almost two-thirds of the population, and
Anglos are less than that.
And--let me make one more point. In 1975 when we dealt with
this before, there were four congressional districts in which
Hispanics had the power to elect, four congressional districts
out of 24. That's 16 percent. Today, there are six out of 36.
That's 16 percent. Exactly the same. It hasn't changed. And the
reason for that is because of the gerrymanders.
Now, Rolando talked about--the congressional districts in
Dallas and Fort Worth were split in eight ways. The only
district that's contained wholly within the district is the
Congressman's district in Dallas County. Otherwise, they go all
over the state, so--yes.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
I just want to make you aware that we are going to keep the
record open for at least two weeks. So if there's other
information that you want to submit to us, you'll have two
weeks to do that, but I do want to make sure that we can have
questions, because there's so many questions I want to ask.
Mr. McCarthy.
Mr. McCarthy. Yes. Good morning. My name is Matthew
McCarthy, and I'm here on behalf of the American--on behalf of
the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Texas.
The ACLU of Texas thanks you for the opportunity to testify
today on this very important issue and applauds the
reinstatement of this Subcommittee, given the importance of
combating voter suppression and encouraging electoral reform
efforts that are directed at protecting the right to vote and
also making it easier for citizens to register to vote and to
cast their ballot.
Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it is the
fundamental right upon which all of our civil liberties rest.
Through litigation and advocacy, the ACLU of Texas has fought
and continues to fight back against attempts to curtail the
right to vote. Despite our best efforts and those of other
organizations and attorneys represented here today, politicians
in Texas and across the country continue to pass laws that
suppress the right to vote by imposing obstacles onto
registration, cutbacks on early voting, and strict voter
identification requirements, among other impediments.
I'd like to focus today on two examples of the way in which
the right to vote in Texas is being curtailed; and I'll start
with the voter identification laws that have already been
mentioned. The voter ID laws in Texas were introduced
immediately following the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby
County be hold up, and they require voters to present one of
seven approved forms of government-issued identification before
being allowed to vote. If a voter doesn't have one of the
approved forms of identification, he or she can sign a
declaration attesting under penalty of perjury that there is a
reasonable impediment to having one of those forms of approved
IDs.
The voter ID laws were the subject of extensive litigation
and were found by three district courts to have
disproportionately burdened voters of color, and that was
because of evidence that minorities are generally less likely
to have one of the forms of approved ID and also less able to
obtain one of those forms of approved ID, given the cost in
terms of time and money in getting one; however, the current
form of the ID law was ultimately approved by the Fifth Circuit
Court of Appeals and was in place in time for the midterm
elections last year.
Now, the ACLU of Texas together with the Texas Civil Rights
Project and other organizations worked as part of a coalition
during the election last year to protect the right of Texans to
vote. As part of that coalition, we had call centers staffed by
trained volunteer attorneys taking calls from around the state,
and we also had a number of field volunteers working at polling
locations assisting voters with queries.
What we found through that process was a significant amount
of confusion and misinformation about the voter ID
requirements. To give some examples, we heard reports of voters
attending polling locations in rural Texas where election
officials posted a sign saying, ``Must have driver's license to
vote.'' Other reports in some of our large metro areas were of
poll workers telling folks who were lining up to vote that you
needed to have photo ID or you wouldn't be permitted to vote.
This is plainly incorrect under the law. And while we were
able to address it, you do wonder how many voters saw that sign
or were given that information and simply turned away and
didn't exercise their right to vote. And that's a particular
concern in polling locations where there are long lines. People
aren't going to line up and vote if they think their vote won't
be counted.
Similarly, a voter in Houston called to tell us that she
presented her United States passport only to be told that this
was not a valid form of ID. Again, plainly incorrect.
We also received reports from voters who didn't have an
approved form of ID and asked to make a reasonable impediment
declaration only to be challenged by election workers,
sometimes aggressively, about the reasons why they didn't have
an approved form of ID.
What these examples demonstrate is the difficulty voters
face in navigating the voter ID laws and the magnification of
those difficulties which arises when election officials are
poorly trained or in some circumstances see their role as
questioning and intimidating voters who don't have one of the
approved forms of government ID. Not only does this place a
real burden on voters, particularly minority voters, but we
fear that in many cases, voters will simply accept what they're
being told and will turn away and won't cast their ballots.
The second issue I wanted to touch on briefly is the voter
purge exercise that's been announced and has been discussed
briefly already. On January 25, 2019 the Texas Secretary of
State issued an advisory to all election officials around the
state informing them that his office had been working with the
Texas Department of Public Safety to identify potential
noncitizens who are registered to vote.
The Secretary said that his office had identified 95,000
such individuals, 58,000 of whom had cast a ballot at some
point in the last 20 years. The Secretary generated his list by
using information provided by the Department of Public Safety
about individuals who at the time of applying for a Texas
driver's license had given indication indicating they were a
noncitizen.
When those individuals were located on the voter rolls,
counties were told they should investigate whether those
individuals were eligible to vote by sending a notice of
examination requiring them to provide documentary proof of
their citizenship, and if they didn't respond within 30 days,
their registration would be cancelled. Of course, their biggest
flaw in this exercise is that no attempt was made to identify
people who became citizens and registered to vote after they
applied for their Texas driver's license.
I see the time, so I'll conclude my remarks there.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
Mr. Dunn.
Mr. Dunn. Thank you. It's my honor to be here today, and
I'm honored to be at this table with these gentlemen and
invited here with this lady who I consider to be heroes of my
state.
I have been a civil rights lawyer here in Texas for almost
20 years. I currently also serve as an adjunct lecturer at UCLA
and a co-director of its voting rights project.
I have represented the state Democratic Party as my honor
since 2003. And its current chairman; Gilberto Hinojosa, and I
have been in the middle of many of these election fights that
you've heard of and some more that you--that you'll hear of
today and elsewhere.
I was asked to come here today and talk to you about the
material effects of the Shelby County decision, and so I'm
going to tell you a story from my perspective. I happened to
have been in the Supreme Court chamber when the U.S. Supreme
Court issued the Shelby County decision. And there was a
majority, if not a quorum, of American civil rights heroes in
the courtroom. And as the clerk announced that Chief Justice
Roberts has the opinion, you could here the weeps in the
chamber, and you knew what was coming next. And although I
can't be sure, I thought I saw tears on some Supreme Court
justices.
Some of these gentlemen and others that I was there with
knew immediately what the effects would be, and unfortunately,
they were so. As I stepped outside of the courthouse and
retrieved my phone--the Supreme Court doesn't allow you to take
your phone in there--turned it on, the first thing I learned,
Congressman Green, was then Attorney General Abbott's tweet
that voter ID laws would be in effect in Texas, despite the
fact that a three-judge court in Washington, D.C., had found
the law to be discriminatory. And that court was made up of
judges appointed by diverse presidents.
This state decided to move forward, because as it saw it,
Shelby County opened the gates. Over the course of the next 36
hours, I drafted a lawsuit on behalf of Congressman Veasey and
others, filed a lawsuit here in Texas. We were joined by many
other soldiers of the civil rights community. And over a period
of years, we were able to beat back part of the voter right--
voter ID law in Texas, but, nevertheless, there remains a
process of separate but unequal voting for people who don't
have the means to have a photo ID, which are estimated to be
approximately 950,000 registered voters in Texas.
But there were other effects that don't get as much
attention as redistricting or voter ID, and those are the--
those are the events that I'd like to speak with you a bit
about. I had been involved in a case, when Shelby County came
down, in Beaumont, Texas, the Beaumont School District. And it
would take quite some time to lay out the sordid events in
Beaumont, so I'll--I'll grossly oversimplify it.
But essentially, the district has been majority black in
its voting population since the 1980s, but it wasn't
integrated--an integrated school district until 1985 under
Brown v. Board of Education. And it ultimately took a series of
court decisions until the 1990s to give blacks legitimate right
to vote for their school board.
A majority of blacks served on that school board before
Shelby County came down, but white citizens had managed to get
a ballot initiative to force at-large voting in the school
district. And the state courts had ordered the school district
to go to partial at-large voting. This would have had the
results of putting the whites in charge of the school district
despite it being majority black.
A federal court in Washington, D.C., under Section 5 of the
Voting Rights Act, a case I was involved in, enjoined that
change. It made the school district stay as it had been ordered
by previous federal courts. After Shelby County, all that was
undone. And as we sit here today, the school board in Beaumont
still does not have, in my opinion, a--an elected board that
represents its community.
Also, as I stepped outside of the courthouse, I received a
phone call from a friend of mine in Galveston where we had
obtained an injunction under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
to prevent the elimination of justice of the peace and
constable districts that has historically elected African-
American and Latino candidates of choice.
The county had decided on a budgetary matter to reduce the
number of districts. And despite the fact that most growth in
the county were black and Hispanic, it was those districts they
chose to eliminate. We had stopped that under Section 5. When
Shelby County was issued, the county immediately implemented
it. Those offices do not exist now. And although there's a
Section 2 lawsuit pending, it's been pending for five-plus
years, and there's not yet a resolution in sight.
Finally, I want to talk about Jasper, Texas, where James
Byrd was gruesomely dragged to his death in a hate crime in the
1990s. Every time I drive through Jasper, I see his grave. And
it has to have extraordinary security mechanisms, because even
to this day, it's vandalized by white citizens in that
community. In Jasper, the community decide to vote at-large to
remove a district office. So imagine, for example, all citizens
of the United States could vote to remove one of you.
And they were successful because the city was majority
white. A black city council person was removed. Because the
Voting Rights Act has been so harmed by the Supreme Court and
other judicial decisions, there was nothing we were able to do
with that. This person--this city council person was removed.
So there's redistricting. There's voter registration.
There's countless polling place changes. And it's scary to
think, but there are scores of other changes we don't even know
about that can't be done or dealt with because of the injury to
Section 5. So I appreciate the important--your work you're
doing, and I thank you very much for allowing me to present to
you.
Chairwoman Fudge. I thank all of you. This has been some of
the best testimony I have heard in some time, and I thank you
for that.
We're going to open it up for questions. And I'm just going
to let--in the same order that they spoke, if they have a
question, we'll just go in that order.
I do want to ask one question just off the top since my
colleagues continue to talk about voter fraud. Do you see a lot
of voter fraud?
Mr. Korbel. Almost none.
Chairwoman Fudge. Okay. I just want to be sure, because
that's the narrative. It's not violations of the Voting Rights
Act. It's voter fraud, is the narrative coming out from my
colleagues in Washington.
Mr. McCarthy. I think that's right. I mean, I think all of
the available evidence shows that in-person voter fraud in
particular is exceptionally rare. And notwithstanding that, you
know, we're currently seeing attempts to provide additional
funding to the Texas Attorney General's so-called voter fraud
units. So there is that narrative that's out there, but it's
just not reflected in--in the actual evidence.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Well, I think the testimony has been quite
revealing in the sense that Texas is trying to act like
Mississippi in voter suppression and other things. The question
that I think we are tasked to address is, you know, we have to
get the record. That--that voluminous document that you
presented, we absolutely need all of that, because one of the
reasons we got to where we are today is the Court said, for
whatever reason, in Shelby there--there wasn't enough of a
record to--to justify the position, which some of us obviously
disagree with.
The question is--we're on a short time frame. I think we're
tasked to be by--by June to have these sessions over with. And
just as a comment, if you have any idea of what's going on out
here around the country, let us know, because we want to make
sure the record is perfected to the point that no stones are
unturned.
The challenge for a lot of us is the notion of packing and
stacking in terms of redistricting, the uniqueness of voter
suppression that's going on in areas. My state just reduced--
attempted to reduce the number of days that a person can clear
up a question of residency from five days to two. And you have
to clear it up in person. You can't do it electronically or
anything. So I might have to go take another day off work to
just prove who I am and where I reside.
Some ask, well, what's wrong with that? Well, in my
district, we don't have public transportation. So I'm going to
have to, in addition to take off work, go to an additional
expense of trying to prove that I'm a registered voter. So
those challenges, how small they might seem, tamp down
participation.
And so I--I guess to--to Mr. Korbel, you've been out here a
long time. So are you seeing purges taking place in communities
now? You know, in the Voting Rights Act, sometimes you were
federally registered. They used to say you had--they couldn't
take you off the roll.
Mr. Korbel. Well, in some senses, the voter ID law is a
purge, because what we're doing is we're--we're doing--
essentially doing away with voter registration and changing it
to driver's licenses or Texas IDs.
Now, it doesn't sound like that's a big deal, but an awful
lot of people have parking tickets or minor violations. They
don't want to go anywhere near the DPS because they're going to
get arrested and they're going to spend time in jail. And so we
were essentially purging our rolls.
And there's also talk in the legislature about another
whole purge, like was being proposed when we got the Voting
Rights Act in '75. There--I think there were 7 million letters
stamped ready to go out when the court issued the injunction--
the first injunction under Section 5 to stop that purge.
Mr. Thompson. So the other point I want to make, and I'll
ask real quick, are you aware of any of this so-called voter
fraud taking place? Do y'all have any--because some of what we
are being told is we're doing these things to protect the
integrity of elections and all of that. So are you all aware of
that taking place for a majority of the people we're talking
about?
Mr. Rios. I'm not aware of any voter fraud. There may be an
election contest here or there where they can prove somebody
might have taken somebody's ballot and brought it in absentee,
something like that, but none--no widespread voter fraud
whatsoever.
Mr. McCarthy. I mean, there are some isolated instances
that we've seen where the Texas Attorney General has taken
action against people for voter fraud and has secured some
convictions, but generally speaking, the circumstances of those
cases are mistaken understanding about when you can vote, for
example, when you're coming off a felony conviction, people
just misunderstanding the requirements and not purposely
intending to commit voter fraud.
Mr. Dunn. And I would just add I agree with that
assessment. There is some limited in-person voter fraud. And
the laws are significant and adequate to deal with them, and
it--and it does deal with them.
Where there is some legitimate voter fraud is mail-in
ballots, but the perception here in Texas is that white
citizens--the political perception here in Texas is that white
citizens avail themselves of the mail-in ballot more than do
other citizens of color, so our legislature has at least thus
far chosen to not do anything about that type of voter fraud
and instead has, you know, chased the boogeyman under the bed,
so to speak, on these limited circumstances of in-person voter
fraud.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you.
Chairwoman Fudge. Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. And let me thank all of
you for being here.
In 1992 when I went to Congress, there were 30 members of
the delegation, 21 were Democrats. Less than a decade, this
reversed, and it continues to be reversed, even though the
minority population has grown tremendously since then. And we
now have 36 seats, but the ratio is about the same as it
changed the first big court type of redistricting in the
midterm--mid census. And we're still electing statewide elected
officials of the party that's not the party of choice of its
minorities.
Do you think it's voter suppression in the state that
influences that, or are there pockets in our rural areas that
are not performing because of not having more contact perhaps
with persons of their voting choice?
Mr. Dunn. I definitely think that's a lot of the reason. I
mean, there's been decades' worth of efforts to suppress the
vote, and they've been effective. So a lot of people have
gotten the message, unfortunately, I'm not wanted at the
polling place, so I don't go. So there's a lot of that,
unfortunately, which the Voting Rights Act was helping to
repair.
Other problems, of course, is a lack of competitive
elections. The districts are so badly gerrymandered that there
are very few places where there is a competitive election. And
that further discourages people from turning out.
And we saw consistent, and across the state, incredible
growth in turnout this last electoral cycle when we had a
marquee race for the U.S. Senate here in Texas. And so it goes
to show that when you have legitimate competitive elections,
you can overcome some of the voter apathy that we see, but the
decades of voter suppression are going to have to be dealt
with.
Ms. Johnson. Do you think that where the voting place is
located has any influence? It's been a while ago, but one of my
former House colleagues came to Dallas from East Texas and said
they had placed the polling place at the jail and that the
minorities just stopped voting.
Is there a reason to--is there any protection for that kind
of thing? I know with the absence of the Voting Rights Act you
don't have to get clearance when changes are made now, but do
we document that? Does that make a difference in the courts?
Mr. Korbel. Let me answer the--let me answer the question
this way. One of the advantages of Section 5 was that we got
notice that all this stuff was going on. The Department of
Justice would publish a notice, I think, weekly of all the
submissions they had gotten so we could look and see where
these polling place changes were made.
Now none of that's taking place, and you know how big Texas
is. There's no way that we can be in every one of our 254
counties and--except under Section 5 when we got this early
notice. And the result of that is we have 254 counties. There
are 60 counties that have more than a third minority population
that don't have a minority county commissioner. And those are
all because of a gerrymander.
In 1975, of course, there were no black county
commissioners. And I think probably every one of the 30 black
commissioners we have now I can show you the lawsuit that put
them in there.
Ms. Johnson. Yes. It is interesting that the precision on
which this gerrymandering has been done has come since the use
of computers. So has that worked for us or against us?
Mr. Korbel. Well, the other side has a lot more money and a
lot more time and a lot more people, and it really works
against us.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Cuellar is going to have to leave us. He is having a
little thing like whether we need a wall on the border, so he's
going to leave us shortly.
So, Mr. Cuellar.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And again, I just want to, first of all, thank all the
Members here and Mr. Vela for hosting us here.
Let me first say, what Mr. Korbel said, the first time
since 1982 that the Committee has been here, so I just want to
thank you for providing that leadership.
Three quick points that have been brought up. Number one,
the last time we had a redistricting, Texas grew by 4.3 million
individuals. 65 percent were Hispanics. You add the African-
Americans and other minorities, 90 percent of the growth that
we had were minorities. And as you know, the legislature wanted
to do it the other way. They wanted four-zero and none for the
minorities. And again, because of these attorneys, we were able
to at least get two and two.
So if you all can mention how many congressional Hispanics
are--Hispanics have grown since the last 50 years. I think it
was 14 percent and 16, but if I can just--just bring up two
more questions.
The voter ID--things don't just happen in Texas by
accident. I mean, there is a plan to do redistricting, voter
ID, everything else. If--if you remember the way they did the
voter ID, this card would have not allowed me to vote. This is
a U.S. House of Representative ID card. This would have
rejected me, would have not allowed me to vote. I would have to
get a Texas driver's license.
The problem was, in some areas, there were some--there's
some counties out of the 254 that have no DPS office. And if
they had to travel, they had to travel miles and miles and
miles. So if you all can comment. I know it's been adjusted a
bit.
The other thing is let me give you my perspective. I was a
Texas Secretary of State, and I want to address the point about
voter fraud. When I was there as the Texas Secretary of State,
the issue of voter fraud was brought up. Maybe you have a case
or other, and they blow it up and make it sound that there's
rampant voter fraud.
As the Texas Secretary of State when I was there, we didn't
have that type of situation. It was just they take one case,
they take a politiquera, they take a mailman, and they make it
sound like everybody has committed voter fraud here. So those
are the points, and I would be happy if you can talk about
those three points.
Mr. Thompson. Then we have a North Carolina situation.
Mr. Cuellar. Yes, we've got the North Carolina situation
now.
Mr. Korbel. In 1975, we had 24 congressmen. Had Texas--had
the minority population in Texas grown at the same rate as the
Anglo population, today we would have 23 congressmen. We would
have lost a congressman. Instead, we've picked up 16
congressmen, and it's all as the result of minority growth.
And I told you that there were 16 percent in '75, and
there's 16 percent today. That--the only reason we got the 16
percent is because we had to litigate to get Congressman
Veasey's district in Dallas and Fort Worth. Had we not gotten
that, we wouldn't even be at 16. So it's a----
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. McCarthy. If I could just make a couple of very brief
comments about your other points. On the question of acceptable
forms of ID, I think I've seen some statistics that say that
around 11 percent of Texans don't have one of the approved
forms of ID, and that 11 percent of the population is
overwhelmingly made up of minority communities.
And I think I've also seen some data that shows that the
cost of getting an approved form of ID can be anywhere between
$75 or $175, which is a significant amount of money for many
people.
The other thing I wanted to mention is in relation to your
comment about there being a plan. We're seeing that right now
with the voter purge exercise that's going on with the Texas
Secretary of State. That exercise coincides with bills being
introduced into the current legislative session in Texas that
are requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter
registration. So it's all part of a plan that's leading towards
that legislative change.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
You know, in my community, we would call what you talk
about a poll tax. And what you were talking about, Mr. Korbel,
we used to say, ``The more things change, the more they stay
the same.''
Mr. Lujan.
Mr. Lujan. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Each of you touched on and described actions that are
taking place now, the same actions that were taking place,
whether it was in the '70s or prior. But I want to zero in on
post-Shelby. If you could shed some light on specific actions
in some detail.
And I'll start, Chad, with you, Mr. Dunn, post-Shelby that
are taking place now that are getting in the way, that are
hurting people, that are discriminatory in practice, that
clearly should be a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Mr. Dunn. Sure. Thank you. I mean, and, obviously, I don't
want to waste the Committee's time or--but the Beaumont
situation is really one of the worst environments I have ever
been in.
When you go to a school board meeting in Beaumont today,
all the white citizens sit on one side of the room, and all the
black and Latino citizens sit on the other side of the room.
Now, it's not forced by any authority, but that's how the
community still operates. And the constables who are black and
Hispanic stay on the white side of the room, and the white
constables stay on the minority side of the room.
And I made the mistake at one meeting of sitting down with
a friend of mine who's an African-American citizen there. I was
working on the school board issue. And, I mean, I had white
citizens shout me down, ``You're sitting in the wrong spot,''
and say all kinds of nasty things to me about where--this is
today. I mean, you know, this is within the last five years.
You go to a Beaumont ISD school board meeting today, and it
will look like this.
So, you know, the--what happened in Beaumont, Galveston,
and Jasper I just described to you would not have happened had
Shelby County not been issued. There have been scores of
polling place changes, some, you know, that we know of. I'm
sure there's been hundreds that we don't know of that have
material effects on people being able to get out to vote.
There are a number of school districts and counties, more
than I can, you know, list for you now, that are either going
to at-large elections, which is a cornerstone method of
discrimination in voting, is you elect at-large instead of
districts. And some of them have done so, and I believe many
more will follow.
I have heard--I don't have direct evidence of it, but I
have heard that after Shelby County, the State sent message to
communities to take their time making changes, to roll it out
slowly as a way to--to sort of hide the effects of it. And it
looks to me like that's happened.
But it doesn't change the--the very real injury that
started the afternoon of--what was it--June 26, 2013, when
Shelby County was issued and continues every day since.
Mr. Rios. I would also add that this issue of questioning
the right to vote of people that have become naturalized
citizens, starting to send letters to them, you know, ``We have
a question about when you became a citizen,'' ``Do you have
proof,'' and all that, I think that's going to have an adverse.
effect on--on many voters who might--might be scared. ``What?
Are they going to come after me? Maybe I-- maybe I made a
mistake on the application,'' whatever. I think it's going to
have an impact in--in chilling the--the person's right to vote.
Mr. Korbel. Maybe I can say a little bit more about Section
5. The Texas Education Agency has the right to seize school
districts and displace elected officials, take over school
districts if they--if they feel that there's a problem.
Now, under Section 5, we almost completely prevented that
from happening. Since the doing away with Section 5, the TEA
has been seizing these school districts, and Beaumont was one
of them. They seized the school districts, and you end up--
Beaumont had a black superintendent, black board members, and
now it's controlled by the whites. It's----
Mr. Dunn. And that's something you would have had to
preclear before----
Mr. Korbel. Yes.
Mr. Dunn [continuing]. But you don't.
Mr. Lujan. And Mr. McCarthy, as time has run out here, what
I'd ask is just if these instances, whether it's in Texas or
with your experience in other parts of the country, if you
could please submit those in writing to the Chair. Thank you
very much.
Chairwoman Fudge. Certainly those are the unintended
consequences.
Ms. Jackson--oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Vela.
Mr. Vela. Thank you.
I'm struck by a few things. The fact that this is the first
hearing on this issue since 1982 in the State of Texas makes
you realize and it makes you appreciate Congresswoman Fudge's
effort to bring this hearing to South Texas and shed light on
this very important issue.
Number two, I've heard of many of you over my last three
terms in Congress, but--except for Mr. Rios, had not had the
opportunity to meet you individually. And I must say now I get
it. Your--your testimony has been so compelling and shed so
much light on the battle that you consistently wage to protect
the very people for which the Voting Rights Act was passed. It
is something that we we--we owe a great deal for that.
I must say the other thing that strikes me is that I just
began my fourth year in Congress. And believe it or not, to
just give you an idea of the depth of experience that is
visiting us here today, I am the junior member in this
congressional delegation. And--and so again, I thank all my
colleagues for that as well.
Mr. Korbel--I have two questions real quick. I think, Mr.
Rios, earlier, when we were in the back, you wanted to shed
some light on the issue of the census question and the status
of that litigation as well.
Mr. Rios. Yes. Real quickly, we did win a case in New York.
I represented Hidalgo and Cameron County where the judge struck
the citizenship question from the census form. And it was a
great victory. It was a 277-page opinion.
One of the looming facts was three of the scientist experts
in the Census Bureau had told Secretary Ross, ``You can't do it
this way. Normally, we test the question for a year, two years
to make sure that it's effective and that it doesn't compromise
accuracy. What you're doing here is going to compromise
accuracy. Instead of having a 3 percent, perhaps, undercount in
certain areas, we could have a 15 percent undercount, which
means we're not doing an actual census.'' And that opinion was
a great victory.
Right now, the Trump Administration is trying to appeal
directly to the Supreme Court because they don't have enough
time to get it reversed by the Second Circuit because the
census forms have to start printing in June.
Here's where you, the Congress, could get involved, because
you have a direct responsibility with the Census Bureau. You
can tell them, ``Look, forget about printing the form.'' The
office of Budget and Management also, they have to put up the
expense. There's hearings on that going on right now. So I hope
that helps.
Mr. Vela. Yeah. And maybe, Mr. Dunn, you can answer--
elaborate on this. I mean, just for the general public, why is
this issue of the census question so important?
Mr. Dunn. Well, so what's interesting is the American
system was set up of large states and little states, as we all
know from our history. And now we have this unique circumstance
where you have a state like Texas that is actively working with
the Census Bureau and folks to add a census question that will
have the effect of reducing its political power, would result
in fewer Congress people or districts being assigned to the
state, fewer electoral votes, and importantly, billions of
fewer dollars would flow into the state as a result of an
incorrect count.
And what that shows is how out of sorts our political
alignment in this country has become. No longer are we rural
states and urban states and big states and small states, which
our Constitution was set up. States are willing to sacrifice
their own political power to do harm to minority voting rights.
And that's what the census question is all about is--is robbing
from our citizens, our school districts, our roads, money so
that there's not more Congress people from Texas that are
elected from Latino and African-American citizens.
Mr. Vela. One last question, Mr. Korbel. So as we wage this
effort to protect voter rights, you sometimes hear, ``Well, all
you're doing is really trying to allow noncitizens to get a
right to vote.'' How do we confront that question?
Mr. Korbel. Well, I--I think it's very uncommon for a
noncitizen to try and vote, because what will happen is if they
get caught, they'll be deported immediately. So they--there's
just no incentive to do that. And there's also no incentive to
turn out--people to turn out a lot of undocumented people to
vote.
The closest election we've had in--in 20 years is the one
we just had for the Senate, and that was almost a quarter of a
million votes' difference. Do you realize the size of fraud
you'd have to do to deal with a quarter of million votes? That
would be an enormous fraud. I mean, maybe 50 votes you could
change, but you couldn't change a quarter of a million.
Mr. Vela. Thank you. I yield.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Representative Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Madam Chairwoman, thank you.
And again, let me emphasize the historic nature of this
hearing. And to our host, Congressman Vela, again, as we hold
this hearing in South Texas, it is really because of the
experts that we have before us really telling the history and
story of the entire state of Texas.
Let me again emphasize that the Honorable Barbara Jordan
who represented this district would not have bean elected had
it not been for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. She went first to
the--to the State Senate on a district-lined Senate and then
off to the United States Congress.
But let me pose questions based upon my being on the House
Judiciary Committee when the panic went out that the Voting
Rights Act was getting ready to end and we had to create 15,000
pages that brought about the bill signed by President George W.
Bush, obviously a Republican, and--and to try to track this
questioning of state action and how vile that is, and maybe the
word should go out that we're under attack again, and let the
horrors of those who bombarded my office and the United States
Congress phone saying, ``Don't let the Voting Rights Act go
out,'' I think the message needs to go out we need them now.
And so I want to pursue this line of questioning very
quickly. Each of you will be a yes or no answer.
Do you consider Texas one of the major epicenters of voter
suppression? I'm going one by one. I just need----
Mr. Rios. Absolutely.
Mr. Korbel. Yes.
Mr. McCarthy. Very much so.
Mr. Dunn. Yes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Do you believe that state action is
clearly part of that voter suppression?
Mr. Rios. Absolutely.
Mr. Korbel. Yes.
Mr. McCarthy. Yes.
Mr. Dunn. Absolutely.In fact, I'd say they're on the
cutting edge of it here in this state.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Based on the stories that you've been
telling, let me go to this point. One, we know in the voter ID
case, we had the Department of Justice documenting and
supporting the position that Texas discriminated, discriminated
in redistricting. The voter ID law was discriminatory.
You now know that we have a new announcement saying that
the DOJ will flip and now support the State of Texas where
there's no intentional discrimination, which was found, and
will indicate that we are no longer subject to preclearance
Section 5, which obviously we've got to fix.
It may take a little bit longer, but I--I'd appreciate----
Mr. Rios. Within two hours----
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Rios, yes.
Mr. Rios. Within two hours of the President's swearing in,
there was a notice filed in the court--federal court on the
voter ID claiming that they were going to realign themselves,
within two hours.
Ms. Jackson Lee. What impact is that when--when the--when
the people's lawyer, the federal law firm that was the
instrument of change in the civil rights movement flips?
Mr. Rios. It has a tremendous impact, because now you have
the federal government weighing in on important questions of
law, and it has an impact on federal judges and the public at
large too.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Dunn, is there any basis for that
flip? Is there any legal--is there any fact basis that should
generate a flip to go against us in terms of saying no
discrimination in Texas sufficient for preclearance?
Mr. Dunn. None whatsoever.
And--and I would point out that the Department of Justice,
the only federal department named after an idea, has fought for
voting rights since it was given the charge in the 1965 Civil
Rights Act--Voting Rights Act. And even during other Republican
administrations, although they would take actions that I
wouldn't necessarily agree with, were consistent in enforcing
voting rights, pursuing individual cases in communities. We've
not seen any of that from the current administration.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I want to make the point that the bulk of
the members on this panel--I think my numbers are correct--are
voting rights districts. And so two questions that you can take
them and--what impact is demise and ending of voting rights on
the idea of one person, one vote, which is what we're supposed
to be adhering to, number one?
Number two, given the Shelby decision, what type of record
do you think needs to be built that could pressure the Supreme
Court in its present configuration that Section 5 preclearance
is an absolute necessity to ensure one person, one vote, and to
eliminate the intimidation that has come about through closing
polling places, short hours, and, of course, purging?
Mr. Dunn. Well----
Mr. Rios. Document the record. It's very important, just
what you're doing.
Mr. Dunn. The ability to influence and dilute others' votes
is caustic to our democracy. And in the cut and thrust of
politics where sort of anything goes, as you know as well as
you do in running for re-election in the various races you've
had to face, it's hard for other candidates to not use a tool
that's available to them.
And the message that we are delivering lately is that
diminishing the right to vote of people that don't support you
as a candidate is a proper campaign method. And it's going to
continue to increase until Congress, the Supreme Court, and
government in general can do something about it. And so this is
an important first step.
It's my honor to be here.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you, Mr. Green.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Madam Chairwoman, if I may compliment you on your
commentary with reference to the poll tax. Indeed, Texas has a
poll tax. That's what it is.
The question is how do we acquire and present the empirical
evidence to support our contention in a court of law the poll
tax exists. Texas will say--and I'm looking at the Department
of Public Safety's Web site. They indicate on the Web site that
you may acquire an EIC at no charge. That's an election
identification certificate, at no charge.
But, Mr. McCarthy, you've indicated that there is a charge
associated with it, and I think we need to have you give some
greater clarity as to what the charges are, for the record.
This will be of benefit to us at a later time.
Mr. McCarthy. Yeah. So what I was alluding to in that
answer earlier was that--and I think other panel members have
indicated that not every county in Texas has a Department of
Public Safety branch. And in some instances, people have to
travel long distances to get to a DPS office. They need to take
time off work. They need to travel long distances. And they
need to wait in line sometimes for hours and hours to get their
election identification certificate.
And so there may not be a financial cost in terms of
acquiring the ID, but there's a significant cost for some
people in terms of getting to an office, taking the time off
work, waiting for--waiting in line and--and, you know, the--the
costs involved in that travel and wait time.
Mr. Green. Because time is of the essence, let me ask you
quickly. Do you not have to have a birth certificate to acquire
this ID?
Mr. McCarthy. I don't believe you do.
Mr. Dunn. You have to have a birth certificate or--to get
one of the IDs. There's some--there's some substitutes for
that, but the--by and large, most people get a birth
certificate.
Mr. Green. By and large a birth certificate.
As you know, a good many people who live in Texas weren't
born in Texas. The notion that the ID is at no cost is
promulgated and promoted by Texas in that it will accord you
your birth certificate if you're indigent, so they try to get
around it.
I tested the system myself. Here's how the system fails us
and becomes a poll tax. I'm from Louisiana. Because I'm from
Louisiana, when I went to vote, and I chose not to use my
proper ID--could use my congressional ID, but I chose not to
use the proper ID--I had to send to Louisiana to get my birth
certificate.
Texas doesn't cover the cost of a birth certificate from
Louisiana. At that point, it becomes a tax, because Texas has
tried to eliminate the cost of the birth certificate when, in
fact, I had to pay for the birth certificate to get my ID. The
five-day period that the Honorable Bennie Thompson mentioned,
not enough time to get an ID from Louisiana and bring it back
to Texas to get the free ID card.
The 24th Amendment, when it speaks to this notion of a poll
tax, it not only talks about poll tax in those explicit terms,
it also mentions something else, and this is where I think we
have a great argument.
It indicates shall not pay--a failure to pay a poll tax,
but then other tax, not just the word ``poll tax,'' but any
other tax. The tax to buy your birth certificate is something
that I think is onerous to the 24th Amendment to the
Constitution. And at some point, I think we have to hone in on
these nuances such as this.
My friend, Mr. Dunn, your thoughts.
Mr. Dunn. Well, two things about that. In the lawsuit, we
actually brought a 24th Amendment claim. The district court
ruled that it was, in fact, a poll tax, and then the Fifth
Circuit overruled that part of the ruling. And we did
ultimately prevail on other--on other theories, and that's why
there's the reasonable impediment declaration that allows you
to get around it.
But there's a ton of people in--in your situation. I'd like
to talk to you just a second about a gentleman named Floyd
Carrier, an African-American Korean War Veteran who was born in
a hospital on a county line in East Texas. And they didn't
register his birth, so he can't get a birth certificate. It
doesn't exist for him. And when the voter ID law went into
effect immediately after Shelby County, he drove his tractor
down to the polling location, because he can't drive. He
doesn't have a driver's license.
And he goes down there where everybody knows him. ''Hey,
Mr. Carrier, how are you doing?''
And they--and he says, ``Can I vote?'' And they said,
``Well, we need your ID.'' And he says, ``I don't have an ID.''
And they said, ``Well, Mr. Carrier, we know who you are,
but we're not allowed to let you vote anymore. ''
A veteran of the armed forces in the Korean War was--was
excluded from voting because of some mistake made at his birth
in paperwork. And now he has to go through the reasonable
impediment declaration process, which, as I mentioned earlier,
is separate but unequal in its own burdensome process. It's an
improvement, but it's certainly no repair.
So, yes, it's very much true that the that--that there
continues to be a poll tax. It's not just that on birth
certificates. Another example, we put people on buses in
Houston, for example, and had them go get their birth
certificate from certain addresses. And they'd stand in line.
And, sure enough, you'd be missing a document, and they'd have
to go home. Some of them, it ended up taking them four or five
days would be off work. These were people we had, you know, got
to do this.
And then a different bus to the DPS station. Well, in
Houston, the DPS location where you get your driver's license
is not in the urban core. And for several people, it was three
different bus routes and transfers, an all day process.
And sure enough, you'd get to DPS, you wait in line your
hour and a half, and you're missing one thing that wasn't on
the Web site. So there's a whole lot of hassle both financial,
time, money, lost time with family that--that these kind of
laws and that's what they're designed to do, make it hard so
the people won't do it.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Mr. Vela, thank you again for helping us to have this
historic occasion:
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
As I wrap up, let me just say a few things. One, of course,
is your testimony has been enlightening, it has been at times
disturbing, and at times just egregious. It is something that I
think every single citizen of this country needs to hear.
I represent one of the poorest districts in America with a
fairly large minority population. And what I know is that most
people who are poor or who are of color, the only protection we
have is the law. It is the courts. And so if you had an
opportunity to say today to the Supreme Court why we need to
reinstate fully the Voting Rights Act, each one of you just
please tell me what that is.
And we'll start with you, Mr. Rios.
Mr. Rios. I think as the minority community becomes more
politically active, the power structure will make it more
difficult for them to participate in the political process and
continually violate the Constitution.
Chairwoman Fudge. So you're basically saying if we allow
people to their own devices, they will do things that are not
right. Okay.
Mr. Korbel.
Mr. Korbel. Well, Congresswoman, I think it's really this
chart showing how small the Anglo population is getting and how
big the minority population is getting.
The--the other side is simply afraid that they're going to
lose control of the state. This is very disturbing to them.
Chairwoman Fudge. And we'd like to also have a copy of your
map in addition to that, because that is happening literally
all over the United States.
Mr. McCarthy.
Mr. McCarthy. Yes. I said before that voting is the
cornerstone on which all of our other civil liberties rest. And
what we've heard today is ample evidence that--that people's
right to vote is being curtailed in this state. People are
having their votes suppressed. And so something really needs to
be done to stop that.
Mr. Dunn. Chief Justice Roberts said in the Shelby County
opinion that nobody denies that there's racial discrimination
in voting, and one circumstance is too many. But times have
changed. And we certainly can't deny that. Times have changed
for the better, sometimes for the worst.
What I would say to the U.S. Supreme Court is in all due
respect, open your eyes and look at least what has happened
since you made that choice. I believe these are people of
integrity. And perhaps they live in different communities than
I do and have different experiences, but open your eyes,
because you have unleashed something that is hard to put back
in the bottle.
Chairwoman Fudge. I thank you all so very much for your
testimony. I thank my colleagues for their participation.
We do have another panel, and I think we are right on time,
so thank you very, very much.
Mr. Rios. Thank you, Congresswoman. (Brief recess)
Chairwoman Fudge. I'm happy to, at this point, introduce
Mimi Marziani, who is the chair of the Texas Advisory Committee
to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Mimi, the floor is yours.
Ms. Mimi Marziani. Wonderful. Can you hear me okay? Okay.
There we go. Wonderful.
Well, good morning, everybody. It is a great honor to be
here, so thank you for having me. My name is Mimi Marziani. As
mentioned, I am the Chairwoman of the Texas Advisory Committee
to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In addition, I'm the
President of the Texas Civil Rights Project. And on top of
that, I'm an attorney. I am a professor of election law and
voting rights. I'm a community leader. And maybe most
importantly, I'm a mom of two young daughters. I believe deeply
that Texas can be better than what it is, and I care about the
future of this state.
I have two goals this morning for you. First, I want to
highlight the significant ways in which continued
discrimination against voters of color in Texas is undermining
the promise imbedded in our Constitution of equality and human
dignity.
My second goal in doing that is to give voice to some of
the voters in Texas who have been affected and describe for
each of you what that's really felt like for them and what
that's looked like on the ground. I'm going to attempt to be
concise, and--but, of course, I am happy to answer any
questions you have.
So first, discrimination in voter registration is
persistent. And, in fact, and sadly, it appears to be getting
worse. We've heard quite a bit this morning about the unlawful
purge of new citizens from the rolls, so I won't spend any more
time on that except for--except to share two points with you.
This morning, the Texas Civil Rights Project joined with the
Texas ACLU and other organizations filed suit against the State
of Texas and several counties over this unlawful purge. We have
a 50-page complaint that outlines a number of ways in which the
state has violated the Constitution. Happy to answer questions
about that litigation.
The other point I wanted to make about the purge is maybe
even more important. Last night, I had the pleasure of speaking
with a woman named Sylvia. She's a naturalized citizen here in
Texas, and she was interested in joining our lawsuit. She
declined to do so, however. And the reason she declined is
because she's scared. She's terrified in this sort of
environment in this state that by speaking out, putting herself
on the line that she could face retaliation from the
government. And--and I share that to describe the type of
environment in which voters are operating.
So a couple other examples of discrimination in voter
registration. Since at least 2011, Texas has worked to
eliminate grass roots voter registration drives. I heard a
number of you talk about voting rights in the `60s and `70s and
`80s, and so you know that voter registration drives have been
a really incredibly important way to bring new people into the
electorate, particularly young people and persons of color.
Sadly, in Texas, it's a crime to register your neighbor to
vote unless you've jumped through a lot of hoops and have
gotten deputized by the state. The very predictable result of
this regime has been the elimination of this sort of grass
roots effort. And, unfortunately, that has led to ridiculous
situations, such as, for example, in 2016 in the City of San
Antonio, a city with a population of more than 1.5 million,
there were under 1,000 people eligible to register somebody
else to vote.
The third failing of voter registration that I wanted to
highlight was the Secretary of State's persistent failure to
enforce a state law requiring that high schools register to
vote young people. And this has been something the state has
refused to enforce in recent years despite public outcry,
despite the fact that 72 percent of our high school students in
Texas are persons of color themselves, and despite the fact
that the state's inaction is causing literally hundreds of
thousands of young people every year to go unregistered and,
therefore, not be able to participate in our democracy.
Finally, I wanted to highlight that Texas has been
refusing, in addition, to comply with federal voter
registration law, namely the Motor Voter Act. By not complying
with the National Voter Registration Act when people go online
to update their driver's license, 1.5 million Texas--Texans
annually are missing an opportunity to register to vote. This,
quite frankly, hits the entire population, but it hits frequent
movers even harder, because it means that as they move, they
are no longer registered at their current address. Frequent
movers tend to be poorer and younger, and, therefore, in Texas,
they are much more likely to be people of color.
The culmination of all of this discrimination in voter
registration has had significant consequences. First, we know
that there are millions of people in Texas who are eligible to
be registered to vote, but they are not, meaning that they just
cannot participate. They are just shut out of the process. In
addition, the people who are on the rolls don't represent us.
The people on the rolls in Texas are older and whiter than the
citizen voting age population as a whole, and so it has skewed
the entire political process.
I see I'm out of time.
Chairwoman Fudge. Just wrap up.
Ms. Marziani. Okay. So one note on the Motor Voter piece. I
did want to share the story of a woman named Tatsia Watkins.
She's a black mother of two from Irving, Texas, in the Dallas
area, and she worked very hard to move herself to a new
neighborhood with better schools. She dutifully went online to
try to update her driver's license and register herself to
vote. When she showed up at the polls in 2014 to try to cast
her first ever vote in a midterm election, she wasn't able to
cast a ballot that counts. And this happened in front of her
daughters. And she honestly cannot talk about it without
tearing up.
So again, that is what this sort of discrimination looks
like on the ground. And as some of the other panelists
mentioned, when that sort of thing happens to a person, they
are much less likely to go and try to vote again.
In my written testimony, I also talk about a medley of
problems that happen once folks actually show up at the
polling--at the polling place and try to vote, including long
lines, changed polling places, mismanagement, and good old-
fashioned voter intimidation. I'm happy to talk about that
further during the question period, but I'll stop my opening.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very, very much.
We've been joined by our colleague Mr. Veasey. Thank you so
much. We are glad that you made it, Marc.
Mr. Veasey. Thank you.
Chairwoman Fudge. Why don't we begin the questioning as
we've gone the same way that we went before. We will start with
Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much.
One of the challenges we've had with the Motor Voter Act is
there's no requirement that if I'm registered at a state
agency, there's no timeline for me to transfer that data to a
local registrar. And so that has compounded the problem,
because some people went to get driver's license, registered to
vote, but that information didn't get transferred to the local
registrar.
And so when they go vote they're told, ``You're not
registered.'' So that's one of the things that we're trying to
look at also to see should we put a time limit on the agency to
transfer that registration data.
Have you run into that?
Ms. Marziani. So, in fact, there is a time limit in the
existing National Voter Registration Act. That already exists.
Unfortunately, what you're highlighting is that there is
rampant noncompliance. And one thing that has been really
unfortunate in recent years is the Department of Justice has
completely stopped enforcing the National Voter Registration
Act, and then you see a lot of states that are not in
compliance.
Mr. Thompson. Well, when we approached my state,
Mississippi, they talked about the capacity issue and the
ability to do it, but I'm happy to know that.
The other part of that question is have you found a--that
when officials are trained to conduct elections, most states
don't have standards? You know, if you're somebody's friend,
they pick you to work the election. How is it in Texas, to your
knowledge?
Ms. Marziani. Yes. So in Texas, poll workers are usually
appointed by the local political party. And to your point,
there are very few standards on who is able to be a poll
worker. They're paid very little. The training is haphazard.
And the result of that is pretty gross mismanagement of the
polling locations. And I've included this in my testimony.
But one very blatant example, during the 2018 election, so
just a couple of months ago, in Harris County, home to Houston,
there were at least nine polling locations that opened more
than an hour late, all of them located in communities of color.
And when we called the local county clerk and said, you know,
action needs to be taken, we were told that, ``No, no. We
shouldn't worry about it. These sort of problems are typical
for election day,'' even though countless folks were just--you
know, they--they couldn't stand in line for hours and hours.
And ultimately, we sued representing a community organizing
group here in Texas, and we were able to get the polls opened
for another hour. But that's one example of the--and, you know,
people slept in. They didn't know how to turn on the machines.
They were really basic things, but it--it comes from having
folks who are--who are not professionals, who are not properly
being trained, they're not properly being supervised, they're
not properly being paid.
Mr. Thompson. So you would recommend some standardization
of a training regimen for election workers?
Ms. Marziani. Absolutely. And not just me. In 2012, you
might recall President Obama saying that we need to do
something about long lines. And there was a bipartisan
commission that he convened, and they issued a report. And one
of the things in that report, as, you know, unsexy as it
sounds, was exactly around poll workers and looking at how many
problems are caused at the polls by the lack of professional
poll workers. And then there's a whole list of things in that
report that we could do.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Fudge. Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Have you had an opportunity to look at the
different applications for driver's license in any one state--
any more--more than one state?
Ms. Marziani. Yes.
Ms. Johnson. Like Texas versus any other state?
Ms. Marziani. With regards to the Motor Voter Law you mean?
Ms. Johnson. Yes. Because the voter--the driver's license
now in Texas focus more on voting rights than they do on
driving. And I just wondered if we could compare that to any
other state.
Ms. Marziani. Well, so one thing I will say in Texas that
the Department of Public Safety, which is in charge of driver's
license, they have been extraordinarily hostile to the notion
that they need to comply with the Motor Voter Law or that they
need to issue voter IDs to people. And so I'm not sure how that
compares to other states, but that has been a significant
problem.
With regards to what I spoke about the failure to offer
voter registration when folks go online and update their
driver's license, as 1.5 million Texans do every single year,
that problem, you do see it in some other states, but it is
much less of an impact in other states because many other
states have online voter registration.
In Texas, we have taken no steps to modernize voter
registration, so you don't have any online voter registration.
And in addition, when people go online to update their driver's
license, they're not getting the benefit of the rights under
the National Voter Registration Act. So there's this--this
double whammy.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Fudge. Mr. Lujan.
Mr. Lujan. Thank you so much for being with us today.
I was intrigued by the aspects of your testimony regarding
young voters in the State of Texas. Can you expand on that and
again remind us of the percentage of people of color currently
in high school. I think you said 72 percent, but exactly what
this means in making it harder for young people to get
registered or--to participate in voting in the state of Texas.
Ms. Marziani. Absolutely. So as I mentioned in my
testimony, I think there's a really important background fact
for the panel to consider is that race, age, and class closely
correspond here in Texas. And so one statistic, when you look
at Texans under 40, it's almost 60 percent black or Latinates
and 35 percent Anglo.
When you go over 40, that flips. You--you're about 56
percent Anglo, 38 percent black or Latinates. And so by
definition, when you're talking about young people in Texas,
you're talking about a population that is majority minority;
Similarly, as we saw in the voter ID litigation, poorer folks
in Texas are more likely to be people of color. So all these
things correspond very closely.
When you get even younger, so under 20, the statistics are
even more pronounced. And as I mentioned before, 72 percent of
high school students in Texas are persons of color. And--and
that's one of the many reasons that we are so concerned by the
state's persistent failure to enforce our very own Texas law
requiring that Texas high schools offer voter registration
twice a year.
Mr. Lujan. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
Madam Chairwoman, I yield back.
Chairwoman Fudge. Mr. Vela.
Mr. Vela. Mr. Veasey, I'm no longer the junior member in
this delegation.
Mr. Veasey, Mr. Joaquin Castro, and Beto O'Rourke, and I
were all elected at the same time. And Mr. Veasey was one of
the first people out front on the issue of voting rights.
And given our--our time constraints, what I'd like to do is
go ahead and yield my five minutes to--to Mr. Veasey so he can
take his full ten.
Chairwoman Fudge. Mr. Veasey, you're recognized.
Mr. Veasey. Fil, thank you very much.
Madam Chairwoman, thank you.
This is really appropriate that we're holding this hearing
in Texas. As you know, from the time of reconstruction until
the Voting Rights Act was passed, Texas had as oppressive
voting laws as any state in the union, including the--the three
deep southern states that are--that are often mentioned when it
comes to voter suppression.
But something happened after the Voting Rights Aqt passed
to where Texas became one of the leaders in the expansion of
voter rights. I mean, you look at, for instance, straight-
ticket voting, being able to vote anywhere in your county
during the early voting period, just making it so easy for
voters to be able to--to cast their ballot.
And then, of course, over the last decade or so, we've
regressed. We have now become one of the very worst states,
including this voter ID bill that has been talked about, and
then a lot of other things that have happened that people are--
aren't quite sure about yet, especially outside of the state.
One is that we ended straight-ticket voting. And the
amazing thing about us ending straight-ticket voting is that
when I was in the State legislature, the Republican and
Democratic activists and organizations, they came to testify
before Austin begging us to not end straight-ticket voting.
And, of course, the Lieutenant Governor's son lost an election
in Harris County in Houston, and they get rid of straight-
ticket voting, which was so easy and convenient for--for so
many people. And, of course, a lot of people think that that's
meant to hurt people in the African-American community.
We also had a--things that people--again, because luckily
they didn't become law, but in the House, when I was in the
House, actually passed a piece of legislation that said that
you could only register to vote if you had a passport or a
birth certificate. I don't know how many voter registration
drives would be successful if you had to have one of those two
on you. I doubt very many people have their passport or birth
certificate on them in this room right now.
And my question specifically to you is what steps do you
think, or what areas do you see Democrats and Republicans in
the Texas Legislature being able to work together to maybe
perhaps, do some good common sense legislation that would
actually increase confidence that people, especially elected
officials in the state, care about people being able to cast
their ballot and the right to vote?
Ms. Marziani. Absolutely. It's a fantastic question. Two
things I would point to that I think are very much common sense
reforms. One is allowing online voter registration. There is--
there's scores of evidence from across the country. Right now,
more than--I think it's 42 other states have online voter
registration. It saves money. It makes the polls more accurate.
It transfers power to the voter themselves, because they can
check the accuracy of their records and update them. And it
increases security. So--that is one thing that, you know, you
look at other states, it's very much been a bipartisan effort.
I think a second thing that I--I would really hope we could
find bipartisan agreement would be around professionalizing the
polling place. And so I do think that includes poll worker
training, but it also includes updating our voting technology.
The--most of the voting machines here in Texas are--were
purchased in 2002. I will admit in 2002, I was not a lawyer. I
didn't--you know, none of us had iPhones. You know, just think
about what you were doing in 2002 and how far back we were. And
so no surprise they're on their last legs.
And that's why our voting machines are doing things like
flipping people's votes entirely. And that was confirmed in the
2018 election that people pulling straight-ticket Democrat, it
was flipping to straight-ticket Republican and vice versa.
So those are two places where I would really hope we could
see some bipartisan agreement.
Mr. Veasey. Speaking of professionalizing the polling
place, could you explain to everybody here why it would be a
bad idea to allow people to remain anonymous when they report
as poll workers.
We had an organization several years ago known as the King
Street Patriots, this right-wing conservative organization that
was trying to get a bill passed that said that poll--that
people that are coming to observe, the poll watchers, need not
show any identification or fill out any forms, that they should
just be able to show up and anonymously be poll watchers. Can
you explain to everybody why that's a bad idea?
Ms. Marziani. Yes. I will give two examples, in fact. One
involves a member of the King Street Patriots, Alan Vera, who
in 2018--August 2018, so just a couple of months ago, actually
submitted to the Harris County voter registrar's office 4,000
challenges of registered voters in Houston. And he based it not
on personal knowledge, as the law required, but on his own
assumptions built into the addresses people had provided.
And we are still actually examining all of those addresses
for patterns, but I can tell you a lot of them come from
communities of color, and a lot of them are folks who are very,
very poor who are living in churches, homeless shelters, places
like that. And they had submitted those addresses, as you are
allowed to.
And one of the reasons that he did this blanket challenge
is because he didn't actually have to stand up and say that he
had personal knowledge for every single one. And so I think
that is the type of thing you could expect if you allow things
to be anonymous.
Secondly, you know, I think that it is just contrary to
notions of justice and--and due process, and, quite frankly,
the type of political dialogue that we should have. There's a
great case from a couple of years ago where people were trying
to shield their identity when they were signing controversial
ballot initiatives. And Justice Scalia actually said that
hiding your identity in these type of situations hardly
resembles the land of the brave.
And--I think that that's the other piece of it, that it's
not fair, and it can't actually promote the type of political
dialogue that all of us would want.
Chairwoman Fudge. Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much.
And welcome, Mr. Veasey. We thank you for your leadership
on the voter ID legislation that obviously is one of the
centerpieces of dealing with voter equality, which I'd like to
call. Let me thank you very much for your leadership.
And I might refer to some points that you made in your
testimony. I'd just like to refer to them again that your
testimony here today is to highlight the continued
discrimination in Texas against voters of color, which you
believe undermines equality and human dignity. So I ask you the
question do you believe that Texas is one of the major
epicenters of voter suppression?
Ms. Marziani. Not only do I believe that, it is the number
one reason that I transferred my legal career from New York to
Texas.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
And do you believe that part of that suppression or all of
it or much of it is state action driven?
Ms. Marziani. Yes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. And your other point made here--and I'm
going to follow a line of questioning--is you talk about the
fact that race, age, and socioeconomic status are closely
correlated in Texas. And here's your exact language.
African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than Anglos
to be living in poverty because they continue to bear the
socioeconomic effects caused by decades of racial
discrimination. Do you agree with that?
Ms. Marziani. That's actually the court's language in
Veasey v. Perry. So, yes, absolutely.
Ms. Jackson Lee. And with that in mind, they bear the
brunt--and I think it's important to note Hispanics and
African-Americans as a group, and, therefore, it is important
for that coalition around these issues to be strong. But you
believe that that is ongoing at this point?
Ms. Marziani. Absolutely. And I would add there's also
pretty rampant discrimination against the Asian-American
community as well.
Ms. Jackson Lee. So let me raise these questions. One, you
gave some history, but I remember in the voter ID law that we
were experiencing the panic in rural areas of DPS offices
closing up or not being available. Number one, if you will
comment on that.
In the recent 2018 election, you may realize in the early
vote, which we pride in Texas, Hispanics and African-Americans
in particular have jobs that really don't release them or they
don't get off until 5:00, 6:00, or so. And their normal
thinking about elections are the polls are open until 7:00. Our
local officials closed the polls at 4:00 p.m. You might comment
on how horrific that is in terms of people's mindset.
Also, the issue of humiliation, I've experienced that. And
I think you had in your testimony the question of a Latino
person who was told to get after they confiscated her passport,
which in the context of ID, it was a legitimate form of ID.
Just if you can just answer those three, and I have a follow-up
question.
Ms. Marziani. Absolutely. First, yes, DPS offices are often
located at very great distances for citizens, which makes it
extraordinarily hard for them to get the ID that they need.
So--so you're absolutely correct.
Early voting is a very important way for people to have the
flexibility to be able to get to the polls, especially if they
have young children, if they work job that are inflexible, for
all sorts of other reasons, I'll note that we were very
concerned in 2018, even though there was advanced warning that
this was going to be a high turnout election in Texas, and it
was, that because of the mismanagement of polling places; we
saw long lines even during early voting. I have this in my
testimony, you know, people waiting an hour in San Antonio, an
hour in Burnet, an hour in La Porte; two hours in Austin, two
and a half hours in Houston, three hours in Corpus Christi. And
so that still--those are significant problems during early
voting.
Finally, on pages 6 and 7 of my testimony, I include some
pretty horrific stories that voters experienced when they were
seeking to vote, many of them at the hands of election workers.
One I'll highlight. A brown-skinned voter in Kingwood gave her
driver's license to a poll worker who asked her how long she
had been in the U.S. She responded that she was a naturalized
citizen from Canada. The poll worker said, ``Welcome to
America.''
He then asked the same question of the voter's mom but then
did not ask that question of any of the light-skinned people
standing in line.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Let me conclude, Madam Chairwoman, if
you'll let me get this last question in. This is an editorial
by The Houston Chronicle that indicates the governor owes an
apology for his ham-fisted try at voter suppression.
It reads ``The Secretary of State should probably resign
after issuing an advisory on January 25th flagging 95,000 of
the state's registered voters as potential noncitizens. At
least 58,000 of those people have voted at least once since
1996 he said.''
But my question is given--tying this in, and given the fact
that only 68 percent of Texans are registered to vote because
of suppression and intimidation, given the Shelby decision,
your experience, what type of record do we need to continue to
build to ensure that the Supreme Court, no matter its
configuration, more Republican appointees, realizes that
Section 5 needs to be reinstituted?
Ms. Marziani. Well, I--I think it's an excellent question.
I--I worked in the testimony to try to provide as many
contemporaneous examples as possible.
I will say that in addition to what's in the testimony that
resubmitted around voter registration and polling access, the
report that the Texas State Advisory Committee issued and
presented to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last year, our
report also has, I think, ten pages of findings. And that was a
bipartisan group that concluded at the end of the day that, you
know, Texas--to put it simply, that Texas is not a red state or
a blue state. Texas is a nonvoting state. And the reason we're
a nonvoting state is because of these systemic barriers that
have been put in front of the voters.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you,
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Green.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And I thank the witness for appearing. Your testimony has
been invaluable.
I'm a son of the segregated South. I know what it's like to
be suspect because of your appearance. I know what invidious
discrimination looks like. I've seen the Klan with the robe in
my community. I know what it smells like. I was forced to go to
filthy colored waiting rooms at restaurants and various other
places. And I know what it sounds like. I've been called ugly
names. So I understand what being a suspect just by virtue of
who you are is like.
And what I see happening to the Latino cornmunity is very
painful, because the Latino community now is being suspect.
What's happening at the southern border, asylees being called
terrorists. The whole notion that Latinos somehow are illegal
by virtue of the titles that are being accorded them by public
officials. When you call people illegal, you then say something
can happen to them because of their status. The notion that you
can purge the rolls by coordinating your effort with the
Department of Public Safety.
And if a person happened to have registered to acquire a
license as a potential citizen, not a citizen at the time,
permanent resident, there's no law that requires you to later
on go back and acknowledge that you're now a citizen, so you
become suspect by simply having acquired a driver's license as
a permanent resident.
This type of behavior from public officials--we're not
talking about just lay people, but from public officials has to
have an impact on the way people participate in a participatory
democracy. And that's what we have.
So the question for you is given all of these things that
are being used as tools against the Latino community, does--
does this in and of itself create a form of suppression in
terms of a willingness to register, a willingness to go to the
polls and vote? Does this behavior from public officials have
an invidious--insidious, if you will, impact upon Latino
voters?
Ms. Marziani. Absolutely. Two comments. One, thank you for
sharing that. I'm also a child of the South, and that's why I
know that racial discrimination is alive and well.
Secondly, yes, you're absolutely right. And--and I'm
actually going to point to something that is--might be--might
seem on its face to be outside of the voting rights sphere, but
the SB4 law that was passed by the legislature in 2017. Now, as
I see a lot of nods. SB4 is a sanctuary city and show me your
papers bill. And that is indeed what it does.
But in addition, SB4 seeks to sow fear in Latino
communities.And in that litigation, the Texas Civil Rights
Project represents a number of community organizing groups. And
what they shared with us is that because of SB4, they had
members who suddenly were afraid to go into the public sphere
and speak out. They were afraid to go to rallies. They're
afraid to register other people to vote.
And so, yes, I agree with you absolutely. And I think that
it's not just the photo ID bill or these unlawful purges. It's
also things like SB4 that are contributing to this environment
of fear and suppression that is just poisonous for our
democracy.
Mr. Green. Final point, and I have very little time, but
the tone and tenor of the political debate often emanates from
the top. The President has said some ugly things. How has that
tone and tenor trickled down to the people who have the right
to exercise the vote?
Ms. Marziani. Well, one thing we can look at is the rampant
misinformation. For instance, the claim that voter fraud is
some sort of systemic problem, which we've discussed has no
factual basis.
I'll point to a very recent example. We've noted that the
Texas Secretary of State in sending out this advisory that
95,000 people are suspect, to use your word, although that was
not rooted in sound data, well, almost immediately after that
went out 11 days ago on January 25th, the President of the
United States tweeted that there were 60,000 people who had
voted illegally in Texas. It is just without factual basis.
But I find it hard to believe that that couldn't--you know,
I mean, people--people trust their elected officials. And so
surely that has led many people to believe that there is, in
fact, these--these rampant problems, when, in fact, there's no
basis at all.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Madam Chairwoman, can I put something in
the record?
Chairwoman Fudge. Yes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. And I won't ask her for an answer to it,
but I just want to put it on the record.
The witness, Ms. Marziani, indicated Asian voters, and that
speaks clearly as much as Hispanics to the--the language
question. And more of it has come because of lack of Section 5.
But I want to add to the record that Texas changed its
voting process that had been in use for decades straight
ticket. And, of course, people will view that as partisan or
political, but it was used by Republicans and Democrats. And it
was put in--when I say ``straight ticket,'' the elimination of
straight-ticket voting, it's used by Republicans and Democrats.
But more importantly, it is a tool that sometimes illiterate
voters are able to use or--or disabled voters are able to use.
And so we had no Section 5 preclearance on the elimination
of the straight ticket, which I believe will disenfranchise
maybe hundreds of thousands and maybe a million voters plus
because it impacts individuals who may be illiterate, who have
a language issue, and as well may be disabled. And I just
wanted to put that on the record.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Chairwoman Fudge. As we prepare to close, I have one
question, and then I'll wrap up. Is there something that you--
or--or could you briefly just tell us what your protection
program really is and how it functions.
Ms. Marziani. Yes. So the Texas Civil Rights Project is
really proud to spearhead a statewide nonpartisan election
protection effort, and we've been doing so since 2016. That
entails dozens of organizations, most of us here in Texas, but
also with some help from some national counterparts.
And we put volunteers outside of polling locations to
answer questions and collect problems. We run a hotline
available in a number of different languages for voters to call
us and ask questions and report proplems. And then we train and
deploy a group of attorneys who are ready to do things like--
like sue a county, the example I gave, to keep polls open later
on election day.
I have a number of examples in my testimony of some of the
calls we received, what voters told us. We received over 4,200
calls in 2018. And we forthcoming have a report that will
document in greater detail what we heard from the voters in
2018. We--we compiled a similar report after the 2016 election
that is linked in my testimony.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much. That is great work.
As we close, let me just say a couple of things. One is, as
you talked about, young people. In my district, we have a
morning where students come to vote in early vote. I meet those
buses. I ask them how they feel when they go in, and I ask them
how they feel when they come out. There's a great sense of
pride when young people go and vote. And so I am hopeful that
we will continue to deal with that situation.
Lastly, I would say to those who are listening as well as
to those who would continue to try to stop us from voting that
this is still the land of the free and the home of the brave.
We're still the country that decides what democracies we
recognize. We're still the country that wants to spread
democracy all over the world.
So I would say to Chief Justice Roberts, give us the
ballot, because it is a shame that the country that calls
itself the light on the hill would treat its own citizens this
way,
I would close and say thank you all so very much. Without
objection, this session of the Committee on House
Administration is adjourned.
(Listening session concluded.)
A P P E N D I X
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Rolando Rios, Esq., statement.................................... 40
George Korbel, Esq., statement................................... 64
Mimi Marziani, Texas Civil Rights Project, statement............. 101
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