    [House Hearing, 117 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    VOTING IN AMERICA: A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE RIGHT TO VOTE, METHODS
           OF ELECTION, JURISDICTIONAL BOUNDARIES, AND REDISTRICTING

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                           SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS

                                     of the

                               COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
                                 ADMINISTRATION
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 JUNE 24, 2021

                                   __________

          Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration

                                  BOOK 1 OF 2

     [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                           Available on the Internet:
             http://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-administration

                               ______

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
     45-581           WASHINGTON : 2021

                       COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION

                      ZOE LOFGREN, California, Chairperson
    JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland               RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois, Ranking
    G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina        Member
    PETE AGUILAR, California             BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
    MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania       BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin
    TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ, New Mexico

    VOTING IN AMERICA: A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE RIGHT TO VOTE, METHODS
           OF ELECTION, JURISDICTIONAL BOUNDARIES, AND REDISTRICTING

                                  ----------

                            Thursday, June 24, 2021

                      House of Representatives,
                             Subcommittee on Elections,
                             Committee on House Administration,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
    Room 1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. G. K.
    Butterfield [Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
        Present: Representatives Butterfield, Aguilar, Leger
    Fernandez, Scanlon, Davis, and Steil.
        Also Present: Representative Loudermilk.
        Staff Present: Jamie Fleet, Democratic Staff Director;
    Brandon Jacobs, Legislative Clerk; Dan Taylor, General Counsel;
    Sean Wright, Senior Elections Counsel; Sarah Nasta, Elections
    Counsel; David Tucker, Senior Counsel and Parliamentarian;
    Natalie Young, Press Secretary; Peter Whippy, Communications
    Director; Tim Monahan, Republican Staff Director; Caleb Hays,
    Republican General Counsel and Deputy Staff Director; Nick
    Crocker, Republican Deputy Staff Director; and Mike Cunnington,
    Republican Policy Advisor.
        Chairman Butterfield. The Subcommittee on Elections of the
    Committee on House Administration will now come to order. Let
    me say good morning to all of you and thank you so very much
    for joining us today.
        I am told that the Committee on the Judiciary met until 5
    o'clock this morning, and so Ms. Scanlon may be a little late
    arriving today, and when she does arrive, I am going to
    accelerate her statement and let her go as early as we possibly
    can.
        As I said, the Judiciary Committee worked until 5 o'clock
    this morning, and I am told that they will resume their work at
    11 o'clock this morning, eastern time.
        And so as we begin, colleagues, this morning, I want to
    note, we are holding this hearing in a hybrid fashion. It is an
    in-person hearing, and we are doing it remotely. And we are
    also doing it in compliance with the regulations for remote
    committee proceedings, pursuant to House Resolution 8.
        Generally, we ask any Committee members and witnesses who
    are joining us remotely to keep their microphones muted when
    they are not speaking, and the purpose of this is to limit
    background noise.
        Members will need to unmute themselves when seeking
    recognition or when recognized for their five minutes.
        Witnesses will also need to unmute themselves when
    recognized for their five minutes or when answering a question.
        If you are joining us remotely, thank you for doing so this
    morning. But please keep in mind that your camera must be on at
    all times, even if you need to step away for a moment. Please
    do not leave the meeting or turn your camera off. There are
    good technical reasons for that. But those are the rules.
        Lastly, for those who are joining in person, we are holding
    this hearing in compliance with the guidance issued by the
    Office of the Attending Physician, and anyone joining us in the
    hearing room who is not vaccinated should continue to please,
    please, please wear your mask.
        At this time, I will ask unanimous consent that the Chair
    be authorized to declare a recess of this Subcommittee at any
    point, and that all members have five legislative days in which
    to revise and extend their remarks and have any written
    statements be made part of the record.
        I hear no objections. It is therefore ordered.
        Today's hearing, ladies and gentlemen, is the fifth--number
    five--it is the fifth in our Subcommittee series examining
    voting in America.
        Today we will discuss changes in election administration
    and voting laws that change methods of election, alter
    jurisdictional boundaries, and redraw district lines, as well
    as a national perspective on the state of the right to vote in
    our great country.
        As we sit here today, it cannot go unacknowledged that
    tomorrow is the eighth anniversary of the Supreme Court's
    decision in Shelby County v. Holder, a case that we are all
    familiar with, a decision that reshaped the landscape of voting
    rights and protecting the right to vote in this country.
        This decision opened the door to a wave of suppressive
    voting measures that are no longer subject to a review by the
    Department of Justice for its discriminatory impact.
        Since that decision, the Shelby decision, access to the
    ballot has been under constant attack, sometimes overtly
    through direct attacks on opportunities to vote, as we
    discussed at previous hearings, discriminatory voter ID laws,
    changes to polling locations that can disenfranchise minority
    voters and lead to long wait lines, and lack of access to
    language materials.
        Sometimes these attacks are less overt, like moving
    district lines or changing election procedures under the guise
    of election integrity.
        The evidence and data this Subcommittee has heard so far
    and we have collected through these hearings, it seems to me to
    be undeniable. The changes to election laws and procedures we
    have discussed can and are enacted and administered in a
    discriminatory manner.
        As I said when we began this series of hearings, one of our
    most sacred rights in this country is the absolute right to
    vote. However, as the evidence has shown, access to the ballot
    in this country is not, and it has not been, free, nor fair for
    all eligible voters. I am not just talking about voters on one
    side of the political persuasion, but all eligible voters.
        Eight years after the Supreme Court decided Shelby, our
    work continues. As our dear friend and my dear friend and
    former colleague, the late Congressman John Lewis, often said,
    the vote is precious. John would tell us in our caucus
    meetings, it is almost sacred. And so we can, and we must, do
    better.
        The testimony provided today will be informative, as we
    seek to understand what needs to be done to safeguard our
    elections and guarantee equal access to the ballot box.
        We must, colleagues, we must comply with the Supreme
    Court's directive that we create a new formula--Section 4, we
    call it--a new formula, narrowly tailored to meet current
    conditions.
        We have seen in other hearings that a law which is neutral
    on its face, or at least appears to be neutral on its face, can
    actually violate Section 5, which is still the law of the land.
        I remind you, the Supreme Court did not strike down Section
    5. It found Section 4, the formula, to be unconstitutional.
        If the law disproportionately and materially burdens
    minority voters when measured against preexisting State law,
    then it violates Section 5.
        I want to repeat that, and then I am going to close,
    because so many of my colleagues, not on this Committee, but
    throughout the House and the Senate, many of our colleagues
    really don't fully understand and appreciate this.
        If a law, a new law, disproportionately and materially
    burdens minority voters when it is measured against preexisting
    State law, then it violates Section 5.
        And so with that said, Mr. Ranking Member, I look forward
    to hearing from today's witnesses. I will continue to work with
    my colleagues to protect this sacred right.
        It is now my pleasure to recognize the Ranking Member, and
    I can now honestly say, my friend, Mr. Steil, for any opening
    statements that he might have.
        [The statement of Chairman Butterfield follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Steil. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Earlier this week, H.R. 1, S. 1, failed to advance in the
    Senate.
        H.R. 1 and S. 1 would have created the first-ever public
    financing of congressional campaigns. It would have gutted
    voter ID laws. It would have legalized ballot harvesting
    nationwide. It would have weaponized the FEC. It would have
    limited free speech protections for Americans. And it would
    have nationalized our elections.
        Luckily, the bill failed to achieve 60 votes in the United
    States Senate.
        When Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced his
    opposition to H.R. 1 and S. 1, he wrote, quote, ``Partisan
    voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of
    our democracy,'' end quote.
        He was chastised when he said that by the Left. One of our
    colleagues, one of our Democratic colleagues from the New York
    delegation said Manchin's op-ed might as well have been titled,
    quote, ``Why I Will Vote to Preserve Jim Crow,'' end quote.
        Unfortunately, this isn't the first time we have heard this
    kind of ridiculous rhetoric, disinformation, and scare tactics
    about many of the election integrity laws States have in place
    or are passing to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat.
        We heard the same rhetoric in my home State of Wisconsin
    when the State implemented voter ID. But in practice, this is
    not the case. The 2020 election, almost 76 percent of eligible
    voters cast a ballot, the fourth highest rate in the country.
        Another Member of the New York delegation recently
    described States' efforts to bolster voter confidence through
    smart reforms as, quote, ``voter suppression epidemic,'' end
    quote, on CNN's ``State of the Union.''
        And President Joe Biden called Georgia's law, quote, ``un-
    American, sick, and Jim Crow on steroids,'' end quote.
    Eventually, that earned him four Pinocchios in The Washington
    Post.
        When you take the time to read the legislation and analyze
    these State laws, you will find that many States' Democrats are
    crying wolf about actually having less restrictive voting laws
    in many Democratically controlled States, such as New York or
    Delaware.
        However, it just doesn't fit their narrative. It is all
    part of an effort to convince the American people that the laws
    being passed by States are so racist or suppressive that the
    only option is for the great, benevolent Federal Government to
    take over. This is a dangerous and false narrative.
        I am thankful that our country has come a long way since
    the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It is important
    to recognize.
        It is also important to remember the history behind the
    need for that legislation, which was intended to protect and
    promote minority voter registration and turnout, a moral and
    just goal.
        Our colleague, Congressman Burgess Owens, testified about
    this at the Senate hearing on H.R. 1 and S. 1, sharing his
    experience with Jim Crow laws growing up in the Deep South and
    noting how dangerous it is to spread the false narrative that
    Jim Crow laws are being implemented today.
        Congressman Owens stated in his testimony, quote, ``It is
    disgusting and offensive to compare the actual voter
    suppression and violence of the era that we grew up in with a
    State law that only asks people to show their ID,'' end quote.
        While Senate Republicans may have stopped H.R. 1 and S. 1,
    this Committee hearing today is proof that Democratic efforts
    to nationalize our elections are far from over.
        As House and Senate Democrats turn their attention to pass
    H.R. 4, we need to examine the power of the Voting Section of
    the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, which
    Democrats wish to expand.
        For example, if H.R. 4, as written last Congress, were to
    become law, the State of Wisconsin would need to get
    preclearance from unelected bureaucrats in Washington to
    implement commonsense voter ID laws. H.R. 4 would essentially
    remove States' constitutional authority to run their own
    elections.
        With the failure of H.R. 1, make no mistake, H.R. 4 is
    Democrats' next attempt at a Federal takeover of our election
    system.
        Although unrelated to today's hearing, I just want to
    quickly mention something that happened in our hearing that was
    very concerning--at our last hearing--that was concerning about
    the use of Zuckerbucks in election administration.
        Mark Zuckerberg poured more than $350 million into this
    supposedly nonpartisan nonprofit to help election
    administrators across the country conduct elections during the
    pandemic.
        However, the Foundation for Government Accountability found
    that much of these dollars went into heavily Democratic areas.
    For example, the research found that 92 percent of the funding
    in Pennsylvania went to counties that broke in favor of
    President Biden.
        In another example in Wisconsin, they found that $9.6
    million that went into Wisconsin, $7.5 million of that went
    into just five cities, the cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Green
    Bay, Kenosha, and Racine, heavily Democratic areas.
        This amount of private money going to influence the
    administration of our elections is concerning, and I believe it
    is something that this Committee should take up and examine.
        With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to today's
    discussion, and I yield back.
        [The statement of Mr. Steil follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Butterfield. The gentleman yields back.
        And I thank you, Mr. Ranking Member, for your comments, and
    thank you for all that you do for this Committee and for your
    constituents.
        In your opening statement, you made reference to my friend
    and your friend, Senator Manchin, and thank you very much for
    those kind words about Senator Manchin. He is, indeed, a
    principled and thoughtful United States Senator.
        I recall the Senator making a statement about H.R. 1, and
    my recollection is that he does not disagree with H.R. 1, he
    disagrees with certain portions of H.R. 1. But he published a
    statement of the things that he agreed with and would be
    willing to support.
        And also Senator Manchin supports updating the formula. We
    have some differences of opinion about how it should be done,
    but Senator Manchin is on record in support of reauthorizing
    Section 4.
        With that in mind, let me recognize the Ranking Member of
    the full Committee, Mr. Davis, Rodney Davis of Illinois.
        Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is great to see you. I
    appreciate another opportunity to talk about these very
    important issues.
        Considering the important nature of this hearing, I am
    actually pleased to hear from the National Republican
    Redistricting Trust and ask unanimous consent, Mr. Chair, that
    their testimony be entered into the record.
        Chairman Butterfield. Without objection.
        [The information follows:]
        Mr. Davis. We know this is a majority-driven institution,
    and the majority gets to pick a lot more witnesses than what we
    do. So this gives us a chance to get some other witness
    testimony into the record, because we all know the Democrats
    are holding this hearing to develop a new preclearance formula.
        The Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the old
    formula. That old formula looked at primarily minority voting
    registration and turnout, subjecting underperforming
    jurisdictions to preclearance, an extreme remedy that allowed a
    Federal court or the Federal Department of Justice to prevent a
    State law or a municipal ordinance from going into effect.
        And our Ranking Member, Mr. Steil, laid this out very
    effectively just a few minutes ago.
        Thankfully, that extreme remedy is no longer required.
    Minority voter turnout has hit record levels, and minority
    voter registration is also high.
        We still have some work to do, but nothing rises to the
    level of requiring preclearance, a direct affront on State
    sovereignty and equal dignity.
        When it comes to redistricting, States must maintain the
    authority to determine the best methods for their own citizens,
    which may rely on maps drawn by the legislature or a
    commission.
        However, I can tell you as somebody who lives in the State
    of Illinois, I am for independent commissions. I think the
    process has been corrupted by politicians from both sides.
        I am pleased that many Democrats appear to be coming around
    to voter ID, the highly popular policy that is important for
    supporting voter confidence in our election processes and their
    outcomes. Even Stacey Abrams and President Carter approved of
    voter ID.
        Finally, we must ensure that we remove any Federal policies
    that serve as improper impediments to Native American
    participation in Federal elections.
        Mr. Chair, thanks for the opportunity to offer opening
    comments. I yield back.
        Chairman Butterfield. And thank you, Mr. Davis, for your
    words.
        At this time, I am going to introduce today's first panel.
    But before I do that, as a reminder to our witnesses, each of
    you will be recognized for five minutes. For those who are
    appearing virtually, there is a timer on your screen. Look
    right up there and you will see the timer. Please be sure that
    you can see the timer and are mindful of the five-minute time
    limit.
        For those who are joining us in person, there is a lighting
    system and timer in front of you. Please be mindful of the
    lights and the five-minute limit.
        Your entire written statements will be made part of the
    record, and the record will remain open for at least five days
    for additional materials to be submitted.
        Welcome to each of our witnesses today.
        Joining us today on our first panel are Jerry Vattamala.
    Jerry is of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education
    Fund.
        Also Patty Ferguson-Bohnee--and if I am mispronouncing any
    of these names, please forgive me, I am from eastern North
    Carolina--Patty Ferguson-Bohnee of the Indian Legal Clinic at
    the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
        We also have Mr. Eric H. Holder, Jr., of the National
    Democratic Redistricting Committee. And as we all know, he is
    the former Attorney General.
        And Thor Hearne of the True North Law Group.
        Next, we will now recognize Jerry Vattamala. Well, let me
    introduce Jerry Vattamala in more detail.
        He is the Director of the Democracy Program at the Asian
    American Legal Defense and Education Fund. He has worked in
    election protection on behalf of Asian American voters,
    litigated and testified on redistricting issues. He has
    litigated cases concerning violations of Section 203 and 208 of
    the Voting Rights Act. He is also an adjunct professor of law
    at New York Law School.
        Next is Patty Ferguson-Bohnee. She is the Director of the
    Indian Legal Clinic at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
    at Arizona State University, ASU. She is also a clinical
    professor of law, the faculty director of the Indian Legal
    Program.
        She has substantial experience in Indian law--and that is
    something this Committee, on both sides of the aisle, we are
    all concerned about--election law, and policy matters, and she
    also concentrates on voting rights.
        She also testified before this Subcommittee twice last
    Congress--I remember it well--on issues impacting access to the
    ballot for Native American voters.
        She is a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe, and serves as
    the Native vote election protection coordinator for the State
    of Arizona.
        Mr. Eric H. Holder, Jr., is the former Attorney General of
    the United States. He serves as the Chairman of the National
    Democratic Redistricting Committee.
        General Holder served in the Obama administration as
    Attorney General of the United States from 2009 to 2015, the
    third-longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history and the
    first African American to hold that office. Also, with
    relatives in Raleigh, North Carolina, I might say that.
        Next, is Thor Hearne II. Thor is a founding partner of True
    North Law Group and has worked in Federal and State litigation
    and appeals in matters involving property rights,
    constitutional law, and election issues.
        Mr. Hearne has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court,
    the circuit courts of appeals, and various State supreme
    courts. He served as President Bush's national election counsel
    in the 2004 campaign and was an adviser to the Carter-Baker
    Commission on Federal election reform.
        That concludes my introductions. I will now recognize the
    witnesses each for five minutes.
        Mr. Vattamala, you are recognized.

      STATEMENTS OF JERRY VATTAMALA, DIRECTOR, DEMOCRACY PROGRAM,
        ASIAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND; PATTY
      FERGUSON-BOHNEE, DIRECTOR, INDIAN LEGAL CLINIC, SANDRA DAY
        O'CONNOR COLLEGE OF LAW; ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., CHAIRMAN,
     NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE; AND THOR HEARNE,
                 FOUNDING PARTNER, TRUE NORTH LAW GROUP

                      STATEMENT OF JERRY VATTAMALA

        Mr. Vattamala. Thank you, Mr. Chair, thank you, Ranking
    Member, and thank you to the Committee for allowing AALDEF, the
    Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, to testify and
    put forward forth the perspective of Asian American voters, a
    perspective that is often not included.
        We conduct our Asian American exit poll and poll monitoring
    programs every major election. We have done this since 1988. In
    2020, for the Presidential election, we were in 13 States and
    Washington, D.C., and had interactions with over 5,000 Asian
    American voters.
        In our work we do focus on the language access provisions
    of the Voting Rights Act, Sections 203 and 208, These
    violations are ongoing. In 2015 we sued the State of Texas for
    violating Section 208. And just a few weeks ago, on June 3, we
    filed a Section 203 complaint against Hamtramck, Michigan, for
    not providing Bengali language assistance.
        We also do a lot of work on redistricting. As you see in
    the materials that we have submitted, in the last redistricting
    cycle, in Favors v. Cuomo, a redistricting case out of New York
    State, we submitted several documents, a memo, as well as some
    attachments.
        And one of those attachments is what we call Asian American
    communities of interest, the neighborhood maps of 15 Asian
    American communities of interest in New York City. The way we
    constructed that map, those 15 different maps, we met with
    community groups and we asked them to identify their own
    neighborhood boundaries.
        That is what we submitted, and on the last three pages of
    that document, we superimposed those 15 different Asian
    American communities of interest over the [inaudible] State
    Senate lines, and congressional lines, and what we found was
    that every single Asian American community of interest was
    divided into numerous different legislative [inaudible].
        And what this does is, it prevents Asian American voters
    from electing a candidate of their choice. And it is not a
    coincidence why there is a population of over 1 million Asian
    Americans, which would be the tenth-largest city in the United
    States, Asian Americans had very little electoral success in
    New York City without fair redistricting.
        Indeed, at the time of the last redistricting cycle, there
    was never an Asian American elected to Congress from New York
    State, nor did we have an Asian American elected to the State
    Senate.
        Several Asian American communities of interest were divided
    into as many as six different legislative districts. Again,
    this denies this community, our community, the opportunity to
    elect a candidate of its choice.
        We had to litigate in Federal court, to argue that these
    communities of interest should be kept whole and together. The
    court actually agreed with us at the congressional level, drew
    a congressional district that kept Asian American communities
    of interest together. It is centered in Flushing, Queens, where
    there is a large concentration of Asian American residents.
        And for the very first time, just several months later, New
    York elected the first-ever Asian American to Congress from New
    York State.
        We do this redistricting work all around the country. We
    are in Boston, we are in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, as well as
    Texas.
        People don't realize, Section 5, we did have coverage in
    New York. It is not only in the South. We had three counties
    that were covered under Section 5, which helped us in Section
    203 compliance.
        It also helped us in the redistricting process. We worked
    with the Black community and the Latino community in forming
    what we call a unity map that protected all the communities of
    color that were protected under the Voting Rights Act.
        It was very powerful to have that knowledge that Section 5
    was there. And the people that were drawing the map, the
    legislature, they started from that position of making sure
    that they are complying with Section 5 and not retrogressing
    districts that were performing for communities of color, which
    is very important, and we don't have that.
        It is the first redistricting cycle in several decades, 50
    years, where we are not going to have this preclearance
    protection. And in a place like Texas, we know that is
    essential because, of the few Asian Americans that are elected
    in Texas, we know there has been consistent efforts to
    deconstruct and divide their community.
        Hubert Vo--it is in my materials--we submitted an amicus
    brief in the last redistricting cycle. He is the first-ever
    Vietnamese American elected to the Texas State House. His
    victory was challenged. There were racist comments and
    accusations made about the voters in his district.
        He is in a triracial coalition district where Blacks,
    Latinos, and Asian Americans all vote as a bloc to elect Mr.
    Vo. In the last round, his district was dismantled, and only
    because of Section 5 was his district protected and the new
    redistricting plan kept his district intact.
        Chairman Butterfield. Please begin to wind down.
        Mr. Vattamala. We do need help from the Department of
    Justice.
        Chairman Butterfield. Please begin to close out if you
    will, sir.
        Mr. Vattamala. They are very upset to see very little
    action, really no action from the Department of Justice. We
    need their help in protecting Asian American voters, and we
    need Section 5 back. Those key protections that we had are very
    effective in protecting Asian American voters. And we look
    forward to working with this Committee and making sure that
    happens.
        Thank you.
        [The statement of Mr. Vattamala follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Mr. Vattamala.
        At this time, the chair recognizes Professor Ferguson-
    Bohnee. You are now recognized for five minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF PATTY FERGUSON-BOHNEE

        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee. Good morning, Chairman Butterfield,
    Ranking Member Steil, Ranking Member Davis, and members of the
    Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify today.
        The Indian Legal Clinic coordinates the Arizona Native Vote
    Election Protection Project, a nonpartisan effort to protect
    Native American voting rights.
        On behalf of Tribal clients, I have litigated Section 2
    cases involving redistricting, restrictive voting laws, early
    voting access, and language compliance under Section 203.
        After Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924,
    States with large Native American populations created legal
    barriers to prevent Natives from registering to vote and
    casting a ballot.
        Four decades later, the Voting Rights Act finally opened
    the door for Native Americans to exercise the right to vote.
    This led to efforts by local and State lawmakers to reduce the
    effectiveness of the Native vote and to prevent Native
    Americans from being elected to office.
        States and their political subdivisions have used the
    redistricting process to disenfranchise Native American
    communities, especially in areas with significant Native
    populations that can determine the outcome of elections.
        Not surprisingly, non-Indians have manipulated the
    redistricting process in order to maintain power and control.
        Before Shelby County, the Department of Justice issued nine
    Section 5 objections to redistricting plans involving Native
    voters in Alaska, Arizona, and South Dakota, and five of these
    were in Arizona.
        The Department of Justice also brought numerous
    redistricting cases to enforce voting rights of Native
    Americans between the 1970s and 2000.
        In the past two decades, however, most redistricting
    litigation filed on behalf of Indian voters has been brought by
    tribes or private parties.
        Since 1996, 22 Federal cases challenging at-large election
    systems, redistricting lines, or malapportionment have been
    filed on behalf of Native voters, involving State legislative
    districts, school boards, counties, sanitation districts, and
    city councils.
        Packing has been one of the methods used to reduce voting
    strength. Multiple counties in South Dakota have packed Native
    Americans in the fewest number of districts, thereby
    eliminating their ability to elect multiple candidates of
    choice.
        In San Juan County, Utah, the county placed Navajo voters
    in a single overpopulated district so that they would not have
    the ability to elect more than one member to a three-person
    county commission. Plaintiffs spent $3.4 million over 7 years
    to litigate this case.
        And in the last 25 years, jurisdictions in Montana, North
    Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming have used at-large voting
    schemes to disenfranchise Native Americans.
        Also, geographic and jurisdictional boundaries frustrate
    the ability of many Tribal communities to politically mobilize
    in support of one candidate for many Federal, State, and local
    offices because a reservation may be split among multiple
    districts, counties, or even States.
        Over 200 reservations are located in multiple counties or
    States. Some jurisdictions fail to respect Tribal boundaries
    when creating districts. Redistricting bodies of Wisconsin,
    Montana, Washington, and California have diluted the power of
    Tribal communities by dividing Tribal voters among multiple
    districts.
        In Washington, for example, the Lummi, Colville, and Yakima
    reservations were each split into multiple districts.
        Arizona courts have invalidated redistricting plans when
    the State legislature split Tribal reservations into multiple
    districts.
        In addition to redistricting boundaries, precinct lines can
    cause confusion and result in discarded ballots. In Arizona,
    sometimes counties fail to place a voter in the correct
    precinct or counties create precinct lines that divide a Tribal
    community.
        Not only does this cause confusion, but Native voters are
    more likely to have their ballot discarded for voting at the
    wrong polling location.
        But for discriminatory practices, Native Americans would
    have greater representation in local, State, and national
    decisionmaking efforts that affect their lives.
        Despite barriers, Natives continue to fight to protect and
    exercise the right to vote. However, past redistricting and
    jurisdictional issues have stunted the full potential of the
    Native vote.
        Redistricting provides an opportunity to reverse course and
    ensure Native American representation. As Justice Breyer said
    in Shelby County, it is an old disease, it has gotten a lot
    better, but it is still there.
        I would like to remind the Committee that Congress has a
    duty to fulfill its unique trust obligation to Native
    Americans, including in the matters of voting. This must
    include a meaningful opportunity for Native people to elect
    candidates of choice, be heard, and not be saddled by
    unnecessary barriers that exploit centuries' worth of
    inequality.
        We need robust voting rights legislation to mitigate the
    burden placed on Tribes to litigate Section 2 cases, and the
    Department of Justice can carry out this trust responsibility
    by bringing enforcement actions to protect Native American
    voters.
        Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am happy to
    answer any questions the Committee may have.
        [The statement of Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. And thank you for your testimony.
        At this time the chair recognizes Attorney General Holder
    for five minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF ERIC H. HOLDER, JR.

        Mr. Holder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Steil,
    Mr. Davis, and members of the Committee. I want to thank you
    for the opportunity to appear before you today.
        As you know, we are having this important conversation at a
    very important moment. Eight years ago tomorrow in the Shelby
    County decision, a very divided Supreme Court gutted Section 5
    of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and undermined a cornerstone
    of American democracy protection.
        Now, before 2013, Section 5, relying on Section 4, had
    helped prevent discriminatory voting laws from taking effect by
    imposing preclearance protections that required a Federal
    review of changes to voting procedures in covered regions.
    Basically areas with a history of discrimination had to get
    approval from the Department of Justice or from a Federal court
    for significant changes in voting laws or procedures.
        Now, that section of the Voting Rights Act, it helped to
    stop some of the worst attempts to discriminate against
    minority voters for decades. But in a 5-to-4 opinion the
    conservative members of the Court wrote that the Nation had
    changed dramatically since the Voting Rights Act went into
    effect and that because of gains made, particularly by Black
    Americans, these protections were no longer necessary.
        They were wrong.
        Efforts to keep groups of Americans, particularly African
    Americans, away from the ballot box are as old as America
    itself, and the same forces that have historically sought to
    create an unequal status quo are still working to impose it
    today.
        In the days since that ruling 8 years ago, unnecessary and
    discriminatory voting restrictions went up across the country.
    We saw State legislatures pass a rash of strict voter ID laws
    that disproportionately impacted people of color. We saw voting
    roll purges and poll closures targeting minority and poor
    communities. And we saw newly emboldened State legislatures
    draw discriminatory maps that unfairly placed Black people and
    other people of color, young and poor people, into
    gerrymandered voting districts where their impact could be
    diluted and their voice ultimately lost.
        Now, as Attorney General I fought back against these
    attempts to subvert our democracy and to disenfranchise voters
    of color using the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights
    Act in cases from Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio, to
    Wisconsin, Montana, and South Dakota.
        As chair of the National Democratic Redistricting
    Committee, I have continued that work, taking on unfair maps,
    fighting for fair elections, and demanding justice for every
    American voter across the country.
        But just as my work has continued, so too often have
    efforts to roll back the clock on voting rights. Over the past
    few years, politicians have used a range of strategies to
    diminish the voice of the people, from gerrymandering to voter
    suppression to outright intimidation.
        And today we are facing what I would call a sustained,
    coordinated, multipronged assault that seeks to diminish
    protections for voters, restrict access to the franchise, and
    redefine the way that power is gained and exercised in the
    United States of America.
        We have seen this assault in voting restrictions, voter ID
    laws, and voter roll purges that have unfairly--and in some
    cases illegally--stripped Americans of their rights.
        In just the first 6 months of 2021, State legislatures
    across the country have introduced more than 389 bills in 48
    States that would make it harder to cast a ballot. Two dozen
    have already been passed into law.
        Since the Shelby County decision, millions of Americans
    have unnecessarily been purged from voter rolls. Nearly 1,700
    polling locations have been closed since the decision. We have
    seen map manipulation and gerrymandering that has allowed
    politicians to pick their voters so that a party with minority
    views and minority support can illegitimately govern with
    majority power.
        In States that are politically competitive, like
    Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, one party has
    sought to draw lines with surgical precision, packing some
    voters together and splitting other towns and communities
    apart, in order to create congressional delegations and State
    legislatures that are heavily skewed on a partisan basis and
    immune to citizen accountability.
        We have seen it in the Supreme Court decision in Rucho that
    abandoned the Court's fundamental, and I think unique,
    responsibility to achieve justice in the face of partisan
    gerrymandering.
        Now, these actions have not made our elections safer or
    more secure. They have not improved the quality or the
    accessibility of our politics. Instead, they have stripped
    Americans of fundamental rights and undermined the promise of
    American democracy. And they have all, every one of them,
    disproportionately impacted people of color.
        Just a few weeks ago, more than 100 of our Nation's top
    democracy scholars signed a letter warning about the
    deterioration of American voting rights and representation due
    to radical laws, regulations, and restrictions imposed over the
    last few months.
        As a result of these changes, they said voting procedures
    in some States, quote, ``no longer meet the minimum conditions
    for free and fair elections,'' unquote.
        In the United States, our beloved country, this must not
    stand. We need to repair the damage being done to our
    democracy. We need to create lasting, durable safeguards to
    protect our most essential freedom. We need to expand and
    codify into law voting rights and processes so that every
    eligible American casts a ballot and be confident that it will
    be fairly county.
        We need to end gerrymandering so that all people, including
    people of color, can be represented by public servants of their
    choice.
        I am here to do all that I can to help in that regard. I am
    not asking for political favoritism. I am asking for no special
    treatment for any group or community.
        I am asking for nothing more radical than that which is at
    the heart of the American experiment, the idea at the core of
    American democracy, free and fair elections where the people--
    all the people--are heard, and all of the people are respected.
        Thank you very much.
        [The statement of Mr. Holder follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Mr. Holder, for your
    statement.
        At this time, the chair will recognize Mr. Hearne for five
    minutes.
        Mr. Hearne.

                        STATEMENT OF THOR HEARNE

        Mr. Hearne. Thank you, Chairman Butterfield and Ranking
    Member Steil and the members of this Committee. I appreciate
    this very important opportunity to appear before you in this
    hearing on how we conduct elections in our Nation.
        How we conduct our elections is the bedrock of our
    constitutional Republic. Without every voter having the ability
    to cast a vote and all citizens having confidence in the
    conduct and outcome of our elections, we, the people, would
    cease to govern our Nation.
        I firmly believe that while political campaigns and
    elections are quintessentially a partisan endeavor, the manner
    in which elections are conducted and the laws governing the
    conduct of the elections should rise above partisan interests.
        Our identity as Americans should transcend our partisan
    affiliation as a Republican or a Democrat. As President Obama
    said in his speech to the Democratic National Convention in
    2004, there is not a liberal America and a conservative
    America, there is the United States of America. There is not a
    Black America and a White America and a Latino America and an
    Asian America, there is the United States of America. I totally
    agree.
        As Americans, we share a common interest in assuring our
    elections are fair, honest, and accessible to every voter. We
    also share a common interest in assuring that the outcome
    reflects the will of the voters and was not engineered by
    disenfranchising any segment of our population, some voters by
    partisan manipulation or by manipulation of the election
    process.
        Elections must be conducted according to clearly written
    laws that are faithfully followed and administered by election
    officials with transparency and without any racial or partisan
    bias. Every eligible citizen, irrespective of their race,
    color, or heritage, must have equal opportunity to cast a
    ballot, and every American must be confident that every
    lawfully cast ballot was accurately counted.
        The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an extraordinary
    legislative accomplishment because it was adopted in a broad
    bipartisan manner. The bill was sponsored by Senators Dirksen
    and Mansfield, both the Republican and Democrat leaders of the
    Senate, and it was passed on a bipartisan basis. That is one of
    the most important points for the moral authority of the Civil
    Rights Act.
        And more recently, the Carter-Baker Commission provided a
    highwater mark in bipartisan election reform and made a number
    of recommendations to increase our Nation's confidence in the
    outcome of our elections and also to increase voter
    participation in our elections.
        These recommendations included a reliable, accessible,
    voter identification requirement, elimination of ballot
    harvesting, maintenance of current and accurate voter rolls,
    among other reforms that increase voter confidence and increase
    voter participation.
        These recommendations were broadly supported by bipartisan
    members of the Carter-Baker Commission, and they are the basis
    for recommendations this Committee and other State and local
    election jurisdictions should consider. These recommendations
    will increase voter confidence in our elections and increase
    voter participation.
        I return to my central point: Laws governing the conduct of
    our elections should be broadly bipartisan, not an effort to
    achieve a partisan advantage for one or the other side.
        At the end of the day, we are all Americans, and we all
    have our first allegiance to our Nation, and it is not to a
    party or to a particular partisan ideology. And we need to work
    together to do that and have the moral authority of an election
    conduct that is bipartisan and rises above any particular
    effort to game the system for one or another faction.
        I commend again the work of the Carter-Baker Commission,
    and I will welcome any questions when we get to that point.
        Thank you.
        [The statement of Mr. Hearne follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. And thank you, Mr. Hearne, for your
    testimony.
        That concludes the statements from the witnesses. I think
    it may be time now for us to move to member questions. I am
    going to take Ms. Scanlon first.
        Mary Gay, I understand that you may have been in markup
    very late last night, maybe till 5 o'clock this morning.
        Ms. Scanlon. Yes, it was. It was a good time.
        Chairman Butterfield. Well, we are going to make you first.
    You know, I have participated in an all-night markup before,
    and it is very brutal. My other committee, the Committee on
    Energy and Commerce, probably holds the record for the longest
    markup, some 25 or 26 hours. So I am empathizing with your
    position.
        Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
        Chairman Butterfield. So at this time, you are recognized
    for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Scanlon. Thank you, Chairman Butterfield, and thank you
    to our witnesses.
        In Pennsylvania we have lived with the reality of political
    gerrymandering. I have lived in the same house for 26 years and
    I have been in three different congressional districts.
        In 2018, after a special election, I briefly served as the
    Representative for Pennsylvania's Seventh, District, which has
    been dubbed ``Goofy kicking Donald'' based on its cartoonish
    shape.
        It snaked across six counties and halfway across the length
    and breadth of the State to collect voters to form a district
    with a Republican voter majority in a region that had a
    Democratic voter registration majority. At one point, that
    district was only the width of a restaurant.
        For the better part of the 2010 decade, Republicans
    controlled 13 of Pennsylvania's 18 congressional seats through
    gerrymandering, despite the fact that Democrats held a
    statewide voter registration edge of several hundred thousand.
        In 2018, as the result of a lawsuit brought by the League
    of Women Voters, Pennsylvania's congressional districts were
    declared so gerrymandered as to be an unconstitutional denial
    of the right to vote.
        Pennsylvania State law still provides for redistricting to
    occur by legislation, and there is every reason to believe the
    Republican-controlled legislature will abuse this power again
    when it redistricts the Commonwealth later this year to reflect
    the loss of a congressional seat.
        An effort to amend the State constitution to substitute a
    redistricting commission for the current partisan process was
    gutted by those same legislators just a year or so ago.
        Without congressional intervention, we will continue to see
    politicians crack and pack districts to their benefit.
        I want to take a moment to address some of the false claims
    being pushed about the voter legislation, H.R. 1, and the John
    Lewis Voting Rights Act.
        These bills are absolutely necessary, as we see a concerted
    effort by Republican legislatures across the country to make it
    harder to vote and, oh, easier to overthrow elections.
        First of all, this is not a Federal takeover of the
    election process. Article I, section 4 of the Constitution
    empowers Congress to regulate Federal elections.
        Second, H.R. 1 and the Voting Rights Act do not outlaw
    voter ID. All States require some form of voter ID in
    registration or the voting process.
        What these laws do is outlaw voter ID laws that preference
    some voters over others. A classic example is the Texas statute
    which recognized voters with a gun license but not with a
    student ID.
        Third, although--I can't read my own writing because it
    disintegrated last night. Oh, although Republican legislatures
    over the past several decades have led the way to implement no-
    excuse mail-in voting, including a law that was passed before
    COVID in Pennsylvania, that changed in 2020, when former
    President Trump began, without evidence, to malign the use of
    mail-in ballots.
        I want to make clear: Mail-in ballots are secure. They have
    multiple levels of security. They have been used by our
    military since the Civil War. And there is no evidence of
    widespread fraud. To the contrary, mail-in voting was a
    blessing during the pandemic.
        For our witnesses, thank you so much for being here today.
        Mr. Holder, we last met coordinating election protection
    efforts in the Philadelphia region in 2008.
        You discussed Shelby in which Justice Roberts invited
    Congress to update the preclearance sections to respond to
    modern conditions. I happen to agree with the late Justice Ruth
    Bader Ginsburg, who dissented in that case, saying that
    preclearance was, in fact, working and throwing it away was
    like throwing away an umbrella in a storm because you are not
    getting wet.
        Since Shelby, voter suppression efforts have metastasized
    across the country in new forms. As one of my colleagues from
    Pennsylvania, Malcolm Kenyatta, recently said, we now have
    artisanal voter suppression.
        Can you talk a little bit about what we should be doing
    with respect to reauthorizing the preclearance provisions?
        Mr. Holder. I think we certainly have to respond to the
    findings of the Shelby County decision, holding hearings like
    this, creating a record that shows the impact of the Shelby
    decision--1,700 polling place closures, unnecessary voting
    purges--to establish a record for congressional action.
        The Court in the Shelby decision actually invited
    congressional action, and I think the efforts that are being
    led by Chairman Butterfield here are consistent with what the
    Shelby County decision mandated.
        I think that the Congress, through the necessary work and
    making appropriate findings, can craft legislation that would
    be responsive to the concerns expressed by five members of the
    Court and come up with a new system that, in fact, would pass
    constitutional muster.
        Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
        Ms. Scanlon. Mr.----
        Chairman Butterfield. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    You can make this your last question, if you can.
        Ms. Scanlon. Actually, I would just seek unanimous consent
    to enter into the record the testimony of Kristen Clarke, now
    Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, when
    she testified before the House Judiciary Committee,
    Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil
    Liberties in 2019, outlining the dozens, if not hundreds, of
    voter suppression acts that had occurred since the Shelby
    decision.
        And with that, I yield back. Thank you.
        Chairman Butterfield. The statement of the Assistant
    Attorney General, Ms. Clarke, will be received, unless there is
    objection.
        Hearing no objection, it will be received.
        [The information follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. At this time, the chair is pleased to
    recognize the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Mr. Steil.
        Mr. Steil. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And thank you to our panelists for being here this morning.
        Mr. Hearne, in your testimony you stated that you served as
    an adviser on the Commission on Federal Election Reform,
    commonly known as the Carter-Baker Commission.
        The commission made a total of 87 election reform
    recommendations to increase voter confidence in the election
    process following the 2000 Presidential election, and most
    notable was the commission's endorsement of a photo
    identification requirement to vote.
        How many members served on the Carter-Baker Commission, Mr.
    Hearne?
        Mr. Hearne?
        The pros/cons of an electronic hybrid. I will answer the
    question. It is 21 commissioners----
        Mr. Hearne. [Inaudible.]
        Mr. Steil. Are you there, Mr. Hearne?
        Mr. Hearne. Yes, I am. Let me--I am here, yeah. Sorry,
    Member Steil.
        Mr. Steil. That is fine. There were 21 commissioners on the
    Carter-Baker Commission. It was bipartisan, Republicans and
    Democrats, correct?
        Mr. Hearne. That is correct. It included luminaries from
    this body like Lee Hamilton, Bob Michel, obviously President
    Carter and Secretary Baker.
        Mr. Steil. And how many members voted in support of the
    voter ID recommendation?
        Mr. Hearne. They all voted in support of it except for two
    members--Tom Daschle and Spencer Overton--who filed a
    supplemental statement in which they said they didn't support
    the use of the Federal Real ID as an identification.
        Mr. Steil. So in summary, Democrats and Republicans on that
    commission in 2000, looking to increase voter confidence in the
    election, voted in favor of photo ID.
        Let me shift gears here slightly. I think one thing we can
    all agree on is that voting rights are important and that every
    single eligible person who wants to vote should have the
    opportunity to cast a ballot, and that every vote should be
    counted according to State law. And thankfully our country has
    come a long way since the 1960s.
        And so I would like to dive into the preclearance, which is
    really an extreme legal remedy.
        Mr. Holder, as you are aware, in 2013 the United States
    Supreme Court declared the preclearance coverage formula
    unconstitutional in Shelby County because the criteria used
    were outdated and, therefore, violated principles of equal
    State sovereignty and Federalism.
        And so the preclearance formula in the Voting Rights Act
    was based on 1965 election information, which had low turnout
    rates, in particular among minority voters.
        If a new preclearance formula was introduced, what would be
    your specific criteria to identify a covered jurisdiction?
        Mr. Holder. Well, I think that what we would have to do is
    do what the Congress did back in 1965, which is to conduct
    hearings, as you are doing now, come up with ways in which you
    look at States that have----
        Mr. Steil. But you are uniquely knowledgeable, you sit on a
    board, you study this. What would be the specific criteria that
    you would recommend Congress look at to determine who would be
    covered?
        Mr. Holder. Well, I would look at voter participation. I
    would look at the way in which lines were drawn when it comes
    to gerrymandering. And gerrymandering has an impact on this
    whole question of keeping people away from the polls.
        If we look at the poll closures, 1,700 since Shelby County,
    750 in Texas, 320 in Arizona----
        Mr. Steil. So I am going to reclaim my time. I am going to
    reclaim my time just because we are so tight on time here.
        So I appreciate that.
        Let me share my concern, is that I don't know how
    jurisdictions are going to know exactly whether or not they are
    in or out of this preclearance. And my concern is that every
    jurisdiction is going to find themselves under the role of the
    Federal Government, continuing to push towards a Federal
    Government takeover of our elections. That is my concern.
        And Chief Justice Roberts noted that the Department of
    Justice is, quote, ``famously opaque, and usually the States
    and municipalities have to go through or had to go through
    several layers of back and forth. It is sort of a bargaining
    process,'' end quote.
        So, to me, my concern is that the Department of Justice is
    not going to be impartial. And in 2013, the Department of
    Justice Inspector General reviewed the DOJ hiring process and
    determined that eight of the nine new hires to the Voting
    Rights Section had one or more liberal affiliations, and two of
    them had an affiliation with the Democratic Party itself. Five
    of the hires had affiliation with five specific civil rights
    groups. Two of the groups are providing testimony today.
        The IG also noted that none--none--of the ten candidates
    had conservative or Republican affiliations that were hired.
    And only 1 of 235 candidates with unknown affiliations was
    hired.
        With the observations of the DOJ hiring practice focused on
    specific partisan ideological affiliations, I am concerned that
    States won't get a fair shake.
        And Mr. Holder, I know that in your testimony you noted
    that you are not asking for favoritism towards any political
    party. But the group that you represent, the National
    Democratic Redistricting Committee, in their IRS filing stated
    that the purpose of the organization is to build a
    comprehensive plan to favorably position Democrats for the
    redistricting process through 2022.
        Is that correct?
        Mr. Holder. Yeah. To favorably place Democrats in a
    position to fight for fairness----
        Mr. Steil. So----
        Mr. Holder [continuing]. To fight for fairness, and make
    sure that the process is indeed fair. We have to ensure that
    Democrats have the capacity to [inaudible]----
        Mr. Steil. Reclaiming my time, and noting that we are in
    the home stretch.
        Mr. Holder [continuing].--With their Republican----
        Mr. Steil. Understood. Just I think it is important to note
    the purpose of the organization that you represent--and Mr.
    Chairman, I will wrap up by seeking unanimous consent to submit
    to the record Mr. Holder's organization's IRS filing with that
    purpose so stated.
        Chairman Butterfield. Without objection, so ordered.
        [The information follows:]

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        Mr. Holder. Let me just say that that is a
    mischaracterization of the intent of that filing. And beyond
    that, the notion that the Justice Department----
        Mr. Steil. Mr. Holder, you are saying that you unfairly
    characterized yourself in your own IRS filing? That you
    misfiled an IRS----
        Mr. Holder. You are unfairly characterizing that which we
    wrote. And beyond that----
        Mr. Steil. I am reading--I am not mischaracterizing
    anything. It says, ``describe the purpose of the
    organization.'' I quoted it in full.
        Chairman Butterfield. The Committee will come to order. As
    I used to say when I was a trial judge years ago, the witness
    may complete his answer. All right.
        Mr. Holder. One can look at words and mischaracterize them.
    With all due respect, Congressman, you are looking at those
    words and mischaracterizing them. I am trying to give you their
    true intention.
        And beyond that, more importantly though, this notion that
    the Justice Department has somehow acted in a partisan way,
    Republican as well as Democratic attorneys general really
    enforced the Voting Rights Act during the course of its
    history.
        Every President who signed the reauthorization of the
    Voting Rights Act was, in fact, a Republican.
        Chairman Butterfield. The gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Holder. The reauthorization of the act was supported
    almost unanimously by Republicans and Democrats in the House as
    well as in the Senate.
        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Mr. Holder.
        At this time, the chair recognizes Mr. Aguilar for five
    minutes.
        Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. And
    I will do something unique here. I will ask a question and then
    let the witnesses answer.
        Attorney General Holder, for the first time since the 1970s
    our Nation is entering a congressional redistricting cycle
    without preclearance, as Ms. Scanlon mentioned.
        What does this mean for communities of color who have been
    disproportionately affected by the drawing of jurisdictional
    boundaries and already lack representation at the local, State,
    and Federal level?
        Mr. Holder. Well, I am very concerned about what this will
    mean. We have seen what State legislatures have done since the
    Shelby County decision with regard to closing polling places,
    with regard to--you look at the way in which Republicans
    gerrymandered in the 2011 process.
        One of the places, we are talking about Wisconsin. If you
    look at in 2018, Democrats got about 54 percent of the votes
    for the Wisconsin State Legislature, got about 36 percent of
    the seats.
        I am concerned that without the protections of the Voting
    Rights Act, that which we have seen in the past decade can
    continue into the following decade and have a negative impact
    on the ability of the American people to elect representatives
    who truly represent their policy desires.
        Mr. Aguilar. After the Shelby ruling, Mr. Attorney General,
    what is the litigation strategy to fight voter discrimination
    and disenfranchisement within communities of color?
        Mr. Holder. Well, we bring cases where we can identify
    racial gerrymanders, and we can bring those into Federal court.
    We have also, after the Rucho decision, brought partisan
    gerrymandering cases in the State courts using the State
    constitutions, done so successfully in North Carolina, as has
    been mentioned, in Pennsylvania as well.
        And so the Supreme Court rulings have made it difficult for
    us to bring litigation but not necessarily impossible.
        Mr. Aguilar. And the Chair talks about this often. Can you
    talk a little bit about the cost of the litigation and the time
    that it takes?
        Mr. Holder. Yeah. The preclearance--the beauty of
    preclearance was that you stopped negative action before it
    began. Without the ability to preclear in those States that
    were covered, you have to deal with things that have already
    occurred, negative impacts that have already occurred, and try
    to unwind them.
        And it means that you have probably gone through at least
    one election cycle where a finding of impropriety has occurred,
    at least one election cycle where something--where a process
    was done inappropriately and probably had a negative impact on
    the voters in the State or the jurisdiction in which the
    litigation has been brought.
        Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, sir.
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee, in your written testimony you
    mentioned States and local jurisdictions carving up
    reservations or packing Indian voters in redistricting plans in
    order to minimize the impact of the Native vote and that this
    method was called cracking and packing.
        Can you talk a little bit about how cracking and packing
    has affected Native Americans, particularly at the local level?
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee. Yes. Thank you, Representative
    Aguilar.
        We see that there are quite a bit of cracking and packing
    in local jurisdictions. I think I set forth in my testimony
    some examples of that. And that has really minimized the Native
    American voice and the ability to participate.
        There are also jurisdictions that have added seats on
    county commissions or judgeships in order to dilute the Native
    American vote and participation in elections.
        And when preclearance was in effect in Arizona, for
    example, there were objections to two rounds--two submissions
    from counties that sought to expand the judgeship positions,
    and in that they found that that would reduce Native American
    participation.
        So that has been done really to minimize the Native
    American voice.
        And then we see--I just want to give the example of the San
    Juan Southern Paiute case, because you asked about cost. That
    litigation took 7 years and cost the plaintiffs, which was the
    Tribe, $3.4 million.
        But these jurisdictions are also spending money to defend
    their plan. So if they were protected by preclearance--Utah
    wasn't covered by preclearance before--but if they were
    protected by preclearance, then a lot of this money would be
    saved for our local jurisdictions and for the Tribes. And most
    of the Tribes do not have the resources to be expending on
    voting rights litigation.
        Mr. Aguilar. You said 3 and a half years and--I am sorry, 7
    years and $3.5 million?
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee. Yes, yes. And that was really to
    prevent Native Americans from gaining another seat on the
    County Commission. They were packed, 90 percent of Native
    Americans were packed into one district. And the other two
    districts maintained a lower number of people, so they were
    malapportioned.
        And so the Navajo Nation had to file litigation to
    apportion those districts correctly and to give them an
    opportunity to elect two candidates of choice, which they did.
        Mr. Aguilar. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
        Mr. Chair, I yield back.
        Chairman Butterfield. The gentleman yields back.
        The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member of the full
    committee, Mr. Davis.
        Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        As somebody who comes from a State that is completely
    controlled by one party, the Democrats, who have
    supermajorities in the House and the Senate. We have a
    Democratic Governor who pledged not to sign a legislative drawn
    map. He broke that pledge when he recently signed a State
    legislative map drawn with incomplete census data.
        I listened to Attorney General Holder's opening comments
    and I think, wow, we are going to have a group come in and
    address the partisan gerrymandering in Illinois.
        Mr. Holder, I enjoyed your opening comments. We got a
    chance to meet at the State of the Union one year. I am glad to
    see you here again.
        Can you tell me how recently it has been since you have
    been to Illinois to discuss partisan gerrymandering?
        Mr. Holder. I have focused on partisan gerrymandering
    around the country and have stood against Democrats who have
    engaged in that process, whether it was in the case, the
    redistricting case, the Rucho case, standing against what
    happened in Maryland. I have stood against Democrats in New
    Jersey and in New York who have tried to use power that they
    have there to engage in partisan gerrymandering.
        And I am against partisan and racial gerrymandering done by
    any party in any place.
        Mr. Davis. Well, I would welcome you to come to my home
    State of Illinois. I didn't get an answer when the last time
    you were there to talk about this issue.
        I do have a quick question regarding this. Does the
    National Democratic Redistricting Committee support the
    Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund's lawsuit against the State
    of Illinois for the redistricting plan that was adopted by the
    Illinois General Assembly just a few weeks ago and signed into
    law by Governor J.B. Pritzker?
        Mr. Holder. I will be honest with you. I have not had a
    chance to review that lawsuit, but I would be more than glad to
    do that and submit some supplementary comments with regard to
    the views of the organization and my personal views on the
    lawsuit.
        Mr. Davis. I really appreciate that.
        Also, Illinois' current map was drawn in 2011. There is a
    lot of discussion here about partisan gerrymandering in 2011.
    There is a district represented by my good friend and colleague
    Mr. Chuy Garcia that is commonly known as the earmuff district.
        Would that be an example of Democrats packing minorities
    into one district?
        Mr. Holder. Again, I am not familiar with the particular
    map.
        But gerrymandering is not something that is only done by
    Republicans. It has been done by Democrats. We have had
    gerrymandering almost since the inception of our Nation, which
    doesn't mean we have to accept it.
        Princeton did a study that said that gerrymandering done by
    Republicans in 2011 was the worst of the past 50 years, but
    there are Democratic as well as Republican excesses that I
    stand against. Let me make that very, very clear.
        Mr. Davis. Well, I appreciate that. And I noticed during
    the decade there were remaps drawn only in Republican States.
        I would again welcome your organization to come to my home
    State of Illinois any year, because they just--the Democrats
    just gerrymandered the State legislative map, and we expect
    them to do exactly the same thing with the congressional map.
        So I welcome you and your team to the fight, and I
    certainly hope that we can communicate in the future on this.
        General Holder, both the Carter-Baker Commission and the
    Bauer-Ginsberg Commission established by President Obama
    identified inaccurate voter rolls as a national problem. And,
    unfortunately, I believe it is still true today.
        You served, as we know, as AG from 2009 to 2015. And during
    your tenure at DOJ, how many NVRA Section 8 enforcement actions
    or investigations did the Department bring against States for
    failure to conduct list maintenance?
        Mr. Holder. I don't have those numbers in front of me, but
    we certainly took our obligations seriously in that regard.
        Mr. Davis. According to the DOJ website, there were no
    enforcement actions for failure to conduct list maintenance,
    only one action against Florida for so-called purging voters.
        How did you guys know at DOJ during your tenure if a State
    was in compliance with provisions of the NVRA or not?
        Mr. Holder. Well, we have a variety of techniques. We
    certainly listen to public comments that we get from a variety
    of sources. We have investigative components within the Justice
    Department that are able to monitor the situations that are
    happening around the country. We have a Civil Rights Division,
    a Voting Rights Section that has investigative power.
        So the Justice Department has a number of ways in which it
    can monitor situations around the Nation.
        Mr. Davis. I appreciate that, sir. And I know many of your
    donors to the National Democratic Redistricting Committee may
    not agree with you wanting to come to States like Illinois, but
    I certainly appreciate your willingness to talk about these
    things.
        Do you support donor disclosure?
        Mr. Holder. I do. I do think that there needs to be
    transparency with regard to who is making donations to
    political organizations, and that would be good for our
    democracy.
        Mr. Davis. Sir, will you disclose the donors to the
    National Democratic Redistricting Committee for the record
    today?
        Mr. Holder. Well, what we do is follow the law as it
    exists. I am not going to unilaterally disarm. When Republicans
    will do the same thing, I will do that and we will certainly
    follow the law.
        But I stand for the disclosure obligations that are
    contained in the bills that are being considered before
    Congress.
        Mr. Davis. Well, I would appreciate any disclosure. Happy
    to talk with you in the future, sir. Thank you for your
    responses.
        And thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.
        Chairman Butterfield. And we thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
        At this time, the chair recognizes Ms. Teresa Fernandez for
    five minutes.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you so much.
        Chairman Butterfield. Leger Fernandez.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. It is a long name. Thank you so much,
    Mr. Chair.
        We are here because American democracy really does depend
    on our power to ensure fair and free elections for all our
    communities, not just some of our communities, because every
    citizen, regardless of ZIP Code, has a right to vote without
    interference and obstruction.
        Before I came to Congress, I actually represented Native
    American Tribes in redistricting cases and overturned
    Republican redistricting maps that sought to divide Native
    American communities.
        We advocated, I advocated the committee include language in
    H.R. 1 to ensure that independent redistricting commissions
    respect Tribal communities when drawing boundaries.
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee, based on your experience with regards
    to Native American voting rights, do you believe that Tribes
    and Native American communities should be protected as
    communities of interest in the Voting Rights Act?
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee. Thank you very much for the question.
        I do definitely agree that Native Americans, within their
    reservation, they should be determined a community of interest.
        We have seen in some circumstances where redistricting
    bodies or those who are making the redistricting decisions have
    split Tribal boundaries and Tribal reservations into multiple
    districts, diluting the effectiveness of that vote.
        We also have Tribes who share communities of interest with
    other Tribal people. They are communities of interest and have
    advocated for that, but, nonetheless, they have also been split
    and they have been packed or cracked into different districts.
        And in that circumstance, there are examples of cracking. I
    have that in my testimony. I can attach some more specifics for
    the record if you would like.
        But I think that is a huge issue, is respecting Tribal
    boundaries and respecting Tribal communities of interest, and
    some redistricting bodies do not do that.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you very much.
        And, for example, in New Mexico we did include the Pueblos
    and the Apaches in single districts, legislative districts,
    precisely because of the fact that they do have affinity on
    many issues and that is what they chose.
        With regards to the independent redistricting commissions,
    where they exist, have you seen whether there has been
    sufficient Native American representation on those commissions,
    therefore reflecting the communities that will be affected by
    the redistricting lines drawn by the commissions?
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee. Well, this round I think there are a
    few Native Americans who are serving on redistricting
    commissions. I think there is Native interest in Montana,
    another State I can't remember off the top of my head. But
    Arizona for the first time has a Native American on the
    commission.
        And I think that is really important, because I think, as I
    explained in my materials, Native Americans have very rural
    areas across the country. They are some of the most rural
    areas, and they have unique needs that may not be understood by
    many of the people who live in urban areas.
        So to understand Tribes and to understand the unique needs
    of Tribal people I think is very important. And we have seen
    that commissions, at least this round, have included some
    Native Americans on their redistricting commissions.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you.
        With regards to the San Juan litigation, how many elections
    took place during those 7 years that the case was being
    litigated?
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee. Yeah. I am sorry. I don't know off the
    top of my head. But I assume--yeah, I don't know off the top of
    my head how many elections took place during that time period.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. But essentially, those elections took
    place with maps that were later found to be unlawful, and,
    therefore, Native Americans did not have the kind of
    representation for 7 years while laws were being passed.
        Mr. Vattamala, thank you so much for joining us today.
        Could you describe more fully how preclearance as opposed
    to Section 2 litigation impacts Asian Americans' access to the
    ballot?
        Mr. Vattamala. Yeah. So, as I mentioned, even in places
    like New York, we were able to successfully use Section 5 in a
    variety of ways, in combination with Section 203.
        We used Section 5 to object, submit our objections to the
    DOJ when the New York City Board of Elections refused to
    translate Chinese ballots with the candidates' names. They
    refused to translate the candidate ballot, the candidates'
    names on the ballot.
        We were able to use Section 5 to require them to do that
    translation, fully translate the ballot, and have 55,000
    limited-English-proficient Chinese Americans able to vote.
        I also gave the example of Hubert Vo in Texas in that Texas
    House district. We would not have been able--we would not have
    the resources to litigate under Section 2 for that seat, but
    under Section 5 the burden was on the State, and they were not
    able to carry that burden. And it was a great example of how
    Section 5 worked well for communities with limited resources.
        Chairman Butterfield. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
        At this time, the Chair will recognize himself for five
    minutes. And I will go back to Mr. Vattamala.
        U.S. census data reflects that Asian Americans are the
    fastest growing racial group in the United States.
        Historically, we have seen that areas with significant
    growth in racial groups are also where there is greatest risk
    of discriminatory intent or discriminatory result in
    redistricting practices.
        How have these rapidly growing Asian American communities,
    many of which are in the South, been impacted by redistricting
    post-Shelby?
        Mr. Vattamala. So there is a backlash. We have seen it in
    some public comments by elected officials, which are included
    in the testimony.
        Asian American communities of interest, when we map them
    out and see where the boundaries are and do this exercise of
    superimposing those neighborhood boundaries over legislative
    lines, you see that in almost every instance--it is not a
    coincidence--in almost every instance, Asian-American
    communities of interest are divided into numerous different
    districts, subverting this growth and thwarting the effects of
    this growth and the numbers, to deny them the ability to elect
    a candidate of their choice.
        That is why the percentage of Asian American elected
    officials is not keeping track with that population growth. And
    we only see Asian American electoral representation when we
    have fair redistricting. Only then are they able to elect a
    candidate of choice and they usually do.
        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you. Thank you for that.
        Next, I will address this to General Holder.
        Attorney General Holder, you were at DOJ at the time that
    Shelby County was handed down, and so you operated in two
    environments. You were involved in the pre-Shelby environment
    as well as the post-Shelby environment. And I know that must
    have been awkward for you as Attorney General.
        Section 5, as I recall, in the Court's decision was found
    to be constitutional. That is what America needs to know. The
    Supreme Court of the United States found Section 5 to be
    constitutional.
        What was found to be unconstitutional was Section 4, which
    is the formula that gives life to Section 5.
        And so I know it must have been awkward for you at DOJ,
    operating under the Court's decision.
        And also, I might recognize that the Court, Chief Justice
    Roberts also acknowledged that voter discrimination continues
    to exist in the United States. And so that also is embedded in
    the Court's opinion.
        And I recall I was a young voting rights attorney in North
    Carolina many years ago, back in the 1980s, and I practiced
    Section 5 law.
        President Reagan was President. William Bradford Reynolds,
    as I recall, was the chief of the Civil Rights Section of the
    Department of Justice. And during the Reagan years, there were
    multiple Section 5 objections to election systems and to
    changes in election laws.
        And let me defend some of the jurisdictions in the South
    that I am familiar with. Many of these voting changes were not
    done specifically with the intent to discriminate against
    African American voters, but they had a discriminatory effect.
        And so that is what the Department of Justice under
    President Reagan had to do. And the standard back then, it
    continues to be the standard now. And I will read it again,
    because I want America to know this: ``A State voting law has a
    discriminatory, regressive effect if the law disproportionately
    and materially burdens minority voters when it is measured
    against preexisting State law.''
        And so my question to you, General Holder, is, how did the
    Shelby decision affect executing your duties at the Department
    of Justice when it was handed down?
        Mr. Holder. Well, the biggest change was by, in essence,
    taking away the preclearance ability. But you are right,
    because of the Section 4 problems, it stopped us from
    preventing negative things from occurring as opposed to waiting
    for those negative things to occur and then trying to make
    things better.
        It is almost as if you see somebody getting ready to set
    fire to a house. You can stop them and prevent the house from
    being damaged as opposed to waiting for the fire to engulf the
    house and then trying to repair the house once the fire is put
    out.
        And so there are still parts of the Voting Rights Act that
    remain that are effective. Section 2, for instance. But that
    doesn't give the Justice Department all of the tools that it
    needs.
        And I really want to push back on the notion that somehow
    or other this was something only the Democratic Attorneys
    General were focused or made a priority.
        As you talk about the Reagan Justice Department, the Bush
    Justice Department, I might not agree with all that they did,
    but they made a priority the enforcement of the Voting Rights
    Act.
        Maybe I would say they didn't go far enough, but certainly
    they did things consistent with the intent of the act to
    protect the sanctity of our electoral system using the tools
    that they had.
        Chairman Butterfield. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for that
    clarification.
        And what my colleagues need to know--not those on this
    committee, because they already know it, but the colleagues
    throughout the House--is that Section 5 is an administrative
    procedure. It is streamlined. It can be completed in 60 days.
    There is no cost associated with it.
        The covered jurisdiction need only to submit in writing the
    proposed change to the Department of Justice for an evaluation
    as to whether or not it is retrogressive. If DOJ says it is not
    retrogressive, it goes into effect. If DOJ says that it is
    retrogressive, it does not go into effect and the jurisdiction
    then goes back and rewrites the law. And oftentimes, rewriting
    of the law is done with consultation with DOJ.
        And I will conclude by mentioning Rocky Mount, North
    Carolina, in my district. When I was a voting rights attorney,
    the city wanted to annex 12 or 13 acres of land within the
    municipal boundaries.
        The city didn't realize the effect that it would have on
    minority voting strength in the community. It was about
    economic development. They wanted to get a shopping center into
    the city and they wanted to annex.
        And once DOJ expressed an objection to the annexation, that
    is when the city asked DOJ, well, what can we do to make it
    right? And DOJ said, well, if you create single-member
    districts, that will kind of level the playing field. And the
    city said, you have got it, we are going to create single-
    member districts.
        They did it. And now it is 30 years later and things are
    well in that jurisdiction.
        That is the power of Section 5. It prevents. It prevents a
    problem.
        Thank you for your tolerance.
        At this time, I will recognize Mr. Loudermilk.
        Welcome back, Barry. You are recognized for five minutes.
        Mr. Loudermilk. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
    you allowing me to participate in this even though I am not an
    official member of this Subcommittee.
        And I apologize. I had to step out. As things go here, we
    had some conflicting meetings, especially now as we are opening
    up and people are coming to meet with us in person. So I
    appreciate your indulgence.
        Look, voter ID laws have been a huge topic since the 2020
    election. In Georgia, they have been a big topic for many
    years. I was in the State legislature when we first adopted a
    clear and concise voter ID law, and it has been debated but did
    find bipartisan support there.
        And in spite of what some of the witnesses here and some
    others may believe, that voter ID laws are very popular and
    really an important safeguard for election integrity and the
    confidence of voters in the election process.
        Most everyone has probably heard of the latest polls that
    have been coming out. Just this week, Monmouth University
    released polling data showing 80 percent of Americans support
    voter ID, and that did not surprise me in the least.
        Friends I have on both sides of the aisle think it is very
    important that you be able to prove who you are for something--
    or who you say you are--for something as important as choosing
    who the leaders of your school board, your city, your county,
    your State, your Nation are. It has great implications and it
    is an intricate part of being a secure election system.
        Even someone I served with in the State legislature, it
    kind of did surprise me of her statement, but Stacey Abrams has
    just recently said no one has ever objected to having to prove
    who you are to vote.
        Now, if my memory serves me correctly, that isn't the
    stance she took when we served in the legislature together
    regarding this matter, but I think we are starting to see a
    shift as people are seeing that this is very popular among
    people, because they want their vote to be protected.
        Attorney General Holder, in your testimony you reference
    voter ID laws as one method that has been used to, I think, if
    I have got it right, strip Americans of their rights.
        In the light of polling information I just referenced,
    including among Democrats and comments like those from Ms.
    Abrams, I am just wondering, have you changed your viewpoint on
    voter ID and do you or do you not support it and why?
        Mr. Holder. What I oppose is the overly prescriptive way in
    which States, generally Republican States, have indicated that
    which is acceptable to prove that you are who you claim to be
    when you want to vote.
        If you expand the number of things that somebody can use to
    prove they are who they claim to be, I could support voter ID.
    But we have that problem in Texas, as was mentioned before,
    where carrying a gun and you have a photo ID, that is
    acceptable, but a State-issued photo ID for a student is not. I
    have got problems with that.
        So if you come up with ways in which you make it widely
    available and you expand the number of ways in which people can
    prove that they are who they claim to be, yeah, I could see
    supporting voter ID measures.
        Mr. Loudermilk. Well, that is good and refreshing to hear.
        In Georgia, if you don't receive a driver's license, you
    can get a free State-issued ID. And so anyone can receive the
    ID and it can be used as identification for voting.
        Mr. Vattamala, do you support voter ID laws? And, if so or
    not, why?
        Mr. Vattamala. Yeah. So we support reasonable voter ID
    laws. It is really the same answer as Mr. Holder. It depends on
    what that list of acceptable documentation is.
        Mr. Loudermilk. Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee, do you support voter
    ID laws? And what about Tribal ID as a form of acceptable voter
    ID?
        Ms. Ferguson-Bohnee. Thank you for that question.
        We have advocated for the use of Tribal IDs when IDs are
    required. In some instances, they have not been accepted or
    States have not accepted that as a form of ID, and that should
    be accepted as a form of ID.
        I would like to note that the Navajo Nation, the largest
    Tribe in the United States, does not issue a photo ID to their
    Tribal members. And so that was concerning when Arizona passed
    their voter ID law, because it didn't take into account what
    types of ID that Native Americans may have.
        In addition, because in rural areas and on reservations a
    lot of areas, especially Arizona, other areas, people don't
    have traditional street addresses. And when they go to vote on
    election day their addresses don't match, because the counties
    change the addresses on the voter registration materials. And
    so that creates problems and sometimes results in votes not
    being counted.
        Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you.
        Continuing on the topic of voter ID, Mr. Hearne, you state
    in your testimony that Democratic Virginia Attorney General
    Mark Herring appointed you to defend Virginia's election reform
    legislation against a constitutional challenge. That challenge
    included a voter ID requirement, correct?
        Mr. Hearne. It did, Congressman. And that was upheld by the
    Fourth Circuit.
        I would cite Virginia's voter ID law as a model of one that
    is constitutional, consistent with the Supreme Court's decision
    in Crawford. And I would also note, in terms of your statement,
    civil rights leader Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta,
    supports photo ID.
        And what we found in the Carter-Baker Commission was that
    there was testimony that actually giving particularly minority
    members a photo ID for free increased their participation,
    because it gave them greater confidence that when they went
    into a polling place, they handed the ID over, they knew they
    would be given a ballot that would be cast and counted. So it
    increased participation.
        Chairman Butterfield. The gentleman's time has expired. All
    time has expired for this panel.
        We want to say thank you to all of our panelists. Thank you
    very much for your testimony. And thank you for your
    cooperation as we have tried to work through the technology. I
    think we have done reasonably well this morning. But thank you
    to the witnesses.
        We in just a moment will be moving to the second panel.
    But, as they say in television, we will stop for a commercial
    break, and we will return in 2 or 3 minutes.
        The committee stands in recess until further call.
        [Recess.]
        Chairman Butterfield. The committee will come back to
    order.
        We are now ready to proceed with the second panel.
        And thank you, panelists, for your patience this morning.
        Joining us today on our second panel are Thomas Saenz of
    the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Also,
    Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
    Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice. Wade
    Henderson of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human
    Rights. And Sara Frankenstein of the law firm of Gunderson,
    Palmer, Nelson & Ashmore in the State of South Dakota.
        Also, Thomas Saenz is President and General Counsel of the
    Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund--we refer
    to it as MALDEF--where he leads the civil rights organization's
    offices in pursuing litigation, policy advocacy, and community
    education to promote the civil rights of Latinos living in the
    United States. He rejoined MALDEF in August of 2009 after 4
    years as counsel to the Mayor in Los Angeles, California.
        Janai Nelson. Janai is the Associate Director-Counsel at
    the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. We call it LDF.
    Ms. Nelson is a member of LDF's litigation and policy teams and
    has served as interim Director of LDF's Thurgood Marshall
    Institute and in various other leadership capacities at LDF.
    She was one of the lead counsels in Veasey v. Abbott, a
    successful Federal challenge to Texas voter ID law.
        Mr. Waldman, who sits in front of me at this moment, is the
    President of the Brennan Center for Justice, which he has led
    since 2005. Mr. Waldman is a constitutional lawyer. He is a
    writer and an expert on the Presidency and American democracy.
    Mr. Waldman was director of speechwriting for President Bill
    Clinton from 1995 to 1999, serving as assistant to the
    President.
        Wade Henderson, who I will acknowledge publicly is a
    friend, is the interim President and CEO of the Leadership
    Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Leadership
    Conference Education Fund, an organization he previously led
    for more than 20 years.
        The Leadership Conference is the Nation's premier civil and
    human rights coalition, charged to promote and protect the
    civil and human rights of all persons in the United States.
        He recently retired as the University of the District of
    Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law first Joseph Rauh Chair
    of Public Interest Law.
        That is a pretty long sentence, Mr. Henderson, but that is
    your experience.
        Next, Sara Frankenstein is a partner at Gunderson, Palmer,
    Nelson & Ashmore, in Rapid City, South Dakota. She practices in
    the areas of civil litigation, civil rights, employment law and
    election law, among other things. She is also the vice chair of
    the South Dakota State Advisory Committee to the U.S.
    Commission on Civil Rights.
        Again, thank you to the witnesses for your testimony today.
    We will now begin with Mr. Saenz.
        You are recognized for five minutes.

      STATEMENTS OF THOMAS SAENZ, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL,
      MEXICAN-AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND; JANAI
     NELSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR-COUNSEL, NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE FUND;
      MICHAEL WALDMAN, PRESIDENT, BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE, NYU
       SCHOOL OF LAW; WADE HENDERSON, INTERIM PRESIDENT AND CEO,
       LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS; AND SARA
       FRANKENSTEIN, PARTNER, GUNDERSON, PALMER, NELSON & ASHMORE

                       STATEMENT OF THOMAS SAENZ

        Mr. Saenz. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair, honorable
    members.
        As President of MALDEF, I lead an organization that has for
    53 years now worked to promote the civil rights of all Latinos
    living in the United States.
        Central to that mission has been our efforts over the years
    legislatively and in court to protect the voting rights of
    Latino citizens, the right of every Latino citizen to cast an
    effective vote.
        In the Latino community since at least 1981, every year
    following a Decennial Census has been a year of great political
    opportunity as each succeeding Census has demonstrated the
    substantial growth and dispersion of the Latino community,
    including a growth in the Latino voting population. Absent some
    overwhelming and disparate undercount in the 2020 census, we
    expect a similar outcome from the 2020 Census.
        Although we do not yet have the subpopulation data for the
    Decennial Census, the Census Bureau's own American Community
    Survey estimates show that Latinos accounted for just over half
    of the entire Nation's population growth between 2010 and 2019.
        ACS data also estimates that Latinos made up over 44
    percent of the entire Nation's growth in citizen, voting-age
    population, a suitable proxy for eligible voters, between 2009
    and 2019.
        However, one consequence of this continued growth in the
    Latino community is that there is little question that the
    growth nationally of the Latino community and its potential
    voting impact is seen by some as a threat to their political
    power. This has had two major effects.
        First, it has resulted in Latinos becoming central to
    numerous false assertions questioning the integrity of our
    elections. These false assertions with regard to the Latino
    community generally take the form of completely unsupported
    assertions that Latino immigrants who are not yet citizens are
    voting in substantial numbers.
        Political forces use these false assertions to back up
    onerous voting requirements that restrict the right to vote of
    Latinos and other populations.
        This includes new and more onerous voter identification
    requirements, new requirements to provide documented proof of
    citizenship in order to register, limitations on voter
    assistance in Spanish and other languages, attempts to
    proliferate in Spanish false information about the voting
    process, discriminatory targeting of in-person and absentee
    voters for challenge based on Latino surnames, and even in
    attempts to intimidate less experienced voters through the
    stationing of uniformed guards at polling places.
        But the second impact of this concern about the growth of
    Latino political power by some has taken the form of
    manipulation of our governance structures, including the
    perpetuation or reintroduction of at-large voting or the
    failure to acknowledge and incorporate the growth of the Latino
    community in the decennial redistricting process.
        To give just two examples. Following the Shelby County
    decision, the city of Pasadena, Texas, decided to shift from
    eight districted seats on its city council to six districted
    seats and two at-large seats. The sole purpose of this creation
    of two at-large seats was to restrict and prevent the growing
    Latino voting population from electing a majority to the city
    council.
        With respect to redistricting, I will give another example.
    Following the last Census in 2011, MALDEF identified eight
    counties in the State of California, my home State, that should
    have drawn an additional Latino majority district on their
    five-member County Board of Supervisors, but failed to do so.
        Because of the arduous cost and effort involved in
    challenging this kind of discriminatory redistricting, through
    the course of a decade we were only able to challenge--
    successfully, I add--one jurisdiction, Kern County.
        The fact is that the challenges, in the face of those who
    believe that the growth of Latino populations is a threat to
    their political power, are many.
        While a rigging of the system to embed the power of
    incumbent long-term officeholders in the face of a newly
    ascendent population like the Latino population may be
    symptomatic of human nature, it cannot be characteristic of a
    thriving democracy.
        We cannot address this system only through litigation that
    is costly and inefficient. This is not a time to shrink from
    efforts to encourage broader participation of all eligible
    citizens in voting.
        Congressional action to preserve voting rights is essential
    as we commence redistricting and as we face the continued false
    invocation of phantom threats used to justify the targeting of
    all voters of color.
        At MALDEF, we call upon the Congress to take action to
    address this ongoing problem and ensure that the voting rights
    of all Americans can be preserved and expanded.
        Thank you.
        [The statement of Mr. Saenz follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. And we thank you for your testimony.
        At this time, the Chair will recognize Ms. Nelson for five
    minutes.
        Ms. Nelson.

                       STATEMENT OF JANAI NELSON

        Ms. Nelson. Good morning. Thank you very much for allowing
    me to testify, Chair Butterfield, Ranking Members Steil and
    Davis, and members of the committee.
        My name is Janai Nelson, and I am the Associate Director-
    Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
        Since our founding in 1940 by Thurgood Marshall, LDF has
    led the fight to secure, protect, and advance the rights of
    Black voters.
        Despite the guarantees of the 14th and 15th Amendments and
    the Voting Rights Act, however, racial discrimination and
    targeted suppression of Black voters persists. And in the
    infamous 2013 Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder,
    we saw the beginnings of voter suppression metastasize in our
    country.
        By disabling Section 5 of the Voting Rights Acts, Shelby
    unleashed systematic attacks on the voting rights of racial and
    language minorities.
        Yet, one of the solutions to this assault on our democracy
    lies in the very decision that instigated it. And writing for
    the 5-4 majority of the Court, Chief Justice Roberts expressly
    invited Congress to update Section 5's preclearance formula to
    reflect modern conditions.
        For 8 years, though, Congress has failed to act, leaving
    voters of color under attack and leaving our democracy at risk.
        In LDF's report, ``Democracy Diminished: State and Local
    Threats to Voting Post-Shelby,'' we have maintained an ongoing
    catalog of the discriminatory voting changes in jurisdictions
    formerly protected by Section 5, changes that preclearance
    likely would have prevented.
        Without Section 5, we must now rely on case-by-case
    litigation under the Constitution and under another provision
    of the Voting Rights Act, Section 2, which has now become the
    primary statutory check on racial discrimination in voting.
        In fact, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
    in the first 5 years following Shelby, an unprecedented 61
    lawsuits were filed under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
    Twenty-three of these cases were successful. By contrast, in
    the 5 years before Shelby, only five Section 2 cases were won.
        This means that after Shelby, after Section 5 was disabled,
    the rate of successful Section 2 litigation quadrupled. And
    these cases arose predominantly in jurisdictions formerly
    covered by Section 5.
        I will give you a few examples.
        In 2013, LDF sued the State of Texas to stop implementation
    of its discriminatory voter ID law, a law previously blocked by
    Section 5 which Texas revived within hours of the Shelby
    decision.
        That litigation produced multiple court findings that
    Texas' voter ID law violated Section 2, including a finding of
    intentional racial discrimination against Black and LatinX
    Texans. But by 2018, when the case concluded, thousands of
    voters have been disenfranchised in hundreds of State, local,
    and Federal elections.
        In 2016, the largely White city of Gardendale, Alabama,
    attempted to secede from the more racially diverse Jefferson
    County School Board, which would have transferred Black voters
    from a districted election system where they have some
    representation to an at-large system where they have no
    representation. The 11th Circuit blocked secession in 2018
    after LDF successfully proved Gardendale was motivated by
    racial discrimination.
        In 2018, LDF also filed a suit on behalf of students at
    Prairie View A&M University, a historically Black university in
    Waller County, Texas. The county had refused to provide equal
    early voting access on the university's campus, even though
    students lack transportation and rely on early voting to access
    the franchise. That litigation is ongoing.
        In 2019, LDF and our allies sued to stop Florida from
    requiring people with past felony convictions to pay all fines
    and fees before registering to vote, a legislative overreach
    that contradicted the will of Florida voters in passing
    Amendment 4. However, the 11th Circuit reversed the district
    court's favorable ruling and blocked thousands of returning
    citizens from voting.
        In 2020 alone, we have filed five Section 2 cases. And this
    year, in 2021, we have filed two more challenging voter
    suppression bills in Georgia and in Florida.
        But, as my colleagues have said, this case-by-case
    litigation is no match for this national democracy crisis. This
    year alone, at least 14 States have rolled back early and mail
    voting, added new hurdles for voter registration, imposed
    burdensome and unnecessary voter identification requirements,
    stripped power from State and local elections to enhance voting
    access, and taken other steps to make voting more difficult.
        Litigation is a blunt instrument. It is costly and slow.
    Victories typically come only after a law has been in place for
    several elections, irreparably harming countless voters.
    Preclearance is necessary because it blocks these
    discriminatory voting laws and changes.
        In fact, the recent wave of voter suppression bills would
    likely never have been introduced under preclearance. The
    deterrent effect was Section 5's genius. It stopped
    discrimination before the harm occurred.
        We urgently need that prophylactic legislation now. It is
    unacceptable that in 2021, 56 years after the VRA's passage,
    the right to vote remains so very underprotected.
        The celebrated turnout in registration rates among Black
    voters occurred despite a litany of unequal obstacles and
    because of Herculean efforts by civil rights groups,
    organizers, and activists, and Black voters' sheer
    determination and resilience. This model is not sustainable nor
    is it acceptable.
        We urge Congress----
        Chairman Butterfield. Ms. Nelson, your time is expired. I
    hate to break the news to you, but your time--you may complete
    the sentence.
        Ms. Nelson. Thank you. We urge Congress to safeguard the
    integrity of our democracy and fulfill the generations-long
    project of perfecting our Union.
        Thank you very much for your time.
        [The statement of Ms. Nelson follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. And thank you, Ms. Nelson. And would
    you please give my best regards to the LDF staff. I have a
    longstanding friendship and relationship with LDF.
        You know, I get a lot of credit in North Carolina for
    voting rights litigation back in the 1980s, but much of that
    credit is overrated. It was the Legal Defense Fund that led the
    way and financed the lawsuits and did all of the heavy lifting
    in those cases.
        So please give my regards to LDF. And I wrote down a few
    names that I recall during those days: Jack Greenberg, Napoleon
    Jones, Lani Guinier, Julius Chambers, Leslie Winner, Elaine
    Jones, Ted Shaw, and the list goes on and on.
        And all of those people would not have been possible
    without Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.
        I just had to get that into the record, because it is
    accurate. It is a fact.
        Thank you, thank you, thank you.
        At this time, the Chair will recognize our next witness,
    and I guess that is going to be Mr. Waldman.
        You are recognized for five minutes.

                      STATEMENT OF MICHAEL WALDMAN

        Mr. Waldman. Thank you, Chairperson Butterfield, Ranking
    Member Steil, members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the
    opportunity to be here with you at this hearing.
        This is a critical moment for our democracy and a critical
    aspect of the fight for our democracy. As you all know, the
    Voting Rights Act was perhaps the most effective civil rights
    law our Nation has ever had, vital to the drive for a vibrant
    multiracial democracy in our country. As you know, 8 years ago,
    the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the most effective part of that
    law.
        Members of Congress of both parties have the power and the
    duty to right that wrong, to modernize the Voting Rights Act
    and strengthen it to defend our democracy so all Americans can
    vote.
        I want to make three points, building on the testimony that
    others have said:
        First of all, as we have just heard, for the past 8 years
    the absence of preclearance, the absence of a strong Voting
    Rights Act, opened the way for racially discriminatory voting
    rules and practices across the country.
        For example, voter purges. Removing voters from the rolls
    can be appropriate or it can remove eligible voters. We found
    in Brennan Center research that voter purge rates soared in the
    States that previously had been covered by Section 5 of the
    Voting Rights Act preclearance, 40 percent higher than the rest
    of the country. All told, 17 million people nationwide removed
    from the rolls in just 2 years.
        We have seen polling place closures and all kinds of other
    activities around the country that have been described and
    documented.
        And now in the wake of the 2020 election, the absence of a
    strong Voting Rights Act has opened the way for the attack on
    voting that is taking place right now in the States.
        We keep track of this. As of May 14 of this year, lawmakers
    in States had introduced more than 389 bills in 48 States that
    one way or another would curb the vote or restrict voting.
        And I should note that these are not backbenchers throwing
    a bill in the hopper to get a good few hours on Twitter. These
    are bills that are passing and becoming law. Seventeen States
    have enacted new laws that in one way or another restrict
    access to voting, and these laws often, uncannily, target
    voters of color.
        And, again, were the Voting Rights Act in full effect, were
    preclearance in full effect, these laws would be scrutinized.
    Many would be blocked. Many would be blunted.
        The second point I want to make is that these racially
    discriminatory laws are based on a lie. American elections are
    secure and accountable. Voter fraud in the United States is
    vanishingly rare. You are, as has been noted many times, more
    likely to be struck by lightning than to commit in-person voter
    impersonation in this country.
        And contrary to the big lie about the 2020 election, it was
    extraordinarily well run, as confirmed by the Department of
    Homeland Security, as confirmed by 60 courts, as confirmed by
    the Justice Department under President Trump.
        And I will note that this week the Republican legislature
    in Michigan put out a report confirming there was no
    substantial voter fraud there and the election was well run
    there.
        Yet, this is a lie that justifies a conspiracy theory that
    provides the pretext for discriminatory voting laws being
    pushed and passed all over the country.
        And I should note again the racial subtext, unfortunately,
    is rarely far from the surface.
        When former President Trump targeted and called out and
    sought the removal of the effective votes from voters in
    Detroit, in Philadelphia, in Milwaukee, in Atlanta, it wasn't
    very subtle what the implications of that were.
        All the more reason why a conspiracy theory should not be
    allowed to deny people the right to vote and why Congress and
    Members of both parties can once again protect that right to
    vote with a strong Voting Rights Act.
        I will note finally, as a third point, that it is important
    that this legislation be understood to work in tandem with the
    For the People Act, with H.R. 1, which has already passed the
    House of Representatives. Both are vital. Both are needed.
        The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, in effect, is
    forward-looking. It deals with preclearance for future
    legislative proposals. H.R. 1 would set national standards for
    elections, including laws that have been passed right now. Both
    are constitutional. Both are well crafted. Both are needed. We
    urge the support of Congress for both of them.
        Finally, as you know, John Lewis' name is on this bill. He
    gave so much of his blood and of his own soul and courage to
    bring the Voting Rights Act into effect. Members of both
    parties over many decades were together in this effort. We urge
    you to once again carry forward his legacy, carry forward his
    name, by strengthening, modernizing this vital piece of
    American law.
        Thank you.
        [The statement of Mr. Waldman follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. And thank you.
        It should be noted that the John Lewis Voting Rights
    Advancement Act has not been introduced, because we have not
    completed these hearings. But as soon as we can finish all 16
    of our hearings among the three committees, it is our sincere
    hope that it will be filed very quickly. And we are hoping that
    it will be given the label H.R. 4. And, hopefully, we can
    decide it and send it over to the Senate for its approval.
        Mr. Henderson, you are recognized for five minutes.

                      STATEMENT OF WADE HENDERSON

        Mr. Henderson. Thank you, Chairman Butterfield, Ranking
    Member Steil, and members of the subcommittee. Good morning,
    and thank you for this opportunity.
        And thank you, Chairman Butterfield, for your leadership in
    calling these critically important hearings on how we ensure
    that all of us, no matter our color, ZIP Code, or income, have
    an equal say in our democracy.
        In his final message to the Nation, the late Congressman
    John Lewis left his marching orders. He called on us to
    remember that, quote, ``Democracy is not a state. It is an
    act.'' He said that every generation must do its part to build
    the Beloved Community.
        I am deeply heartened that Americans are heeding his call.
    Across diverse backgrounds, amid a pandemic, people turned out
    to vote in unprecedented numbers. It was an awe-inspiring
    moment for the world's oldest and greatest democracy and a
    declaration of the possibility to realize our highest ideals.
    Indeed, voting is the language of democracy.
        Some lawmakers, however, have turned their backs on the
    Congressman's noble call. They are trying to take us backwards
    by creating barriers for Black, Brown, indigenous and new
    Americans who want to exercise their right to vote.
        Our Nation is faced with reconciling the contradiction of
    who we say we are and who we actually are. Congress must
    swiftly set to make real the promise of democracy for all.
        We didn't get here overnight. Eight years ago tomorrow, the
    Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder and decimated the
    heart of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 allowed the Justice
    Department to block proposed discriminatory voting restrictions
    in places with pervasive histories of discrimination and
    ensured voting changes were public and transparent.
        Despite the best efforts of the leadership conference and
    our members to protect the franchise, nearly a decade of
    antivoter tactics has exacerbated a harmful toll.
        Without the VRA's strongest tool to fight discrimination,
    lawmakers continue to wage a coordinated attack on Black and
    Brown voters. The deluge of antivoter laws is unrelenting.
    Voters of color face intimidation, burdensome ID requirements,
    voter purges, and disenfranchisement laws, built on top of mass
    incarceration.
        States cut back early voting, eliminated same-day voter
    registration, and shuttered polling places. In 2020,
    politicians exploited the pandemic by imposing additional
    barriers to the ballot.
        But democracy prevailed, because the people prevailed.
    Voters refused to give up their power. This revealed not only
    the American people's resiliency, but also our collective will
    to ensure our democracy works for everyone.
        Yet, the assault on our freedom to vote has only grown more
    dire. After a historic turnout, politicians peddled lies, tried
    to discount the votes of communities of color, and attempted to
    override the will of the people. Their efforts ultimately
    fueled a deadly attack on this very institution by armed right-
    wing militants.
        Now they have doubled down on attempts to reshape the
    electorate for their own gain. Since January, State lawmakers
    have introduced, as my colleague Mr. Waldman said, 389
    antivoter bills and enacted 22 laws.
        These restrictions disproportionately burden voters of
    color. They resemble the very strategies that led Congress to
    adopt the Voting Rights Act in the first place.
        In her dissenting opinion in Shelby County, the late
    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that throwing out
    preclearance when it successfully stops discrimination is,
    quote, ``like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm
    because you are not getting wet.''
        Today we are drenched. This is our moment to act, right
    now. We have no other choice if we want to fulfill the promise
    of our democracy that every voice and every vote count.
    Congress must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
    and restore the VRA to its full strength.
        Shortly before President Johnson signed the VRA into law,
    25-year-old John Lewis led more than 600 people across the
    Edmund Pettus Bridge. State troopers unleashed brutal violence
    and our hero was beaten and bloodied.
        But he never gave up the fight. For decades, he implored
    his colleagues in these hallowed halls to realize equal
    opportunity for all.
        Before his death, he wrote, and I quote, ``Time is of the
    essence to preserve the integrity and promises of our
    democracy.''
        Members of Congress must now answer his call with all the
    force you can muster.
        Thank you for allowing me to testify this morning.
        [The statement of Mr. Henderson follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. And thank you, Mr. Henderson.
        At this time, the Chair will recognize Ms. Frankenstein.
    Some may pronounce it Frankenstein, but I say Frankenstein.
        You are now recognized for five minutes.

                     STATEMENT OF SARA FRANKENSTEIN

        Ms. Frankenstein. Thank you, Chairman Butterfield, Ranking
    Member Steil, Ranking Member Davis, and members of the
    committee.
        My name is Sara Frankenstein, and I am a private practice
    attorney in Rapid City, South Dakota. I practice voting rights
    and election law and advise election administrators in the
    Midwest in all aspects of elections and voting rights. I was
    lead counsel in numerous Federal Voting Rights Act cases and
    other election disputes, including redistricting and felony
    voting issues.
        These matters often involve issues unique to American
    Indian voting, as well as Tribal and county governmental
    concerns. I am presenting information on two areas of Voting
    Rights Act litigation relevant to American Indian populations
    within States and counties.
        The first is the issue of preclearance wherein South Dakota
    previously had two counties which were deemed covered
    jurisdictions in 1975. South Dakota's two counties previously
    covered were not added initially, but after additional tests
    were promulgated in 1972 which found that counties should be
    added to the preclearance list if they maintained a test or
    device, which included holding elections in English, and the
    county had less than 50 percent of voting-age citizens
    registered to vote did, in fact, vote in the November 1972
    election.
        In 1975, two counties in my State of South Dakota were
    added as covered jurisdictions. In 1977, our then South Dakota
    attorney general determined that the preclearance requirements
    were an unworkable solution to a nonexistent problem and
    advised that the State should not seek preclearance for those
    laws while he pursued litigation to exempt South Dakota from
    the VRA preclearance requirements.
        What that did was create a backlog of 3,048 South Dakota
    laws that needed to be submitted for preclearance once the
    State and actually the two counties that were covered were sued
    for that very purpose.
        One might think that this scenario would present the very
    method to uncover discriminatory or retrogressive statutes,
    administrative rules, and other laws that were passed by a
    legislature over 25 years when its legislators had no threat--
    or no feasible threat--hanging over their heads, because they
    understood that they did not need to seek preclearance for
    these laws.
        One might expect that a number of these 3,000-plus laws
    would be found objectionable or otherwise denied preclearance.
        How many of South Dakota's 3,048 laws and administrative
    rules were denied preclearance? None.
        Such facts are a strong indicator that preclearance is not
    needed in South Dakota.
        Our individual counties, should they be subject once again
    to preclearance requirements? In my experience, including
    representing these counties themselves, they are often
    reservation counties.
        As I say, reservations make up a majority or maybe all of
    these counties. They are run by majority American Indian
    leaders. And, in my experience, the American Indian leaders do
    not pass local ordinances that deny or abridge their own
    people's ability to vote.
        County election officials work with their respective Tribes
    to find polling places, which are usually determined by the
    Tribe. To give you an example of the burden that is placed upon
    these reservation counties when they are under preclearance is
    typically found in the issue of moving polling places.
        An example that I had in representing a county was a Tribe
    who had previously indicated a polling place could be located
    in a certain Tribal building indicated a few days before the
    election that, in fact, the county could not use that polling
    place, but offered up another Tribal building that it found
    more suitable.
        I, on behalf of that reservation county, sought expedited
    preclearance from the Department of Justice. I did not get a
    response before the election. The county was placed in the
    situation of not knowing whether it should go forward with the
    new location, trying to hold an election in a place the Tribe
    said it could not.
        Finally, after the election, we received preclearance being
    granted by the Department of Justice.
        It demonstrates the situation, however, when a bureaucracy
    could move slowly, but yet we need to have certainty in how to
    run our elections back here in South Dakota.
        Second, redistricting hasn't been a recent issue. We have
    had no redistricting cases here in the last decade. But what we
    have seen are Voting Rights Act vote denial claims,
    particularly in light of the issue of satellite offices.
        Our county courthouses are not located on Indian trust land
    generally, so to engage in in-person absentee voting in a
    brick-and-mortar building, one needs to leave the reservation
    and travel to the county seat.
        Because that requires distance, transportation, et cetera,
    we have had success working with counties to implement HAVA
    funds, Help America Vote Act funds, in order to fund those
    types of offices.
        Now, efforts to require preclearance in these counties
    don't ameliorate or address those underlying funding problems
    in reservation counties.
        [The statement of Ms. Frankenstein follows:]
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        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you. Thank you for your
    testimony.
        Ms. Frankenstein. Thank you.
        Chairman Butterfield. That completes the testimonies of the
    witnesses. We will now move to member questions.
        It looks like my friend from California, Mr. Aguilar, will
    go first.
        Mr. Aguilar, you are recognized for five minutes.
        Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
        Mr. Saenz, in your testimony, you stated that congressional
    action or inaction today will have a critical impact on the
    enduring condition of our democracy 5 years from now.
        Can you explain how the failure of enacting a comprehensive
    voting rights bill will affect generations to come?
        Mr. Saenz. Sure. I think it is grounded in the fact that
    litigation, which is still possible, primarily under Section 2
    of the Voting Rights Act, is notoriously costly and
    inefficient. It means that as the challenges to voting rights
    proliferate, our ability, even with a reinvigorated Department
    of Justice Civil Rights Division, our ability to successfully
    challenge all of those deprivations of voting rights is
    limited.
        That is when legislation is most necessary. The most
    important piece of that is to reintroduce preclearance as an
    operative tool to prevent the implementation of changes that
    restrict the rights of minorities to vote.
        Mr. Aguilar. Could you also expand on how the Latino
    population is already feeling the impact from some of these
    attempts to seize control from individuals and eliminating the
    right to vote by using reduced methods?
        Mr. Waldman talked a little bit about that and the number
    of State measures that have proceeded.
        Can you talk about their impact to the Latino population?
        Mr. Saenz. Absolutely. Thank you, Congressman Aguilar.
        Because the Latino population is growing as quickly as it
    is, we have substantial numbers of new voters. And it is
    particularly new voters who are affected by these attempts to
    restrict the right to vote, whether that takes the form of
    requiring new voter registrants to provide proof of citizenship
    not required of their predecessors, or new restrictive voter ID
    provisions where voter ID is not readily and costlessly
    available to those new voters.
        So the impact on the Latino community as it expands and
    grows and produces more and more voters who become eligible to
    vote is substantial of all of these efforts to deter
    participation.
        Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Saenz.
        Mr. Waldman, could you elaborate a little bit more and talk
    about some of the harm that you see in the near and distant
    future to marginalized communities and their ability to
    exercise their right to vote if some of these measures, the
    statewide measures continue, and we don't pass anything here?
        Mr. Waldman. Well, we have had measures that have passed
    and measures that are being considered.
        In Florida, for example, where 64 percent of the voters, in
    an overwhelming bipartisan vote, voted to end that State's
    notorious voter disenfranchisement regime, felony
    disenfranchisement regime for people with past criminal
    convictions, the legislature followed up by passing a
    requirement that changed that and made it so that you could
    only get your right to vote recognized if you had paid your
    fees and fines.
        This overwhelmingly has a disproportionate impact on voters
    of color because of the way the criminal justice system works.
        In many of the measures that we have seen advanced or
    moving or passed in States across the country in the past few
    months, they have targeted activities that voters of color are
    using--and sometimes recently.
        As was mentioned earlier, vote-by-mail, for example, was
    never particularly controversial. But when communities of color
    began to use that method during the pandemic very successfully,
    suddenly it became the target of efforts to cut back on vote-
    by-mail.
        Some have been rebuffed, some are moving forward, but there
    are ways in which you can trace the voting patterns and map it
    against these measures.
        And as you know, in the last election, despite the pandemic
    and despite voter suppression and despite the lies, it was the
    highest voter turnout since 1900. We think we ought to be
    celebrating that and not trying to undo some of the changes
    that made that possible.
        Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Waldman.
        Back to you, Mr. Saenz.
        Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act talks about access to
    limited-English-proficient voters through language assistance.
    Many jurisdictions locally, we know, fall short of that through
    access of interpreters and other resources that are necessary.
        Can you talk a little bit about how States are failing to
    meet the needs of limited-English-proficient voters?
        Mr. Saenz. Sure. Well, failing to provide those resources
    required by Section 203 is the first barrier.
        It is often compounded when States or localities place
    limits, whether by law or in practice, on providing voter
    assistance to those who may need assistance in a language other
    than English.
        We, for example, at MALDEF are currently challenging a law
    in Arkansas that, in contravention of the Voting Rights Act,
    limits the number of voters who someone can assist when they
    need that assistance to cast an effective ballot.
        So we have failure to comply with 203, compounded by
    restrictions that contradict current law on assisting voters
    who need that assistance because they have challenges with
    language.
        And I should end, Congressman, by pointing out that all of
    this has a disparate impact, a discriminatory impact, on our
    newly naturalized voters who are folks that show by process a
    greater inclination to participate in voting but are restricted
    and prevented from doing that by these laws.
        Mr. Aguilar. Thank you so much.
        My time is up, Mr. Chairman. Yield back.
        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, thank you.
        At this time, the chair recognizes the Ranking Member of
    the full Committee for five minutes.
        Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Always good to follow my
    friend Mr. Aguilar. Twice in 1 day. I couldn't ask for more
    fun, sir.
        Mr. Saenz, I would like to start with you.
        Why did MALDEF sue to prevent the new Illinois legislative
    map from going into effect?
        Mr. Saenz. We sued because the legislature, as you know,
    used ACS figures instead of Decennial Census figures.
        I do want to make clear that neither our clients, nor
    MALDEF, seeks to change the legislature's ability to draw the
    lines. As you know, there is a State constitutional provision
    that could shift that responsibility from a legislature to a
    commission.
        But it appears clear to me that it was not the intent of
    that provision to shift that responsibility based on the
    happenstance of the delay in the release of Decennial Census
    data.
        So all we seek in that lawsuit is to have the lines
    redrawn, using Decennial Census data once that data is made
    available by the Bureau later this summer.
        Mr. Davis. Well, aside from the clear constitutional
    issues, sir, why is it important that States like Illinois use
    Census data instead of population estimates when drawing maps,
    as you just briefly talked about your lawsuit doing?
        Mr. Saenz. Sure. Thank you, Congressman.
        The reason is that the Census is an actual enumeration, as
    you know, from household questionnaires, of our entire
    population, whereas the ACS is estimate data based on a sample
    of households across the country.
        Because it is a limited sample, the Census Bureau does not
    provide numbers except over a 3- to 5-year average. So if you
    redistrict using ACS data, you will actually be looking at
    population estimates that go back to 2015, rather than data
    from the Decennial Census that is from 2020. So among other
    problems, it is outdated data if it is used to redraw our
    lines.
        Mr. Davis. Sir, as you know, the Chicago area has grown in
    Latino voting-age population exponentially over the last
    decade. Do you and your organization support drawing another
    Hispanic majority district in the Chicago area?
        Mr. Saenz. We support it if the Census data indicates that
    an effective district that would allow Latino voters to elect a
    candidate of choice can be drawn. That is something we can't
    assess completely until we have that Decennial Census data.
        But certainly it has long been our goal, particularly in a
    context as you have indicated in Illinois, the Latino community
    is growing while the whole State's population is shrinking. In
    fact, as you know, the apportionment here shows that the
    State's population did shrink over the last decade, that we
    know from ACS estimates that the Latino population in Illinois
    grew by over a hundred thousand or more people.
        So if it is possible to draw a second effective--another
    effective Latino majority district, we certainly would be in
    favor of that.
        Mr. Davis. Great. I look forward to working with you
    because I think we know that the only thing that would stop
    another Hispanic district from being drawn would be pure
    partisan politics.
        Ms. Frankenstein, can you speak to the Committee about
    particular Federal impediments you have identified that may
    reduce the number of Native Americans who cast ballots in
    Federal elections?
        Ms. Frankenstein. One issue is the popular area of vote-
    denial claims for lack of satellite offices on reservations.
        I can tell you that working with my clients who are elected
    county officials regardless of their race, whether they are
    majority White, whether they are majority American Indian, or
    all American Indian county commissioners, they all face the
    same concern, and that is lack of funding for such offices and
    lack of space, buildings to actually locate those.
        Where we have found success, however, is where we are able
    to utilize HAVA funds in order to hire, train, and staff those
    offices, and pay a lease agreement in order to fund those. I do
    not believe that preclearance requirements would help in this
    regard in any way, but it is necessary that we allow--or we
    provide funding, through HAVA or otherwise, to those cash-
    strapped counties.
        Our reservation counties are funded through property taxes,
    and land held in trust does not contribute to the property tax
    base. So the very counties which have more American Indian
    population have less money to work with. Those are the counties
    that are sued, requesting satellite offices, and they don't
    have the funds to create those offices.
        So I would encourage more of a focus on funding to allow
    those capabilities in those counties and less focus on
    preclearance requirements for those cash-strapped counties.
        Mr. Davis. Great. Are there any rural mail delivery issues
    that are part of this?
        Ms. Frankenstein. There can be. Reservation areas,
    oftentimes they lack a post office or one nearby. It is common
    for a family--for large families to live together and share a
    mailbox.
        There are concerns among Native American voters as to how
    to get their ballot to the mailbox or to the post office, and
    they tend not to trust the postal system. Therefore, they more
    heavily rely upon election day voting and in-person absentee
    voting.
        Mr. Davis. Great.
        I see my time is expired. Thank you to the witnesses.
        And thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
        Chairman Butterfield. And thank you, Mr. Davis.
        At this time, the Chair recognizes the gentlelady from New
    Mexico, Ms. Leger Fernandez.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The witness testimony today and in our earlier hearings
    laid out multiple examples of how after the Shelby County
    decision communities were forced to bring Section 2 cases as
    States formerly under preclearance immediately passed laws--or
    recently as well--to restrict Asian Americans, Latinos, Native
    Americans, Black Americans access to the polls and their
    ability to elect candidates of their choice.
        They won. Right? They won those lawsuits, many of those
    lawsuits, proving that gerrymandering and changes in laws and
    procedures were unlawful, in contrast to, as Mr. Waldman noted,
    the big lie that there has been fraud in elections, which I
    would note the courts have rejected. The courts have found that
    voting discrimination is real and still happening.
        Mr. Saenz, it is great to see you again.
        Mr. Saenz was the vice president of litigation at MALDEF
    when I was on the board, so I appreciate having the opportunity
    to ask him questions again.
        Your written testimony noted that it took a decade of
    litigation to address Texas legislators' splitting of Latinos
    after primarily Latino population growth gave Texas four new
    districts. We heard earlier today of a 7-year battle by the
    Navajo Nation in Utah.
        What are the policy consequences for the community when
    election after election occurs under a system that has deprived
    Latino voters of the right to vote or elect a representative of
    their choice?
        Mr. Saenz. Thank you, Congresswoman. Great to see you
    there.
        As you know from your experience with Section 2 litigation,
    the consequence is elections that go forward under flawed
    discriminatory systems undermine confidence in our democracy.
    Because a court later proclaims that elections occurred in the
    districts that should not have been drawn the way they were, it
    means that folks were deprived of representation that reflects
    their views over a significant period of time.
        I should note that that Texas litigation did last 8 years.
    Fortunately there, there were interim maps put in place. But
    those interim maps did not reflect all of the changes
    ultimately required by a case that went to the United States
    Supreme Court twice over the course of those 8 years.
        So even in that system with an interim map in place that
    addressed some of the problems, all of the problems ultimately
    identified by the three-judge court were not addressed by those
    interim maps.
        And the biggest problem, as you also know from your
    experience, is that Section 2 litigation is costly. It means
    that organizations like MALDEF--and there were many others
    involved in that Texas litigation--that our efforts are
    diverted from our ability to challenge other deprivations of
    rights in other parts of the country.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. Yes. And in Section 2 cases, we also
    must prove--and do prove--that the failure to have
    representation often leads to policies, legislative policies,
    that don't assist those particular communities. So the harm is
    compounded and compounded.
        Mr. Henderson, some of my colleagues have cited the record
    voter 2020 turnout as evidence that voter suppression is not an
    issue. What is your response to this?
        Mr. Henderson. Well, thank you for the question,
    Congresswoman.
        We have seen in a number of jurisdictions that,
    notwithstanding the extraordinary turnout by voters of color--
    and I will cite one example, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
        In the primary of 2020, Milwaukee had previously 180
    polling places that were reduced to 5. That meant that voters,
    even with an expanded population, were compressed into casting
    a vote in a narrower group of eligible precincts.
        That meant that in many instances lines of 4 and 5 hours in
    length were required in order for an individual to cast their
    vote.
        Now, this was at a time when the county in which Milwaukee
    sat was a hotbed of COVID pandemic development. And, in fact, I
    believe in my testimony I cite the fact that the county had, I
    believe, the highest death rate of African American voters, et
    al.
        And so what we see in county after county is,
    notwithstanding the increase in voters, there has often been an
    effort to winnow down the number of places that voters could
    cast ballots. And that meant, of course, they were faced with
    the prospect of long lines under difficult circumstances in
    trying to cast their ballot. And we have only now begun to
    really assess that for its true impact.
        Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you, Mr. Henderson.
        In New Mexico, we saw some of those lines, and in H.R. 1,
    we have provided that there is a 30-minute time limit by which
    all voters--all voters--should be able to cast their ballots.
        Mr. Chairman, my time has expired, and I yield back.
        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you.
        The gentleman from Wisconsin. I don't know--you are not
    from Milwaukee, but you are from the State of Wisconsin.
        Mr. Steil. I have the great honor of representing part of
    Milwaukee County.
        Chairman Butterfield. You do?
        Mr. Steil. But I am from Wisconsin, from Janesville.
        Mr. Butterfield. All right. You are recognized for
    rebuttal.
        Mr. Steil. Thank you. I am actually going to be adding onto
    the comments. I don't know that this will be a full rebuttal.
        Before I dive in, I would like to just insert to the
    record, if I can, two articles. One, a Journal Sentinel article
    titled, ``Eric Holder Addresses Wisconsin Redistricting Panel,
    Prompting Criticism.'' And another article titled, ``Washington
    Post Denounced for Report on Stacey Abrams, Dems' `Evolution'
    on Voter ID.''
        Chairman Butterfield. Both articles, without objection,
    will be received.
        [The information follows:]

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        Mr. Steil. Mr. Henderson, I appreciate you bringing up the
    case of Milwaukee. I think it is actually really important. I
    don't think everybody fully appreciates how the spring election
    in Milwaukee played out, how it played out very differently
    than other cities across the State of Wisconsin during the
    spring 2020 election.
        Milwaukee, correctly, as you noted, did reduce the number
    of polling locations, and it is correctly identified by my
    colleague here, from 180 to 5. And I think that is a pretty
    important point to recognize.
        Do you know who appoints the elections administrator in the
    city of Milwaukee?
        Mr. Henderson. I do not.
        Mr. Steil. It is a good--it is a worthwhile point, because
    I think it would enhance your written testimony. It is the
    Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett.
        It is also worth noting and it is kind of interesting, at
    that election, he was actually running in a primary for the
    election for mayor against an African American woman. And so I
    think it is worth noting.
        And I think it is actually interesting, the last time
    Republicans held the mayorship of Milwaukee, the city, is 1908.
    And the last time anyone held the--besides a Democrat--was
    actually 1960, and it was a Socialist.
        So it went from Republican to Socialist to Democrat, and it
    has been held by Democrats since 1960.
        And so while I share some of your concerns about what
    played out, I think it is very worthwhile for this Committee to
    recognize that it was under a period of time of Democratic
    control, and it was a Democratic appointee that made the
    decision to reduce the number of polling locations from 180 to
    5.
        And meanwhile, 70 miles away to the west, another very
    liberal city, Madison, Wisconsin, actually only reduced their
    polling locations from 92 to 66.
        So in an area that was disproportionately African American
    in the city of Milwaukee, a Democratic-appointed elections
    official made that decision.
        I think your testimony is spot on, but I think it could be
    enhanced by noting some of that background, and I hope you have
    the opportunity to look into it.
        Mr. Henderson. Mr. Steil, may I respond? Because I think
    you are making a point that my organization emphasizes
    regularly.
        We are a nonpartisan organization. We operate under the
    view that voting really is the language of democracy. It is not
    a partisan issue. It is a national issue.
        And regardless of who is in control, the evidence that you
    cited and that I cited is evidence of the fact that the voting
    laws need to be enhanced and protected for all.
        Obviously, there are--
        Mr. Steil. Let me reclaim my time. I wanted to give you the
    moment to reply, and I appreciate it. I think we do share that,
    is that we are enforcing the laws on the books. I think that is
    a very important point, that we are not changing the rules of
    the road as we go.
        But if I went back to your testimony, you noted that the
    Republican majority in the State refused to give people a few
    extra days to turn in their mail-in ballot, which I think
    actually would change the rules of the road as we go, because
    voting was ongoing at a period of time where you would look to
    then change the rules.
        Is that fair?
        Mr. Henderson. But I would argue that the pandemic clearly
    was an intervening factor that warranted a review of the voting
    procedures to determine whether amendments were necessary.
        Certainly no one would argue that as the country was
    battling the height of the pandemic and that people were dying
    at amazing rates, that we should not have taken a closer look
    at how we exercised in-person voting.
        Mr. Steil. I think we definitely should have taken a look.
    I think changing the rules of the road while voting is ongoing
    is a very dangerous path to go down.
        But let's pause that. Let me shift gears to Ms.
    Frankenstein, if I can.
        Chief Justice Roberts in the Shelby case quoted as saying
    that a lot has changed since 1975, and while racial
    discrimination, any racial discrimination in voting is too
    much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes
    speaks to current conditions.
        And so recognizing that the voting access for minorities in
    1964 and 1965 was very different than it is today in 2021, and
    that thankfully we have made a lot of progress in righting
    historical wrongs, is a preclearance formula necessary, in your
    opinion, Ms. Frankenstein?
        Ms. Frankenstein. In my opinion, it is not. I have cited to
    you the statistics of South Dakota and those laws that sought
    preclearance in our previously covered counties. As you heard
    me testify earlier, none were not granted preclearance.
        I think it is also an antiquated concept to look instead at
    whether ballots are offered in an indigenous language, if you
    will also look to whether or not the Tribe in the respective
    county holds its Tribal elections using an indigenous language.
        Mr. Steil. Only because we are short on time. I would love
    you to be able to keep going. I am short on time. I am
    recognizing the time.
        And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Chairman Butterfield. All right. I was distracted. Mr.
    Steil, did you yield back?
        Mr. Steil. I did yield back.
        Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, and thank you very much
    for your statements.
        The Chair will now recognize himself for five minutes, and
    I will start with Ms. Nelson.
        Ms. Nelson, I know LDF has been collecting information and
    data for as long as I can remember and probably before I was
    born. It has been a data collection agency as well as a
    litigating agency.
        Have you been collecting information since the Shelby
    County decision? And I know we don't have the time for you to
    recite it verse after verse, but can you give us a summary of
    what the record shows based on the information you have
    collected since 2013?
        Ms. Nelson. Absolutely. The Legal Defense Fund has a report
    that we admitted into the record. It is called ``Democracy
    Diminished: State and Local Threats to Voting Post-Shelby
    County, Alabama v. Holder.''
        And in that report we maintain an ongoing catalog of the
    discriminatory voting changes in jurisdictions that were
    formerly protected by Section 5. And we submit that these are
    voting changes that would likely have been prevented had
    Section 5 still been in place.
        What we have seen over time is that there has been a
    proliferation of laws across the country that otherwise would
    have never come to see the light of day, would have never
    infringed on voters' rights had Section 5 been in place.
        We know this because immediately after the Shelby County
    decision, in places like Texas and Alabama and other covered
    jurisdictions, those election officials resurrected laws that
    had been prohibited from going into effect by Section 5.
        Chairman Butterfield. Have you published these voting
    changes in your website? Have you released those?
        Ms. Nelson. We do.
        Chairman Butterfield. I know the Brennan Center does that.
        Ms. Nelson. They are on our website, and they are routinely
    updated.
        Chairman Butterfield. All right. So any citizen can go to
    your website or to the Brennan Center website and look at those
    changes. Is that right?
        Ms. Nelson. That is correct.
        Chairman Butterfield. All right. Let me just change gears,
    and the time goes so fast when you have the microphone.
        During the Juneteenth debate a few weeks ago, Congressman
    Jim Clyburn of South Carolina said one of our greatest
    shortcomings here in Congress is that we fail to communicate.
        And I think, when I go into my district and I talk about
    Section 5 and Section 2 and the importance of the Voting Rights
    Act, oftentimes those who are doubtful would ask the question,
    Why is it necessary to have a large number of African Americans
    or Hispanic Americans in an electoral district? Why is that
    important?
        And sometimes that gets me back on my heels when I get the
    question asked because the response to that is so basic and is
    so clear. It is called racially polarized voting.
        The fact of the matter is, in many places throughout the
    country--and it is not in every community--but in many places
    throughout the country a lot of voters vote along racial lines
    regardless of the qualifications of the candidate or the
    preferences of the community, which means that if African
    Americans are a minority within a community, then the majority,
    if they vote along racial lines, that inherently discriminates
    against a minority group. And when you explain that and
    communicate that to individuals, they begin to see what this is
    all about.
        The other thing that people confuse is Section 2, vis--vis
    Section 5. Section 2 is very expensive. I recall back in the
    1980s, Mr. Waldman and Mr. Henderson, it cost hundreds of
    thousands of dollars, and I suspect it is in the millions now,
    to litigate a Section 2 claim, not to mention the fact that it
    could take months or years to do so.
        I had a Section 2 claim in 1982 that it was not until 1985
    when it was finally decided by the court. And so it is very
    expensive, and it is very time-consuming.
        And the standard of proof in a Section 2 claim is not only
    intentional discrimination, but in 1982 Congress changed the
    law to a lower standard, which is discriminatory result. And so
    that is the standard that you are guided by in Section 2.
        Section 5 is so much different. That is a retrogression
    standard. You simply take the proposed change, you compare it
    to existing laws, and see if there is any retrogression in the
    effect that it has on minority voters.
        Have I said anything, Mr. Waldman, that you disagree with?
        Mr. Waldman. No. I think you have stated it very well.
        And, again, when Section 5 was in effect, it was a
    predictable regime that counties and States all across the
    country handled without much muss or fuss. It was a step
    forward for the country, and it was something that everybody
    was able to deal with. And what is needed now is, in effect, to
    modernize the coverage formula so that it can work again.
        Chairman Butterfield. My first Section 5 claim was in 1982.
    I still have the records from it. I am writing my book now, and
    so I had to refer to it the other day. And in 1982, I
    complained about staggered terms, my county commission going
    from an at-large system to staggered terms.
        And DOJ took it up, evaluated it for 60 days, they asked
    for more information. The county provided more information. And
    DOJ approved it.
        And then, after another change that took place, we finally
    litigated under Section 2 and we won the case. The county was
    divided into seven districts. And now, instead of an all-White
    board of commissioners, we have three African Americans, four
    White Americans, and everything is reasonably well. I am not
    going to say it is perfect, but it is reasonably well.
        And so the Voting Rights Act is a very serious piece of
    legislation that is deserving of our attention. It protects
    democracy.
        And, Mr. Henderson, you made a statement a minute ago that
    it is what for our democracy? It is the language, did you say,
    of our democracy? May I adopt that as one of my talking points?
    I like that. It is the language of our democracy.
        And so thank both of you, thank all of you for your
    testimony.
        Do we have any other members who have returned to the
    meeting?
        Yes?
        Mr. Aguilar. Just a point of clarification, Mr. Chairman. I
    know I speak on behalf of the Committee members. We just want
    to know if we are going to get an advanced copy of your book
    and if you can write a--I know Mr. Steil and Mr. Davis would
    really appreciate it.
        Chairman Butterfield. Well, I have been writing it--
        Mr. Aguilar. They have a lot to learn.
        Mr. Steil. It is quite the story. I would read it.
        Chairman Butterfield. I have been writing this thing, I
    want you to know, for many years now, and finally my editor
    told me a few months ago that I really needed to separate it
    into two books, one book on community history.
        Mr. Henderson's second cousin, who is also a local
    historian in my hometown, she and I are the local historians.
    And so I have been advised to separate what they call community
    history from memoirs. And so now, instead of one book, it is
    now going to be two books.
        But anyway, just for public recognition, Mr. Henderson's
    second cousin is named Lisa Y. Henderson, who is from Wilson,
    North Carolina, but lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a real
    scholar.
        So thank all of you. Thank all of you.
        Is there any other business to come before the Subcommittee
    before we adjourn?
        All right. I have some housekeeping matters that we need to
    attend to.
        I ask unanimous consent that we enter the following
    articles in the record.
        From Mother Jones, it is entitled, ``The Dog That Voted and
    Other Election Fraud Yarns: The GOP's 10-year campaign to gin
    up voter fraud hysteria--and bring back Jim Crow at the ballot
    box,'' end of quote.
        The next is from the Free Press of Ohio. It is entitled,
    ``Ohio, the DOJ scandal, and `Thor'--the god of voter
    suppression.''
        Okay. The third is from--you have to appreciate our staffs
    on both sides of the aisle. They work hard.
        The third and final one is from the Daily Kos, quote,
    ``198-Thor: GOP `Voter Fraud' Lawyer Thor Hearne''--I am going
    to stop right there.
        Without objection, these three will be included in the
    record.
        [The information follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. Okay. Before we conclude, I am going
    to ask also unanimous consent to enter into the record the
    report prepared by this Subcommittee in the last Congress,
    under then Chair Marcia Fudge, detailing our findings of
    discrimination in voting practices. That is the document that I
    hold in my hand.
        Hearing no objection, it is so ordered.
        [The information follows:]

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        Chairman Butterfield. If I am not mistaken--and staff can
    correct me if I am wrong--this is hearing number six of six.
        Staff. Five.
        Chairman Butterfield. This is hearing five of five.
        And I think we are going to be completing this work, and we
    are going to be documenting and writing up our findings. And I
    will be transferring this data, this information, to the
    Committee on the Judiciary, hopefully by June the 30th. That is
    my self-imposed deadline. That is my intention.
        And then we will await action by the Committee on the
    Judiciary, both in the House and in the Senate. And, hopefully,
    within the foreseeable future, we will be able to write a
    formula, write a bill, and get it passed and signed by the
    President.
        Thank you very much for your testimony.
        Without objection, the Subcommittee adjourns.
        [Whereupon, at 12:38 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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