[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 121 (Tuesday, July 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H7687]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE VOTERS' BILL OF RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to inform my 
colleagues that tomorrow I will be introducing a series of pieces of 
legislation that I think will get us back onto some of the agenda items 
that we need to address this fall. We have had a very successful year 
beginning early in the year with the Contract With America, moving on 
now through a process of going through 13 appropriations bills. But I 
believe the legislation that I am going to be introducing tomorrow, at 
least parts of them, are going to require serious consideration this 
fall.
  What I do is I call them the Voters' Bill of Rights. Because really, 
what we are doing with these pieces of legislation is we are empowering 
American citizens to help set the agenda in Washington, and to hold 
their Members more accountable for their actions in the House and in 
the Senate.
  Specifically, the three pieces of legislation include three items, 
the first of which is the national voice on term limits. As many of you 
know, we had a vote on term limits earlier this year. We had a 
majority. We failed to get the required number because it was a 
constitution amendment.
  I think it is now time to nationalize the debate, to have a national 
debate during the spring, the summer and the fall of 1996, and then we 
are going to have a unique experience if this legislation passes. We 
are going to have the opportunity to have every American citizen in 
this country to vote and express their preference on what they would 
like congress to do with term limits. That would happen in November of 
1996. Then, as the Speaker of the House has committed, if Republicans 
are still in control of the House in 1997, January 1997, a vote on term 
limits would be the first vote that we will have on our legislative 
agenda in January 1997.
  So what a beautiful process. We will have a national debate. We will 
have a national advisory referendum, and then we will have instructed 
Congress how to vote, and then in January 1997, we will have that vote 
on term limits, which I am sure will get us over the hump and move us 
to actually completing the work, or completing the work in Washington 
on term limits so that we can then move it to the States.
  The second piece of legislation that I am going to be introducing 
tomorrow is the opportunity for citizens in their districts to recall 
Members of the House and Members of the Senate. Currently, if, during 
their term of office, the Member in the House or the Senate loses the 
trust or the confidence of the people of their district, there is no 
mechanism by which the Member or the citizens of that district can hold 
their Member accountable.
  Recall is an extreme measure. The hurdles that we have in our 
legislation will make it very difficult to recall a Member of the House 
or of the Senate, but it provides that opportunity where the trust 
between the Member and the citizenry has been broken, for the citizens 
to go through a petitioning process and to call for the recall of their 
Member of the House or of the Senate.
  It moves accountability and the ability to hold a Member accountable 
during a term of office back to the people, another element of our 
Voters' Bill of Rights.
  The third element of our Voter Bill of Rights, and there are a couple 
of others, but the only other one that I want to highlight this 
evening, it is something that I saw for the first time 3 years ago, and 
I kind of chuckled the first time I saw it, but then I actually figured 
out how it worked.
  What this calls for is FOR the States in the election process to list 
the individuals who have qualified through a petitioning process, or 
have qualified through a primary process. So it lists the names of the 
individuals who have qualified to be on the ballot in a November 
national election or House election or a Senate election. It has the 
names on there, and then it is going to add another interesting little 
category. It is going to add the category: None of the above. We call 
it NOTA, None of The Above.
  So often we hear our citizens saying, we are not really satisfied 
with the choices that we have. In this new process, they can vote for 
the individuals that are listed or they can vote for none of the above. 
If none of the above receives the majority of the votes, a new election 
will be held, and the individuals that were on the original ballot will 
not be eligible for this second election.


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