[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 93 (Monday, July 17, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1425-E1427]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




FANNIE, LOU HAMER, ROSA PARKS, AND CORETTA SCOTT KING VOTING RIGHTS ACT 
               REAUTHORIZATION AND AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2006

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 13, 2006

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 9) to amend 
     the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I rise in proud support of 
H.R. 9, the ```Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King 
Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006.'' Had I 
and several of my colleagues not heeded the requests of the bipartisan 
leadership of the Committee and the House, there might be an amendment 
to the bill adding the name of our colleague, John Lewis of Georgia, to 
the pantheon of civil rights giants listed in the short title.
  Mr. Chairman, with our vote today on H.R. 9, each of us will earn a 
place in history. Therefore, the question before the House is whether 
our vote on the Voting Rights Act will mark this moment in history as a 
``day of infamy,'' in FDR's immortal words, or will commend us to and 
through future generations as the great defenders of the right to vote, 
the most precious of rights because it is preservative of all other 
rights. For my part, I stand Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks and 
Coretta Scott King, great Americans who gave all and risked all to help 
America live up to the promise of its creed. I will vote to reauthorize 
the Voting Rights Act for the next 25 years.
  I will oppose all of the poison pill amendments offered by offered by 
the gentlemen from Iowa, Georgia, and, sadly, my home state of Texas. 
Collectively, these amendments eviscerate the preclearance provisions 
of Section 5, end assistance to language minorities, and shorten the 
period of renewal by 15 years.
  Mr. Chairman, the proponents of these amendments claim their 
amendments are intended to ``save'' or ``preserve'' or ``strengthen'' 
the Voting Rights Acts. To claim that you are strengthening the Voting 
Rights Act by offering amendments that weaken it is like saying you 
must destroy a village in order to save it. There will be time enough 
to discuss in detail each of the weakening amendments when they are 
offered later today. But at this time I think it very important to 
discuss the provisions of the Voting Rights Act which I believe an 
overwhelming majority of the members of this House will vote to adopt 
today. I also want to spend some time reminding my colleagues, and the 
American people, why this nation needed a Voting Rights Act in 1965 and 
still needs it today. The American people are entitled to know why the 
Voting Rights Act is widely regarded as the most successful civil 
rights legislation in history. For all the progress this nation has 
made in becoming a more inclusive, equitable, and pluralistic society, 
it is the Voting Rights Act ``that has brought us thus far along the 
way.''


                    I. Before the Voting Rights Act

  Mr. Chairman, today most Americans take the right to vote for 
granted, so much so that just over half of eligible Americans vote in a 
presidential election. Americans generally assume that anyone can 
register and vote if a person is over 18 and a citizen. Most of us 
learned in school that discrimination based on race, creed or national 
origin has been barred by the Constitution since the end of the Civil 
War.
  Before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, however, the right to vote did not 
exist in practice for most black Americans. And, until 1975, most 
American citizens who were not proficient in English faced significant 
obstacles to voting, because they could not understand the ballot. Even 
though the Indian Citizenship Act gave Native Americans the right to 
vote in 1924, state law determined who could actually vote, which 
effectively excluded many Native Americans from political participation 
for decades. Asian Americans and Asian immigrants also have suffered 
systematic exclusion from the political process and it has taken a 
series of reforms, including repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 
1943, and passage of amendments strengthening the Voting Rights Act 
three decades later, to fully extend the franchise to Asian Americans. 
It was with this history in mind that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was 
designed to make the right to vote a reality for all Americans.
  Through the years leading up to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, 
courageous men and women braved threats, harassment, intimidation, and 
violence to gain the right to vote for disenfranchised Americans.
  When the Civil Rights Movement came to Ruleville, Mississippi in 
1962, Fannie Lou Hamer quickly became an active participant. With 
training and encouragement from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating 
Committee (SNCC), Hamer and several other local residents attempted to 
register to vote, but were unsuccessful because they did not pass the 
infamous literacy tests. In retaliation for trying to register, Hamer 
was fired from her job, received phone threats, and was nearly a victim 
of 16 gunshots fired into a friend's home. But Hamer was not 
intimidated: by 1963 she was

[[Page E1426]]

a field secretary for SNCC and had successfully registered to vote. 
Once, when asked whether she was concerned that agitating for civil 
rights might stir up a backlash from white Mississippians, Fannie Lou 
Hamer famously said:

       I do remember, one time, a man came to me after the 
     students began to work in Mississippi, and he said the white 
     people were getting tired and they were getting tense and 
     anything might happen. Well, I asked him, ``how long he 
     thinks we had been getting tired?'' . . . All my life I've 
     been sick and tired. Now I'm sick and tired of being sick and 
     tired.

  Mr. Chairman, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, was enacted 
to remedy a long and sorry history of discrimination in certain areas 
of the country. Presented with a record of systematic defiance by 
certain States and jurisdictions that could not be overcome by 
litigation, this Congress--led by President Lyndon Johnson, from my own 
home state of Texas--took the steps necessary to stop it. It is 
instructive to recall the words of President Johnson when he proposed 
the Voting Rights Act to the Congress in 1965:

       ``Rarely are we met with a challenge . . . to the values 
     and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The 
     issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such as an 
     issue . . . the command of the Constitution is plain. It is 
     wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the 
     right to vote in this country.''

  It was wrong to deny African-Americans and other citizens their right 
to vote. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. Nothing has done more 
to right those wrongs than the Voting Rights. Without exaggeration, it 
has been one of the most effective civil rights laws passed by 
Congress.
  In 1964, there were only approximately 300 African-Americans in 
public office, including just three in Congress. Few, if any, black 
elected officials were elected anywhere in the South. Today there are 
more than 9,100 black elected officials, including 43 members of 
Congress, the largest number ever. The act has opened the political 
process for many of the approximately 6,000 Latino public officials 
that have been elected and appointed nationwide, including 263 at the 
state or federal level, 27 of whom serve in Congress. Native Americans, 
Asians and others who have historically encountered harsh barriers to 
full political participation also have benefited greatly.
  Mr. Chairman, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no ordinary piece of 
legislation. For millions of Americans, and many of us in Congress, the 
Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a sacred treasure, earned by the sweat and 
toil and tears and blood of ordinary Americans who showed the world it 
was possible to accomplish extraordinary things.
  Mr. Chairman, I hail from the great State of Texas, the Lone Star 
State. A state that, sadly, had one of the most egregious records of 
voting discrimination against racial and language minorities. Texas is 
one of the Voting Rights Act's ``covered jurisdictions.'' In all of its 
history, I am only one of three African-American woman from Texas to 
serve in the Congress of the United States, and one of only two to sit 
on this famed Committee. I hold the seat once held by the late Barbara 
Jordan, who won her seat thanks to the Voting Rights Act. From her 
perch on this committee, Barbara Jordan once said:

       I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not 
     overstate the solemness that I feel right now. My faith in 
     the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.

  I stand today an heir of the Civil Rights Movement, a beneficiary of 
the Voting Rights Act. I would be breaking faith with those who risked 
all and gave all to secure for my generation the right to vote if I did 
not do all I can to strengthen the Voting Rights Act so that it will 
forever keep open doors that shut out so many for so long. And the 
first and most important thing to do today is to vote in favor of H.R. 
9 and against all weakening amendments.


                II. renewal of section 5 and section 203

  Congress needs to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 
which requires election law changes proposed by covered jurisdictions 
to be pre-cleared by the Department of Justice. The reason is simple. 
Equal opportunity in voting still does not exist in many places. 
Discrimination on the basis of race still denies many Americans their 
basic democratic rights. Although such discrimination today is more 
subtle than it used to be, it must still be remedied to ensure the 
healthy functioning of our democracy. It is the obligation of the 
federal government to see that the constitutionally protected right to 
vote is guaranteed. This is what the Voting Rights Act is designed to 
do.
     Section 5: Preclearance
  Section 5 applies to 16 states in whole or in part, including my home 
state of Texas. Under section 5, a covered jurisdiction must submit 
proposed changes to any voting law or procedure to the Department of 
Justice or the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. for pre-
approval, hence the term preclearance. The submitting jurisdiction has 
the burden of proof to show that the proposed change(s) are not 
retrogressive, i.e. that they do not have the purpose and will not have 
the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race 
or color.
  The formula used to designate these covered jurisdictions was first 
adopted in 1965 and then subsequently amended in 1970 and 1975. Section 
5 applies to any state or county where a discriminatory test or device 
was used as of November 1, 1964, and where less than 50 percent of the 
voting age residents of the jurisdiction were registered to vote, or 
actually voted, in the presidential election of 1964, 1968, or 1972. 
Although the formula used by Congress focused on registration rates, 
Congress was principally focused on voter turnout rates. Rather, 
Congress understood and found that there was an exceptionally strong 
correlation between low registration rates in the covered jurisdiction 
and active, purposeful discriminatory conduct intended to keep African-
Americans from voting.
  Mr. Chairman, it is important to emphasize that preclearance does not 
punish states for the wrongdoings of the past. Nor does it stifle their 
ability to move forward and progress. That is because covered 
jurisdictions are able to remove themselves from the restrictions of 
preclearance through a process known as bailout which sets forth clear 
and demonstrable standards. Among other things, the jurisdiction must 
show that:
  (1) It has not used a test or device with a discriminatory purpose or 
effect with respect to voting;
  (2) No state or federal court has issued a final judgment against the 
state or political subdivision for voting discrimination;
  (3) The jurisdiction has submitted all voting changes for 
preclearance in compliance with Section 5;
  (4) The Attorney General has not objected to a proposed voting 
change, and no declaratory judgment under section 5 has been denied by 
the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and;
  (5) The Justice Department has not assigned federal examiners to 
carry out voter registration or otherwise protect voting rights in the 
jurisdiction.
  Currently eleven local jurisdictions in Virginia have taken advantage 
of the bailout provisions thus far.
  Mr. Chairman, preclearance acts as an essential deterrent because it 
puts modest safeguards in place to prevent backsliding. As a bipartisan 
report by the U.S. Senate in 1982 said, without Section 5, many of the 
advances of the past decade could be wiped out overnight with new 
schemes and devices, such as the mid-decade redistricting conducted in 
Texas, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in part in LULAC v. 
Perry, 546 U.S.--No. 05-254 (June 28, 2006) and the Georgia voter 
identification scheme, which just this week was struck down for a 
second time.
  Mr. Chairman, many scholars and voting rights experts agree that 
without the deterrent effect of Section 5, there will be little to 
prevent covered jurisdictions from imposing new barriers to minority 
participation.
  As much as I and many other may like to see it, Section 5 should not 
be made permanent. Making it permanent would render it vulnerable to a 
constitutional challenge. Because Section 5 is race conscious, it must 
be able to withstand strict scrutiny by the courts. What this means, in 
part, is that the provision must be narrowly tailored to address the 
harms it is designed to cure. Many legal experts question whether the 
Court would find a permanent Section 5 to be narrowly tailored, such as 
to survive a constitutional attack.
  Similarly, Section 5 should not be changed to apply nationwide. 
Although this might sound attractive, a nationwide Section 5 would also 
be vulnerable to constitutional attack as not narrowly tailored or 
congruent and proportional to address the harms it is designed to cure, 
as required by the Supreme Court's recent precedents. Section 5 is 
directed at jurisdictions with a history of discriminating against 
minority voters. In addition, nationwide application of Section 5 would 
be extremely difficult to administer, given the volume of voting 
changes that would have to be reviewed. This expansion of coverage 
would dilute the Department of Justice's ability to appropriately focus 
their work on those jurisdictions where there is a history of voting 
discrimination.


                   section 203 (language assistance)

  Mr. Chairman, it is crucial that everyone in our democracy have the 
right to vote. Yet, having that right legally is meaningless if certain 
groups of people (such as the disabled or those with limited English 
proficiency) are unable to accurately cast their ballot at the polls. 
Voters may be well informed about the issues and candidates, but to 
make sure their vote is accurately cast, language assistance is 
necessary in certain jurisdictions with concentrated populations of 
limited English proficient voters.
  Section 203 was added to the Voting Rights Act in 1975 and requires 
certain jurisdictions to make language assistance available at polling 
locations for citizens with limited English

[[Page E1427]]

proficiency. These provisions apply to four language groups: Americans 
Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and those of Spanish 
heritage. A community with one of these language groups will qualify 
for language assistance if (1) more than 50 percent of the voting-age 
citizens in a jurisdiction belong to a single language minority 
community and have limited English proficiency (LEP); OR (2) more than 
10,000 voting-age citizens in a jurisdiction belong to a single 
language minority. community and are LEP; AND (3) the illiteracy rate 
of the citizens in the language minority is higher than the national 
illiteracy rate.
  Section 203 requires that registration and voting materials for all 
elections must be provided in the minority language as well as in 
English. Oral translation during all phases of the voting process, from 
voter registration clerks to poll workers, also is required. 
Jurisdictions are permitted to target their language assistance to 
specific voting precincts or areas.
  There are currently a total of 466 local jurisdictions across 31 
states that are required to provide language assistance nationwide. Of 
this total: 102 must assist Native Americans or Alaskan Natives across 
18 states; 17 local jurisdictions in seven states must assist Asian 
language speakers and; 382 local jurisdictions in 20 states must assist 
speakers of Spanish. The total of these figures exceeds 466 because 57 
of these Section 203 jurisdictions across 13 states must offer 
assistance in multiple languages.
  There is a great misconception that section 203 is not needed because 
voters must be citizens, who are required to. speak English. While this 
is true, such citizens still may not be sufficiently fluent to 
participate fully in the voting process without this much-needed 
assistance. In addition, there are many other citizens, the majarity of 
whom are Latinos and Native Americans, who were barn in the United 
States but have had little or no education and/or are limited English 
proficient. The failure of certain jurisdictions to provide adequate 
education to non-English speaking minorities is well documented in 
legal decisions and in quantitative studies of educational achievement 
for Latinos and Native Americans. Before the language assistance 
provisions were added to the Voting Rights Act in 1975, many Spanish-
speaking United States citizens did not register to vote because they 
could not read the election material and could not communicate with 
poll workers. Language assistance has encouraged these and other 
citizens of different language minority groups to register and vote and 
participate mare fully in the political process which is healthy far 
our democracy.
  Mr. Chairman, it should be stressed that language assistance is not 
costly. According to two separate Government Accounting Office studies, 
as well as independent research conducted by academic scholars, when 
implemented properly language assistance accounts only for a small 
fraction of total election costs. The most recent studies show that 
compliance with Section 203 accounts for approximately 5 percent of 
total election costs.
  Finally, Mr. Chairman, language assistance works. To cite one 
example, in 2003 in Harris County, Texas, officials did not provide 
language assistance for Vietnamese citizens. This prompted the 
Department of Justice to intervene and, as a result, voter turnout 
doubled and a local Vietnamese citizen was elected to a local 
legislative position. Another example: implementation of language 
assistance in New York City had enabled more than 100,000 Asian-
Americans not fluent in English to vote. In 2001, John Liu was elected 
to the New York City Council, becoming the first Asian-American elected 
to a major legislative position in the city with the nation's largest 
Asian-American population.


                               conclusion

  The Voting Rights Act of 1965, represents our country and this 
Congress at its best because it matches our words to deeds, our actions 
to our values. And, as is usually the case, when America acts 
consistent with its highest values, success follows. I urge my 
colleague to vote for the bill and reject all amendments.

                          ____________________