[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 128 (Thursday, September 20, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H6153-H6154]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  STILL FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT TO VOTE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, there have been two struggles to make 
American democracy work. First was who would be eligible to vote. 
Originally, only those who were white, male, property owners over 21, 
voted, perhaps a quarter of the population.
  More than three-quarters of a century later, having fought the civil 
war, African Americans were granted the franchise. It would be another 
two-thirds of a century before voting rights were extended to women.
  Finally, in a battle that I was proud to be a part of as a college 
student, campaigning and testifying before Congress, we adopted the 
XXVI amendment, extending the voting rights to young people at age 18.
  But there's always been another battle: Who amongst the theoretically 
eligible voters are actually able to cast their ballot and have it 
counted?
  It's no secret the States in the Old South waged a brutal extra-legal 
war to prevent newly enfranchised African Americans from voting. The 
discrimination, intimidation and violence are well-chronicled; and it's 
why, almost a century after African Americans were given the legal 
right to vote, we still need the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to really 
give them the vote supposedly guaranteed under the Constitution.
  Despite the Voting Rights Act, and two centuries of struggle, there's 
still

[[Page H6154]]

a battle today. Part of the Republican game plan for 2012 is to make 
voting difficult or impossible for some of the same groups who have 
long suffered discrimination, who are now seriously disadvantaged by 
new voter suppression laws that have been passed by Republicans in 
States like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
  Because voter fraud is a Federal offense, with serious legal 
consequences, even jail time, improperly cast ballots are virtually 
nonexistent in the United States. There are far more votes that are 
lost due to malfunctioning voting machines, mistakes and sleight-of-
hand by local elected officials who are either inept or cheating than 
are all the cases that have been documented nationwide.
  Texas has another effort to pass aggressive voter ID legislation, but 
they can find only five documented incidents of voter fraud in 13 
million ballots cast in the last two elections.
  In Pennsylvania, there have been fewer cases than you can count on 
your fingers, yet up to a million people may be denied the right to 
vote because of these legal changes.
  Millions of poor, elderly, minority and student voters don't have 
passports or driver's licenses; some don't even have birth 
certificates. They may face the modern version of a poll tax, and 
that's unconscionable.
  The media and courts are pushing back on some of the more outrageous 
behaviors, like Ohio's Secretary of State, John Husted, who was called 
out and forced to back down after he tried to limit early voting in 
counties with Democrats in the majority, while expanding them in 
Republican counties.
  Come election day, the problems will still persist. There is a 
solution: pry partisan fingers off the controls of a varied election 
process. We shouldn't be treating the precious right to vote as a game 
where partisan advantage comes at the expense of our civil rights.
  Oregon has been involved for 25 years with what is no longer an 
experiment but a display of a better way: vote by mail. Each registered 
voter in the Oregon is mailed a ballot to their residence 19 days 
before the election. They are given well over 400 hours to examine the 
ballot, make their decision on the issues and individuals, and return 
it by mail or in person.
  Oregonians don't worry about people gaming voting machines, closing 
precincts early, having long lines for working people at the end of the 
day, or mysteriously running out of ballots at precincts that are 
likely to vote against you. In Oregon, there's no problem with illegal 
voting. Everybody has access to the ballot, and results are processed 
in a timely fashion.
  It's shameful that, after more than two centuries of struggle for the 
right to vote, we're still playing games with people's opportunity to 
exercise that hard-won privilege upon which our democratic tradition 
rests.
  I will be championing the Oregon solution of vote by mail to make the 
process simpler, more reliable, most important, fairer, while saving 
money in the process. I hope these blatant attempts at manipulation and 
discrimination backfire so that the next Congress and the 
administration are positioned to do something about it.
  A country that prides itself as the oldest democracy deserves for the 
democratic process to work.

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