[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 28, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H2477-H2478]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      VOTING RIGHTS AMENDMENT ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, when the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 to 
invalidate the preclearance formula in the original Voting Rights Act, 
it issued a challenge to Congress to pass an updated one. That is a 
challenge Congress must accept. Until Congress acts, millions will 
continue to face barriers at the ballot box.
  On April 18, The New York Times editorial board highlighted the 
disturbing and flawed argument that preclearance is no longer 
necessary. Obviously, the Congress of the United States found 
otherwise.
  The editorial stated: ``This process . . . stopped hundreds of 
discriminatory new laws from taking effect, and deterred lawmakers from 
introducing countless more.''
  The process to which they were referring was the preclearance process 
that the Supreme Court threw out. The editors cited a new study that 
analyzed more than 4,000 rights cases.
  They write again: ``The study provides the most wide-ranging 
empirical evidence yet that Congress was amply justified in finding 
that voting discrimination remains concentrated in the covered States 
and regions.''
  When we reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006, Mr. Speaker, we 
did so with an overwhelming vote of 390-33 in the House. In the Senate, 
Mr. Speaker, it was 98-0. There was no confusion, there was no doubt in 
the minds of the Congress of the United States, and that bill was 
signed by President George Bush. It was an overwhelmingly bipartisan 
conclusion that preclearance was still necessary some 45 years after 
the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
  This has traditionally been an issue that brings Democrats and 
Republicans together, and I am proud to have cosponsored a bipartisan 
compromise bill sponsored by Republican former chairman of the 
Committee on the Judiciary, Jim Sensenbrenner, who was the sponsor and 
chairman of the committee when the reauthorization was effected in 
2006.
  The bill that we have introduced, called the Voting Rights Amendments 
Act, with Republican former chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, 
Jim Sensenbrenner, and Ranking Member John Conyers, as well as John 
Lewis--great hero of the civil rights movement--that would answer the 
Supreme Court with an updated preclearance formula, as they suggested. 
In fact, in the past 2 years since the Court's ruling, we have seen a 
resurgence of efforts to limit when and where minorities can vote.
  The editorial goes on to say, Mr. Speaker: ``Voting discrimination no 
longer takes the form of literacy tests and poll taxes. Instead, it is 
embodied in voter-ID laws, the closing of polling places in minority 
neighborhoods, the elimination of early-voting days and hours, and much 
more.''
  Mr. Speaker, I hope the House will take up a bill to restore the 
Voting Rights Act without delay and crack down on these discriminatory 
practices that only serve to weaken our democracy by excluding millions 
of voices that deserve to be heard.
  2015 is the 50-year anniversary of the passing and signing of the 
Voting Rights Act. That act was achieved only after some died, many 
bled, and a large number participated in the march from Selma to 
Montgomery.
  That galvanized American public opinion and led the Congress to pass 
one of the most significant civil rights and democratic rights bills of 
its history. Congress has the responsibility to act and act now.
  As I close, Mr. Speaker, let me remind the Members of the Congress 
that I discussed this with the majority leader. The majority leader 
indicated that we would have discussions about bringing Voting Rights 
Act to the floor, as did I and Mr. Cantor, his predecessor as majority 
leader.
  I look forward to those discussions to facilitate and to speed the 
bringing to the floor of the bipartisan restoration of the protections 
in the Voting Rights Act amendments.
  Mr. Speaker, I will insert into the Record the editorial reference.

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 18, 2015]

                     Voting Rights, by the Numbers

       When the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting 
     Rights Act in 2013, its main argument was that the law was 
     outdated.

[[Page H2478]]

       Discrimination against minority voters may have been 
     pervasive in the 1960s when the law was passed, Chief Justice 
     John Roberts Jr. wrote, but ``nearly 50 years later, things 
     have changed dramatically.'' In this simplistic account, the 
     law was still punishing states and local governments for sins 
     they supposedly stopped committing years ago.
       The chief justice's destructive cure for this was to throw 
     out the formula Congress devised in 1965 that required all or 
     parts of 16 states with long histories of overt racial 
     discrimination in voting, most in the South, to get approval 
     from the federal government for any proposed change to their 
     voting laws. This process, known as preclearance, stopped 
     hundreds of discriminatory new laws from taking effect, and 
     deterred lawmakers from introducing countless more.
       But Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, 
     invalidated the formula because ``today's statistics tell an 
     entirely different story.''
       Well, do they? A comprehensive new study by a historian of 
     the Voting Rights Act provides a fresh trove of empirical 
     evidence to refute that assertion. The study by J. Morgan 
     Kousser, a professor of history and social science at the 
     California Institute of Technology, examines more than 4,100 
     voting-rights cases, Justice Department inquiries, 
     settlements and changes to laws in response to the threat of 
     lawsuits around the country where the final result favored 
     minority voters.
       It found that from 1957 until 2013, more than 90 percent of 
     these legal ``events'' occurred in jurisdictions that were 
     required to preclear their voting changes. The study also 
     provides evidence that the number of successful voting-rights 
     suits has gone down in recent years, not because there is 
     less discrimination, but because several Supreme Court 
     decisions have made them harder to win.
       Mr. Kousser acknowledges that the law's formula, created 
     without the benefit of years of data, was a ``blunt tool'' 
     that focused on voter turnout and clearly discriminatory 
     practices like literacy tests. Still, he says, the statistics 
     show that for almost a half century it ``succeeded in 
     accurately homing in on the counties where the vast majority 
     of violations would take place.''
       Members of Congress had seen some of this data in 2006 
     when, by a near-unanimous vote, they reauthorized the Voting 
     Rights Act for 25 years. In fact, the legislative record 
     contained more than 15,000 pages of evidence documenting the 
     continuation of ever-evolving racially discriminatory voting 
     practices, particularly in the areas covered by the 
     preclearance requirement.
       But the Roberts opinion showed no interest in actual data. 
     Nor did it seem to matter that the law was already adapting 
     to current conditions: Every one of the more than 200 
     jurisdictions that asked to be removed from the preclearance 
     list was successful, because each showed it was not 
     discriminating.
       Instead, the court said the coverage formula had to be 
     struck down because it failed to target precisely all areas 
     with voting rights violations in the country.
       Mr. Kousser's study does not solve this problem, in part 
     because there is no easy way to compare discrimination in 
     places that are under a federal microscope with those that 
     are not. But the study provides the most wide-ranging 
     empirical evidence yet that Congress was amply justified in 
     finding that voting discrimination remains concentrated in 
     the covered states and regions. In other words, the tactics 
     may have changed, but the story remains largely the same. 
     Voting discrimination no longer takes the form of literacy 
     tests and poll taxes. Instead, it is embodied in voter-ID 
     laws, the closing of polling places in minority 
     neighborhoods, the elimination of early-voting days and 
     hours, and much more.
       The Supreme Court suggested that Congress could fix the law 
     by updating the coverage formula to more closely reflect 
     where violations are occurring today--and a bipartisan bill 
     introduced in 2014 and reintroduced this year has done just 
     that. So far it has gone nowhere because most Republicans 
     oppose it. Even if it were to pass, there is no guarantee it 
     would survive before a Supreme Court that is highly skeptical 
     of any race-conscious efforts to reduce discrimination.
       Meanwhile, the Justice Department and private groups are 
     doing what they can to combat the flood of new discriminatory 
     laws with the surviving provisions of the Voting Rights Act. 
     But without preclearance requirements for places with the 
     worst records on racial discrimination, they will always be a 
     few steps behind.

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