[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 25 (Thursday, February 11, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H760-H763]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             VOTING RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. I am delighted to follow the gentlewoman from New 
Jersey, focusing on the Congressional Progressive Caucus' commitment to 
ensuring every American can vote.
  Might I add that we have worked together with the Congressional 
Hispanic Caucus, we have worked together with the Congressional Black 
Caucus, and we have worked together with the Democratic Caucus.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to encourage the entire House to be 
committed to the very values of this Nation. This should not be a 
Republican or Democratic issue, of which it has become. We stand here 
as Democrats arguing for the empowerment of voters all over the Nation, 
yet legislative initiatives have been introduced by members of the 
Judiciary Committee and others. I have joined a number of those 
legislative initiatives, and these initiatives cannot be heard and 
cannot be voted on.
  The American people need to know that. There is no other reason than 
the Republican majority does not want to have empowered voters.

[[Page H761]]

  This is unlike what we did in years past. I have had the privilege of 
being on the House Judiciary Committee for a number of years, and the 
most powerful and moving experience was--and there have been many 
experiences on the House Judiciary Committee--when all of us came 
together to help write the restoration or reauthorization of the 1965 
Voting Rights Act.

                              {time}  1815

  It was a very emotional and tearful moment. It was a moment of great 
extensiveness--15,000 pages of testimony; many, many, many witnesses; 
individuals explaining how precious it is to vote; but, more 
importantly, how not having protection for the vote can, therefore, 
disallow them to vote.
  I guess the most provocative experience was a Republican President 
being joined by Republican and Democratic Members on a joyful sunny day 
signing the legislation that reauthorized the Voting Rights Act of 
1965.
  Mind you, Mr. Speaker, that bill exhibits, if you will, the pain and 
suffering of so many who marched and marched and marched and marched. 
Not only did they march, they died, like Jimmie Lee Jackson. Or our own 
colleague from Georgia, John Lewis, who reminds us every day of the 
fear and feeling of being beaten near to death in his march across the 
Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
  He also reminds us how precious the right to vote is. When Dr. Martin 
Luther King, who refused to give up or give out or give in, marched 
again, and they made it--with so many people from all backgrounds and 
all over the Nation--to Montgomery, Alabama, on that fateful trip back, 
everyone was celebrating that they had marched for the Voting Rights 
Act, that they had gotten through without violence--attributable, of 
course, to a Texas President by the name of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
  When a wonderful, wonderful lady--whose children I had the privilege 
of meeting--was driving back some foot soldiers, whom we will honor 
shortly at the leadership of Terri Sewell, when they were driving back 
and Viola Liuzzo was behind the wheel, lo and behold, somebody 
violently took a gun and killed her.
  Voting has never been easy. Voting rights has never been easy. A lot 
of blood was shed.
  It baffles me why we are faced with a situation where the United 
States Supreme Court eliminated section 5--not an illegal provision, 
but a provision that somebody disliked because, I believe, it empowered 
voters.
  What the Congress was tasked to do by the Court, which I think 
incorrectly and wrongly ignored 15,000 pages of testimony, ignored tens 
upon tens of witnesses in a meticulous rewriting of the Voting Rights 
Act to prove that it was still necessary, in a skewed deliberation, the 
Supreme Court decided to reject it, indicating that it was long passe.
  And, of course, some brilliant legislators used the example: because 
we have eliminated polio because of the vaccination, is it appropriate 
to get rid of the vaccination?
  No, it is not, Mr. Speaker.
  So with that skewed and, if I might use the term, weird reasoning, we 
are left holding the bag and the door is open to the kinds of laws, 
such as voter ID laws, that spread across America like a contagious 
disease because we did not have the protection of section 5, which the 
idea of section 5 was a preclearance for men and women of goodwill to 
look and determine whether or not a procedure was going to block 
individuals from voting.
  Of course, the voter ID law from Texas sprung up. You will soon hear 
from the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Veasey), my dear friend and 
colleague, because he was, in fact, the leader on the lawsuit.
  Let me say that that terrible law blocked a lot of people from 
voting.
  I want to remind people that the day of August 6, 1965, in the 
presence of such luminaries as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Roy 
Wilkins of the NAACP, Whitney Young of the National Urban League, James 
Forman of the Congress of Racial Equality, A. Philip Randolph, John 
Lewis, Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Everett Dirksen--mind you, 
a lady was missing, but, in the event, many women were foot soldiers.
  The point was made on the Voting Rights Act:

       The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by 
     man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible 
     walls which imprison men because they are different from 
     other men.

  In this instance, I would modify it and say ``women.''
  When the voting ID law--because of the misgivings of the State of 
Texas and its legislature--was put in place, there were 80 counties at 
least in Texas that did not have a Department of Public Safety office 
for individuals to be able to register or to be able to get an ID. That 
is a tragedy. Each moment there is something coming out of Texas that 
wants to, in essence, put down the rights of individuals to vote.
  One case that should be brought to our attention is a case before the 
Supreme Court that indicates a group of petitioners who don't like the 
fact that you represent a population of people. So they want to 
characterize and get a definition of what a person means, and they want 
to make that person be an eligible voter.
  So, in essence, a sick person laying in a bed who needs health care 
and needs to be represented is not an eligible voter. Or a senior 
citizen that has gotten so old and feeble that they may not have been 
registered because of their illness and their feebleness, but they need 
to be represented. Or it may be a child--Hispanic, African American, 
Anglo, or Asian--who is not at the age of voting and they are not an 
eligible voter. Or, as I know they are focusing on, is hardworking 
individuals who happen to be immigrants and they are not yet eligible 
to vote.
  And this case is brought primarily to make sure that those people who 
need to be represented to the extent that they are taxpayers but are 
not yet status, they will not be counted.
  This case is not anything to do with voter fraud. These people are 
not trying to vote. They are just trying to survive. But you are 
telling me that they are human beings, and this case is suggesting that 
they cannot be represented.
  This is the devastating impact of not having voter protection in 
section 5.
  So I rise today to ensure that it is heard throughout the land: We 
can pass voter restoration, voter advancement. We can pass fixing the 
Voting Rights Act and restoring section 5.
  There are many people in this Congress who previously were here when 
we stood with President Bush, a Republican, and Republicans and 
Democrats 98-1, 98-2 in the Senate, massive support in the House, to 
restore the Voting Rights Act.
  Let me ask the question, Mr. Speaker: Why now? Why are we struggling 
in this Presidential year not to allow people to vote?
  Let me close my remarks because we could go on with--how should I say 
it--the irony and, as well, the wrongness of not passing legislation. 
But let me say this in closing:
  Redistricting is a result of the Voting Rights Act. Those of us in 
Texas are still in litigation--for 20 years some of us--on the question 
of redistricting and making fair districts where all people are 
represented.
  And the gerrymandering that has been done, that disallows and 
disenfranchises whole chunks of minorities, disallowing them from 
voting for the person of their choice, do you know what it brings 
about? It brings about this House in the majority--good friends 
of mine--having the sheer gall to deny the President's representative 
of the Office of Management and Budget to present the President's 
budget. In its 41-year history, that has never happened.

  But because we have these districts that are drawn, not representing 
the vast numbers of people who should be able to hear the President's 
statement about his budget, by having his representative, the OMB 
Director, come before Congress and speak about what the President is 
trying to do: reducing the deficit, providing for education, protecting 
health care, job creation, economic security, universal access to child 
care, education for all, year-long Pell Grants, all of that, and a 
national security for peace--we can't hear from the OMB Director 
because of the skewed redistricting that allows for the majority to be 
so overwhelmingly in charge that they would deny the normal processes 
of government.
  The Voting Rights Act and the empowerment of voters is crucial and a

[[Page H762]]

fair redrawing of lines to let all of the people be heard and all of 
the voters be able to speak. That is why I am on the floor today.
  I am looking forward to reasonable people coming together and 
fostering legislation that answers the constitutional call that we all 
are created equal with certain unalienable rights--the rights of life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--which is embodied in the vote of 
the American people.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. SHEILA JACKSON LEE. I am pleased to join my colleagues of the 
Congressional Progressive Caucus in this important Special Order on 
voting rights protection and expansion for every American.
  I would like to thank Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman for 
convening this evening's Special Order and for her dedicated leadership 
on critical issues impacting children and families, including this 
evening's topic of voting rights.
  Fifty-one years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the 
Voting Rights Act of 1965 and because of that law, I stand before you 
as Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, the first African American woman 
Ranking Member of the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, 
Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.
  We are here today not just to commemorate the landmark achievement of 
51 years ago but to redouble and rededicate our efforts to the work 
that remains to be done to protect the right of all Americans to vote 
free from discrimination and the injustices that prevent them from 
exercising this most fundamental right of citizenship.
  On August 6, 1965, in the Rotunda of the Capitol and in the presence 
of such luminaries as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Roy Wilkins 
of the NAACP; Whitney Young of the National Urban League; James Foreman 
of the Congress of Racial Equality; A. Philip Randolph of the 
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis of the Student Non-
Violent Coordinating Committee; Senators Robert Kennedy, Hubert 
Humphrey, and Everett Dirksen; President Johnson said before signing 
the Voting Rights Act, in: ``The vote is the most powerful instrument 
ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the 
terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other 
men.''
  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was critical to preventing brazen voter 
discrimination violations that historically left millions of African 
Americans disenfranchised.
  In 1940, for example, there were less than 30,000 African Americans 
registered to vote in Texas and only about 3% of African Americans 
living in the South were registered to vote.
  Poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats of violence were the major 
causes of these racially discriminatory results.
  After passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited 
these discriminatory practices, registration and electoral 
participation steadily increased to the point that by 2012, more than 
1.2 million African Americans living in Texas were registered to vote.
  In 1964, the year before the Voting Rights Act became law, there were 
approximately 300 African-Americans in public office, including just 
three in Congress.
  Few, if any, black elected officials were elected anywhere in the 
South.
  Because of the Voting Rights Act, as of 2013 there are more than 
9,100 black elected officials, including 43 members of Congress, the 
largest number ever.
  The Voting Rights Act 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.
  The crown jewel of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is Section 5, which 
requires that states and localities with a chronic record of 
discrimination in voting practices secure federal approval before 
making any changes to voting processes.
  Section 5 protects minority voting rights where voter discrimination 
has historically been the worst.
  Since 1982, Section 5 has stopped more than 1,000 discriminatory 
voting changes in their tracks, including 107 discriminatory changes 
right here in Texas.
  And it is a source of eternal pride to all of us in Houston, that in 
pursuit of extending the full measure of citizenship to all Americans 
that in 1975, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who also represented this 
historic 18th Congressional District of Texas, introduced, and the 
Congress adopted, what are now Sections 4(f)(3) and 4(f)(4) of the 
Voting Rights Act, which extended the protections of Section 4(a) and 
Section 5 to language minorities.
  Barbara Jordan championed this reform because as she stated during 
the floor debate on the 1975 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act: 
``There are Mexican-American people in the State of Texas who have been 
denied the right to vote; who have been impeded in their efforts to 
register and vote; who have not had encouragement from those election 
officials because they are brown people[.] ``So, the state of Texas, if 
we approve [the Jordan language included in the bill], would be brought 
within the coverage of this Act for the first time.''
  We must remain ever vigilant and oppose all schemes that will abridge 
or dilute the precious right to vote.
  And we are here today to remind the nation that the right to vote--
that ``powerful instrument that can break down the walls of 
injustice''--is facing grave threats.
  The threat stems from the decision issued in June 2013 by the Supreme 
Court in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 193 (2013), which 
invalidated Section 4(b) of the VRA, and paralyzed the application of 
the VRA's Section 5 preclearance requirements.
  Earlier this week, the Maryland Senate voted to override Governor 
Larry Hogan's veto of a bill that allows formerly incarcerated 
individuals to register to vote after they are released from prison.
  Also, the Iowa Supreme Court will also be considering amending laws 
to grant the right to vote those who have been incarcerated in the 
past.
  Amending this legislation is important for the population because it 
will help in the reintegration of these individuals, and secure their 
right to vote.
  In light of this, there is still progress in the fight to restore the 
right to vote.
  According to the Supreme Court majority, the reason for striking down 
Section 4(b): ``Times change.''
  Now, the Court was right; times have changed. But what the Court did 
not fully appreciate is that the positive changes it cited are due 
almost entirely to the existence and vigorous enforcement of the Voting 
Rights Act.
  And that is why the Voting Rights Act is still needed.
  Let me put it this way: in the same way that the vaccine invented by 
Dr. Jonas Salk in 1953 eradicated the crippling effects but did not 
eliminate the cause of polio, the Voting Rights Act succeeded in 
stymieing the practices that resulted in the wholesale 
disenfranchisement of African Americans and language minorities but did 
eliminate them entirely.
  The Voting Rights Act is needed as much today to prevent another 
epidemic of voting disenfranchisement as Dr. Salk's vaccine is still 
needed to prevent another polio epidemic.
  However, officials in some states, notably Texas and North Carolina, 
seemed to regard the Shelby decision as a green light and rushed to 
implement election laws, policies, and practices that could never pass 
muster under the Section 5 preclearance regime.
  We all remember the Voter ID law passed in Texas in 2011, which 
required every registered voter to present a valid government-issued 
photo ID on the day of polling in order to vote.
  The Justice Department blocked the law in March of 2012, and it was 
Section 5 that prohibited it from going into effect.
  At least it did until the Shelby decision because on the very same 
day that Shelby County v. Holder was decided officials in Texas 
announced they would immediately implement the Photo ID law, and other 
election laws, policies, and practices that could never pass muster 
under the Section 5 preclearance regime.
  The Texas Photo ID law was challenged in federal court and 
thankfully, just yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth 
Circuit upheld the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales 
Ramos that Texas' strict voter identification law discriminated against 
blacks and Hispanics and violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  To take another example, last year, Councilwoman Pat Van Houte, who 
serves on the Pasadena, Texas City Council was forcibly ejected by 
armed officers at the direction of Pasadena Mayor Johnny Isbell at a 
council meeting to consider a controversial redistricting plan.
  The Pasadena redistricting plan is one of the first to be implemented 
in the aftermath of the Shelby v. Holder decision.
  Pushed through by Mayor Isbell and narrowly passed by the voters, the 
redistricting plan switches two of the city's eight council seats from 
single member district to at-large.
  Thus, the effect of the plan is to dilute the voting power of the 
poorer, predominantly Hispanic residents of the Pasadena's north side 
who opposed the change, and to increase the voting power of residents 
in the wealthier, whiter south side who supported it.
  This shameful episode is a reminder that the Voting Rights Act 
protected not only right to vote in federal elections but also applied 
to state and local jurisdictions as well.

[[Page H763]]

  For example, Section 5 subjected to preclearance and could have 
blocked the Texas Education Administration (TEA) from closing the North 
Forest Independent School District (NFISD) and disbanding its locally 
elected school board comprised of 7 African American members.
  Once freed by the Shelby County decision from having to pass muster 
under Section 5, however, TEA directed the annexation of the NFISD by 
HISD and dissolved the school board, thus diluting the ability of the 
African American and Hispanic community residents served by NFISD to 
influence the decisions affecting the education opportunities of their 
children.
  Protecting voting rights and combating voter suppression schemes are 
two of the critical challenges facing our great democracy.
  Without safeguards to ensure that all citizens have equal access to 
the polls, more injustices are likely to occur and the voices of 
millions silenced.
  Those of us who cherish the right to vote justifiably are skeptical 
of Voter ID laws because we understand how these laws, like poll taxes 
and literacy tests, can be used to impede or negate the ability of 
seniors, racial and language minorities, and young people to cast their 
votes.
  Consider the demographic groups who lack a government issued ID: 
African Americans: 25%; Asian Americans: 20%; Hispanic Americans: 19%; 
Young people, aged 18-24: 18%; Persons with incomes less than $35,000: 
15%.
  Voter ID laws are just one of the means that can be used to abridge 
or suppress the right to vote. Others include:
  1. Curtailing or Eliminating Early Voting
  2. Ending Same-Day Registration
  3. Not counting provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct on 
Election Day will not count.
  4. Eliminating Teenage Pre-Registration
  5. Shortened Poll Hours
  6. Lessening the standards governing voter challenges to vigilantes 
like the King Street Patriots to cause trouble at the polls.
  Today, I call upon House Speaker Ryan to bring legislation intended 
to protect the right to vote of all Americans to the floor for debate 
and vote.
  Specifically, I call for the passage of the bipartisan Voting Rights 
Amendments Act, (H.R. 3899 and H.R. 885) of which I am an original co-
sponsor, which repairs the damage done to the Voting Rights Act by the 
Supreme Court decision.
  This legislation replaces the old `static' coverage formula with a 
new dynamic coverage formula, or `rolling trigger,' which effectively 
gives the legislation nationwide reach because any state and any 
jurisdiction in any state potentially is subject to being covered if 
the requisite number of violations are found to have been committed.
  Alternatively, I call upon the Speaker to let the House debate and 
vote on the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 (H.R. 2867), a bill 
that provides even greater federal oversight of jurisdictions which 
have a history of voter suppression and protects vulnerable communities 
from discriminatory voting practices.
  Second, I call for the passage of H.R. 12, the Voter Empower Act of 
2015, legislation I have co-sponsored that protects voters from 
suppression, deception, and other forms of disenfranchisement by 
modernizing voter registration, promoting access to voting for 
individuals with disabilities, and protecting the ability of 
individuals to exercise the right to vote in elections for federal 
office.
  Before concluding there is one other point I would like to stress.
  In his address to the nation before signing the Voting Rights Act of 
1965, President Johnson said: ``Presidents and Congresses, laws and 
lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to 
the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot.
  ``But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied 
the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use 
that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice 
and fulfillment.''
  In other words, political power--and the justice, opportunity, 
inclusion, and fulfillment it provides--comes not from the right to 
vote but in the exercise of that right.
  And that means it is the civic obligation of every citizen to both 
register and vote in every election, state and local as well as 
federal.
  Because if we can register and vote, but fail to do so, we are guilty 
of voluntary voter suppression, the most effective method of 
disenfranchisement ever devised.
  And in recent years, we have not been doing a very good job of 
exercising our civic responsibility to register, vote, and make our 
voices heard.
  In the last two mayoral elections in Houston, barely 10 percent of 
city residents bothered to cast ballots (12% in 2011 and 13% in 2013); 
in many district-level elections, turnout rates were less than 10 
percent.
  For millions of Americans, the right to vote protected by the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965 is 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.
  As we are approaching the 51st anniversary of that landmark law, let 
us rededicate ourselves to honoring those who won for us this precious 
right by remaining vigilant and fighting against both the efforts of 
others to abridge or suppress the right to vote and our own apathy in 
exercising this sacred right.

                          ____________________