[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 130 (Monday, July 26, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E815-E817]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 URGENT NEED TO PASS LEGISLATION TO PROTECT AND PRESERVE VOTING RIGHTS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 26, 2021

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on the fierce urgency 
of preserving the precious right to vote by passing H.R. 4, the John 
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, H.R. 1, the For The People Act. I 
will continue the dialogue at a future time, when I discuss the 
importance of passing H.R. 40, legislation which I introduced that 
establishes a commission to study and develop reparation proposals for 
African Americans.
  Madam Speaker, the serious damage to the precious right to vote 
occasioned by the right-wing, conservative majority on the Supreme 
Court demands that Congress exercise its powers under Section 5 of the 
15th Amendment to restore the extraordinary reach and effectiveness of 
Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. As an aside, Madam 
Speaker, on the objection of VRA opponents to states subject 
preclearance having the burden to bail themselves out, I have long said 
that the states that were subject to preclearance under the Voting 
Rights Act earned their way in, so it only fitting that they earn their 
way out.
  Madam Speaker, June 25, 2021, marked the 8th anniversary of the 
Supreme Court's infamous decision in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 
529 (2013), which immobilized the Department of Justice from subjecting 
discriminatory voting and election law changes to prior review and 
approval, or ``preclearance.'' It was predicted at the time by me and 
other defenders of the precious right to vote that the Court's 
misguided and naive decision would usher in a wave of state and local 
initiatives intended to suppress and nullify the rights of black 
Americans, persons of color, young adults, and marginalized communities 
to exercise the most basic act in the political process: voting. As we 
have seen in recent months, this prediction has tragically come to 
pass.
  Not to be content with the monument to disgrace that is the Shelby 
decision, the activist right-wing conservative majority on the Roberts 
Court, on July 1, 2021, issued its evil twin, the decision in Brnovich 
v. DNC, 594 U.S. __, No. 19-1257 and 19-1258 (July 1, 2021), which 
engrafts on Section 2 of the Voting Rights onerous burdens that 
Congress never intended and explicitly legislated against to ensure 
that: ``No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, 
practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or 
political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or 
abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on 
account of' race or color, or language minority status.''
  Among these burdens, couched as ``guideposts,'' or ``suggestions'' 
are that when reviewing claims that a facially neutral election law, 
policy, practice, or voting rule has a discriminator, and therefore 
unlawful, effect on minority citizens, courts are to consider the 
following matters:
  1. An ``ordinary burdens'' or ``mere inconvenience'' exception; 2. 
Size of disparities in burdens imposed by the challenged rule; 3. Other 
opportunities to vote provided by a state's election system; 4. 
Legitimate state interests justifying the challenged voting rule; and 
5. The degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard 
practice when 2 was amended in 1982.
  Taken together, this Supreme Court cabal is saying to racial, ethnic, 
and language minorities: ``What's the big deal, it's only voting. Just 
like with bad weather, sometimes you just have grin and bear a little 
inconvenience.'' This Supreme Court majority has simply never 
understood, or refuses to accept, the fundamental importance of the 
right to vote, free of discriminatory hurdles and obstacles.
  Madam Speaker, were it not for the 24th Amendment, I venture to say 
that this conservative majority on the Court would subject poll taxes 
and literacy tests to the review standard enunciated in Brnovich v. 
DNC. Their predecessors on the Court understood this, going back at 
least as far as 1938, when the Supreme Court held in Chief Justice 
Hughes' famous Footnote 4 in United States v. Caroletie Products, 304 
U.S. 144 (1938), that government action alleged to discriminate against 
``discrete and insular minorities'' would be subject to ``strict 
scrutiny'' by reviewing courts.
  Madam Speaker, you might be asking who are these `discrete and 
insular minorities' about whom the Court was referring? The answer is 
they were and are persons ``excluded from ``those political processes 
ordinarily to be relied upon to protect'' them, racial and language 
minorities, and aliens, all of whom were denied the single most 
important tool for protecting and advancing one's interests in a 
democracy: the right to vote. It is useful, Madam Speaker, to recount 
how we arrived at this day. Madam Speaker, fifty-six years ago, in 
Selma, Alabama, hundreds of heroic souls risked their lives for freedom 
and to secure the right to vote for all Americans by their 
participation in marches for voting rights on ``Bloody Sunday,'' 
``Turnaround Tuesday,'' or the final, completed march from Selma to 
Montgomery.
  Those ``foot soldiers'' of Selma, brave and determined men and women, 
boys and girls, persons of all races and creeds, loved their country so 
much that they were willing to risk their lives to make it better, to 
bring it even closer to its founding ideals. The foot soldiers marched 
because they believed that all persons have dignity and the right to 
equal treatment under the law, and in the making of the laws, which is 
the fundamental essence of the right to vote. On that day, Sunday, 
March 7, 1965, more than 600 civil rights demonstrators, including our 
beloved former colleague, the late Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, 
were brutally attacked by state and local police at the Edmund Pettus 
Bridge as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of the right 
to vote.
  ``Bloody Sunday'' was a defining moment in American history because 
it crystallized for the nation the necessity of enacting a strong and 
effective federal law to protect the right to vote of every American. 
No one who witnessed the violence and brutally suffered by the foot 
soldiers for justice who gathered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge will ever 
forget it; the images are deeply seared in the American memory and 
experience. 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. and 
Rev. Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; 
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 addressed the nation 
before signing the Voting Rights Act: ``The vote is the most powerful 
instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and

[[Page E816]]

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 
percent 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, African Americans held elective office 
anywhere in the South. Because of the Voting Rights Act, in 2007 there 
were more than 9,100 black elected officials, including 46 members of 
Congress, the largest number ever. Madam Speaker, the Voting Rights Act 
opened the political process for many of the approximately 6,000 
Hispanic public officials that have been elected and appointed 
nationwide, including more than 275 at the state or federal level, 32 
of whom serve in Congress. Native Americans, Asians and others who have 
historically encountered harsh barriers to full political participation 
also have benefited greatly.
  As I indicated, 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 has protected 
minority voting rights where voter discrimination has historically been 
the worst. Between 1982 and 2006, Section 5 stopped more than 1,000 
discriminatory voting changes in their tracks, including 107 
discriminatory changes right here in Texas. Passed in 1965 with the 
extraordinary leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, the greatest 
legislative genius of our lifetime, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was 
bringing dramatic change in many states across the South. But in 1972, 
change was not coming fast enough or in many places in Texas. In fact, 
Texas, which had never elected a woman to Congress or an African 
American to the Texas State Senate, was not covered by Section 5 of the 
1965 Voting Rights Act and the language minorities living in South 
Texas were not protected at all.
  But thanks to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the tireless voter 
registration work performed in 1972 by Hillary Clinton in Texas, along 
with hundreds of others, including her future husband Bill, Barbara 
Jordan was elected to Congress, giving meaning to the promise of the 
Voting Rights Act that all citizens would at long last have the right 
to cast a vote for person of their community, from their community, for 
their community. Madam Speaker, 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, 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.
  During the floor debate on the 1975 reauthorization of the Voting 
Rights Act, Congresswoman Jordan explained why this reform was needed: 
``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 this measure, would be brought within the coverage of this 
Act for the first time.'' When it comes to extending and protecting the 
precious right vote, the Lone Star State--the home state of Lyndon 
Johnson and Barbara Jordan--could be the leading state in the Union, 
one that sets the example for the nation. But to realize that future, 
Texas must turn from and not return to the dark days of the past.
  By embracing the discriminatory Texas SB7 and the `Big Lie' that the 
2020 election, by all accounts adjudged the most secure and inclusive 
in American history, was riven by voter fraud, Texas Republicans are 
making the wrong choice to their eternal shame. Texans must remain ever 
vigilant and oppose all schemes that will abridge or dilute the 
precious right to vote, like the odious Texas SB7 recently passed by 
the Texas State Senate but killed, but not yet permanently, by the 
unity and courage of Democrats in the Texas State House of 
Representatives. Madam Speaker, I applaud the House Democrats of the 
Texas General Assembly for being on the front lines, fighting in 
opposition to Texas SB7 on the House floor and I join with them in 
calling upon the U.S. Senate to eliminate the filibuster and to bring 
to the floor for debate and vote--so Congress can pass--H.R. 1 and H.R. 
4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
  We must all do our part to preserve this most important heritage 
because it was earned with the sacrifices and the lives of our 
ancestors. The right to vote is a ``powerful instrument that can break 
down the walls of injustice'' and must be protected against attack from 
all enemies, foreign and domestic, using all the legal tools at our 
disposal. Madam Speaker, the right to vote and to participate 
meaningfully in civic and political affairs has done more to advance 
the cause of freedom, justice, and equality than the Second Amendment 
has ever done, if it has done anything at all. It is time the Congress 
act to protect and expand the right to vote, the only right that is 
preservative of every other right.
  Madam Speaker, how often have we heard our friends across the aisle 
claim that burdening the right to vote with new restrictions and 
limitations are racially neutral and that their intentions must be 
adjudged pure because `after all, they're the party of Lincoln'? This 
is a short horse soon curried. The Republican Party was founded in the 
1850s because of its opposition to slavery that Southern Democrats like 
future Vice-President of the Confederate States of America Alexander 
Stephens boasted was the ``cornerstone of America.'' In 1861, after the 
election of Abraham Lincoln as President, the eleven slave-holding 
states succeeded from the Union, not to preserve their heritage, but to 
keep their slaves. That led to the Civil War, in which more than 
600,000 persons on both sides gave their lives and ended in the utter 
defeat and unconditional surrender of the Confederate Army led by its 
traitor general Robert E. Lee. Also, as a consequence of the Civil War, 
the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed and 
ratified.
  Madam Speaker, I am grateful that at the time when it was needed 
most, the Republican Party was born and committed to the extinction of 
slavery. It was the pro-freedom, pro-civil rights party. The Democratic 
Party in those nightmarish days was centered in the ``Solid South,'' 
and proudly wore the label of the pro-slavery, white supremacy party. 
This was not lost on the American people, and for a century Black 
Americans overwhelmingly self-identified with the pro-civil rights, 
anti-white supremacy Republican Party. Even after the national 
Democratic Party renounced de jure racism and `states rights' at the 
1948 DNC in Philadelphia, resulting in Strom Thurmond leading his 
fellow Dixiecrats out of the convention and his running failed bid for 
the presidency, Black Americans remained a core constituency of the 
Republican Party, while nearly all whites in the southern states were 
Democrats, distinguishing themselves from northern liberals by calling 
themselves `Southern Democrats' or `constitutional Democrats'. All of 
this changed in 1964.
  That was the year the Republican Party nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater 
for President, an active and die-hard opponent of the Civil Rights Act 
of 1964. Southern Democrats saw in Goldwater's support for `states 
rights' a kindred spirit and vehicle to halt the federal government's 
commitment to extend the writ and guarantees of the Constitution to all 
persons in all regions of the country. Madam Speaker, the result of 
that realigning election remains with us to this day. Before the Great 
Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the overwhelming 
majority of votes cast by Black Americans were for Republican 
candidates.
  Even in the election of 1960, the parties closely competed for the 
votes of Black Americans, with Republican Richard Nixon winning more 
than 35 percent. Fast forward to 1964. Republican Barry Goldwater was 
routed 486-52 in an electoral college landslide and lost 43 states; 
Lyndon Johnson won the popular vote by 16 million votes (61-38 
percent). Goldwater won only his native state of Arizona and five Deep 
South states--Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and South 
Carolina. It is interesting to note that the five Southern states that 
voted for Goldwater swung over dramatically to support him; for 
example, in Mississippi, where Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had won 
97 percent of the popular vote in 1936, Goldwater won 87 percent of the 
vote. Lyndon Johnson would say the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would cost 
Democrats the South for 50 years but it was worth it.
  What accounted for this change in voting allegiance, which persists 
to this day? The answer is simple and obvious, beginning in 1964 the 
Democratic Party became, and was perceived by Americans, as the party 
of civil rights; the Republican Party not so much. The difference now 
is that white supremacists have not been welcome or embraced by the 
national Democratic Party since 1948 and have been pariahs since 1964. 
But they are welcome in today's Republican Party; in fact, one was even 
nominated and renominated as its standard-bearer in 2016 and 2020. We 
Democrats are not reluctant to remove and banish

[[Page E817]]

those who bring shame and dishonor to our cause of advancing equal 
justice for all Americans. I challenge our friends across the aisle to 
stop glorifying as `heritage' a history of terror, injustice, violence, 
and racism represented by the persons whose statues are being removed 
and anyone who proudly waves a Confederate flag, like the one that 
disgraced the Capitol when it was paraded by domestic terrorists during 
the January 6 insurrection and attack on American democracy.

                          ____________________