[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16450]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             VOTING RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, the right to vote is under attack. It may 
not be easy to see; but in State legislatures all across this country, 
we are seeing a quiet passing of laws that will strip American citizens 
of their right to vote.
  It may come as a surprise that this is happening in the United 
States. Our great country is best known for its rich democratic 
tradition, which is predicated on the right to vote; and this right to 
vote has been expanding over time, not retracting. Throughout our 
history, brave men and women have fought and died for the right, and it 
has been denied to too many Americans for too long. Since its founding, 
the United States has been on a course toward enfranchisement, not 
disenfranchisement. Incredibly, that seems to be changing.
  State legislatures are turning back the clock on decades of hard-
fought voter protections. This year, 34 State legislatures introduced 
prohibitive voter ID bills. If passed, they could affect the voting 
ability of nearly 21 million Americans. Two States have enacted 
prohibitive proof-of-citizenship laws, which stand to exclude even more 
voters at the polls; 13 States are working to make it harder to 
register to vote; and nine are working to reduce early and absentee 
voting.
  These laws add up to the greatest attack on voting rights since the 
Jim Crow era. In all, they could strip more than 5 million Americans of 
the right to vote. That figure alone is half the margin of victory from 
the 2008 Presidential election. Congress must act. Today, I am 
introducing two bills to push back against these laws and protect 
Americans' right to vote.
  The first bill, the Voter Access Protection Act, will ensure that no 
American citizen is denied the right to vote because they don't have 
photo IDs on election day. The second bill, the Same Day Registration 
Act, will allow Americans to register to vote on the same day they cast 
their ballots. No American citizen should be turned back at the polls 
because they didn't register weeks or months in advance. These bills 
will help ensure that all Americans are able to exercise their 
fundamental rights in Federal elections.
  If you truly believe in democracy, you should be doing everything you 
can to increase the enfranchisement of American citizens, not to take 
it away. I urge all of my colleagues to support this critical and 
patriotic legislation.

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