[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17318]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1230
                             VOTER ID LAWS

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Instead of Republican legislatures across 
America, Madam Speaker, focusing on creating jobs in their States and 
working with this Congress to create jobs, we find ourselves shackled 
by 40 States implementing voter ID laws--laws/provisions that limit 
voting by requiring the presentation of photo identification that, 
however, is limited to State-authorized voter ID, which has a negative 
impact on our seniors, laws that exclude the most common forms of ID--
student IDs and Social Security cards. But they offer no alternate 
procedures. Changes requiring limitations or the outright elimination 
of early voting opportunities bury us to first-time voters, such as the 
elimination of same-day registration.
  Madam Speaker, couldn't we do better than to counter the 15th 
Amendment, which indicates that there should be no laws that would 
thwart anyone's right to vote, or even the 24th Amendment that 
indicates that we should not have a poll tax to allow people to vote?
  Rather than creating jobs through passing the American Jobs Act or 
standing up and denouncing the sexual abuse of children, which is a 
crisis and an outrage, we are stopping people from voting by putting in 
place voter ID laws. Voter suppression, the Constitution will not 
tolerate it--the 15th Amendment and the 24th Amendment. Let us open 
this opportunity for all people and fight the real issues that the 
American people want us to address.

                          ____________________