[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19102-19103]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         VOTER SUPPRESSION LAWS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. LEE of California. Mr. Speaker, first let me take a moment to 
thank the gentlelady from Ohio, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, for her 
fearless and tireless leadership in protecting our democracy and the 
bedrock, of course, of our country, and that is the right to vote. She 
has done an amazing job keeping us very focused and pointed with all of 
the information we need to try to address this in a big way.
  Once again, I am here today to sound the alarm because, make no 
mistake

[[Page 19103]]

about it, the fundamental right to vote which is at the heart of our 
democracy, it is under attack. Republican legislators and governors are 
proposing partisan laws that require voters to show government-approved 
photo IDs before voting.
  Now, I came to this floor years ago after the stolen Presidential 
elections in Florida and in Ohio to protest the results of those two 
elections that were filled with voter suppression. It worked for the 
Republicans before, and so legislators in 42 States on this map of 
shame have doubled down on these strategies to make it harder for 
certain communities to vote.
  These proposals would disenfranchise 21 million Americans. That's 
over 1 in 10 eligible voters in America who do not have adequate 
identification. Now, how in the world, for example, would my 100-year-
old aunt get her birth certificate to prove who she is to get a 
government ID to vote? She wouldn't know where to start, nor how to pay 
for it. And it's no coincidence that a disproportionate number of these 
disaffected voters come from communities of color as well as the poor, 
the elderly, and students.
  Fully one in four otherwise qualified African Americans would be 
unable to vote under these voter-ID laws. Around one in five Asian 
Americans, Latinos, and young adults between the ages of 18 to 24 would 
be blocked.
  In my home State of California, a voter-ID bill was introduced to 
suppress voter participation. It would cost $26 just to get the 
required documents to qualify for a government-issued ID. Now, having 
been born and raised in Texas, this certainly looks like a poll tax to 
me, which those of us remember as a way to prevent African Americans 
from voting. These voter-ID laws have a partisan agenda seeking to 
disenfranchise and deny specific populations of voters before they have 
the opportunity to elect their representatives in government. These 
partisan laws are shameful, and they're a disgrace to our country.
  If these Republican lawmakers were truly concerned with fighting 
voter fraud, they would take on actual documented problems such as 
distributing fliers with false information meant to trick voters, 
improperly purging voters, or tampering with election equipment and 
forms.
  Instead, they are pushing laws designed to change election outcomes 
by reducing voting, repressing turnout, and turning the clock back to 
the days of Jim Crow. This is the exact opposite of where our country 
needs to go. With almost 40 percent of eligible voters regularly 
staying away from voting booths, we need to be expanding participation 
in our democracy, making the ballot more accessible, not less. We 
cannot and we must not allow democracy to be undermined, especially 
while we're promoting democracy abroad.
  We must unmask these shameful attempts to disenfranchise voters. 
Let's stop this partisan effort that strikes at the very core of our 
country. Let's win this war against voters. We should be about 
dismantling and reducing barriers so that we can really begin to 
reignite the American Dream for those who have lost hope.
  So I want to thank my colleagues, especially Congresswoman Fudge, for 
their calls to protect the right to vote on behalf of all the citizens 
across this great Nation.

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