[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12183]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1210
                       PROTECT THE RIGHT TO VOTE

  (Ms. CHU asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. CHU. Few things are as sacred as the right to vote. Generations 
have fought, bled, and died so that you and I can have a voice in our 
democracy. This is why we must guard against measures that take this 
away, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited all 
Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens so that they 
would not be able to vote. It lasted 60 years, until 1943, preventing 
people who'd lived in this country for decades from exercising their 
voices.
  Laws like this, poll taxes, or literacy tests, should be a thing of 
the past in America. Every U.S. citizen, no matter what their 
background, should have access to the polls. But today, State 
governments across the country are enacting laws making it much harder 
for as many as 5 million Americans to vote, requiring, for instance, 
photo IDs for grandmothers who voted for years but no longer drive.
  When barely half of Americans vote, we should not be erecting more 
barriers to democracy. We should be removing obstacles. We must protect 
the right to vote.

                          ____________________