[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 13830-13831]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  COMMEMORATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, September 8, 2015

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker on this joyful day 50 years ago, 
President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 
and because of that law, I stand before you as Congresswoman Sheila 
Jackson Lee, the first African American woman Ranking Member of the 
House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, 
and Investigations.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today not just to commemorate the landmark 
achievement of 50 years ago but to inform our colleagues and the nation 
of the need to redouble and rededicate our efforts to the work that 
remains to be done to protect the right of all Americans to vote free 
from discrimination and the injustices that prevent them from 
exercising this most fundamental right of citizenship.
  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 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% 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, today there are more than 9,100 
black elected officials, including 46 members of Congress, the largest 
number ever.
  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.
  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 protects minority voting rights where voter discrimination 
has historically been the worst.
  Since 1982, Section 5 has stopped more than 1,000 discriminatory 
voting changes in their tracks, including 107 discriminatory changes 
right here in Texas.
  And 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 to vote, 
the Lone Star

[[Page 13831]]

State--the home state of Lyndon Johnson and Barbara Jordan--can be the 
leading state in the Union, one that sets the example for the nation.
  But to realize that future, we must turn from and not return to the 
dark days of the past.
  We must remain ever vigilant and oppose all schemes that will abridge 
or dilute the precious right to vote.
  Mr. Speaker, I am here today to remind the nation that the right to 
vote--that ``powerful instrument that can break down the walls of 
injustice''--is facing grave threats.
  The threat stems from the decision issued in June 2013 by the Supreme 
Court in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 193 (2013), which 
invalidated Section 4(b) of the VRA, and paralyzed the application of 
the VRA's Section 5 preclearance requirements.
  According to the Supreme Court majority, the reason for striking down 
Section 4(b) was that ``times change.''
  Now, the Court was right; times have changed.
  But what the Court did not fully appreciate is that the positive 
changes it cited are due almost entirely to the existence and vigorous 
enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
  And that is why the Voting Rights Act is still needed.
  Let me put it this way: in the same way that the vaccine invented by 
Dr. Jonas Salk in 1953 eradicated the crippling effects but did not 
eliminate the cause of polio, the Voting Rights Act succeeded in 
stymieing the practices that resulted in the wholesale 
disenfranchisement of African Americans and language minorities but did 
eliminate them entirely.
  The Voting Rights Act is needed as much today to prevent another 
epidemic of voting disenfranchisement as Dr. Salk's vaccine is still 
needed to prevent another polio epidemic.
  However, officials in some states, notably Texas and North Carolina, 
seemed to regard the Shelby decision as a green light and rushed to 
implement election laws, policies, and practices that could never pass 
muster under the Section 5 preclearance regime.
  My constituents remember very well the Voter ID law passed in Texas 
in 2011, which required every registered voter to present a valid 
government-issued photo ID on the day of polling in order to vote.
  The Justice Department blocked the law in March of 2012, and it was 
Section 5 that prohibited it from going into effect.
  At least it did until the Shelby decision, because on the very same 
day that Shelby was decided officials in Texas announced they would 
immediately implement the Photo ID law, and other election laws, 
policies, and practices that could never pass muster under the Section 
5 preclearance regime.
  The Texas Photo ID law was challenged in federal court and 
thankfully, just yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth 
Circuit upheld the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales 
Ramos that Texas' strict voter identification law discriminated against 
blacks and Hispanics and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
  Mr. Speaker, protecting voting rights and combating voter suppression 
schemes are two of the critical challenges facing our great democracy.
  Without safeguards to ensure that all citizens have equal access to 
the polls, more injustices are likely to occur and the voices of 
millions silenced.
  Those of us who cherish the right to vote justifiably are skeptical 
of Voter ID laws because we understand how these laws, like poll taxes 
and literacy tests, can be used to impede or negate the ability of 
seniors, racial and language minorities, and young people to cast their 
votes.
  Consider the demographic groups who lack a government issued ID:
  1. African Americans: 25%
  2. Asian Americans: 20%
  3. Hispanic Americans: 19%
  4. Young people, aged 18-24: 18%
  5. Persons with incomes less than $35,000: 15%
  And there are other ways abridging or suppressing the right to vote, 
including:
  1. Curtailing or eliminating early voting
  2. Ending same-day registration
  3. Not counting provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct on 
Election Day will not count.
  4. Eliminating adolescent pre-registration
  5. Shortening poll hours
  6. Lessening the standards governing voter challenges thus allowing 
self-proclaimed ``ballot security vigilantes'' like the King Street 
Patriots to cause trouble at the polls.
  Mr. Speaker, on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights 
Act signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965, I 
called upon House Speaker Boehner to bring legislation intended to 
protect the right to vote of all Americans to the floor for debate and 
vote.
  Specifically, I call for the passage of the bipartisan Voting Rights 
Amendments Act (H.R. 885), of which I am an original co-sponsor, which 
repairs the damage done to the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court's 
Shelby decision.
  This legislation replaces the old `static' coverage formula with a 
new dynamic coverage formula, or `rolling trigger,' which effectively 
gives the legislation nationwide reach because any state and any 
jurisdiction in any state potentially is subject to being covered if 
the requisite number of violations are found to have been committed.
  Alternatively, I call upon the Speaker to let the House debate and 
vote on the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 (H.R. 2867), a bill 
that provides even greater federal oversight of jurisdictions which 
have a history of voter suppression and protects vulnerable communities 
from discriminatory voting practices.
  Second, I call for the passage of H.R. 12, the Voter Empowerment Act 
of 2015, legislation I have co-sponsored that protects voters from 
suppression, deception, and other forms of disenfranchisement by 
modernizing voter registration, promoting access to voting for 
individuals with disabilities, and protecting the ability of 
individuals to exercise the right to vote in elections for federal 
office.
  Mr. Speaker, before concluding there is one other point I would like 
to stress.
  In his address to the nation before signing the Voting Rights Act of 
1965, President Johnson said:

       Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the 
     doors to the polling places and open the doors to the 
     wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot.
       But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been 
     denied the right to vote, can really walk through those 
     doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote 
     into an instrument of justice and fulfillment.

  In other words, political power--and the justice, opportunity, 
inclusion, and fulfillment it provides--comes not from the right to 
vote but in the exercise of that right.
  And that means it is the civic obligation of every citizen to both 
register and vote in every election, state and local as well as 
federal.
  Because if we can register and vote, but fail to do so, we are guilty 
of voluntary voter suppression, the most effective method of 
disenfranchisement ever devised.
  And in recent years, Americans have not been doing a very good job of 
exercising our civic responsibility to register, vote, and make their 
voices heard.
  Mr. Speaker, for millions of Americans, the right to vote protected 
by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is sacred treasure, earned by the 
sweat and toil and tears and blood of ordinary Americans who showed the 
world it was possible to accomplish extraordinary things.
  So on this 50th anniversary of that landmark law, let us rededicate 
ourselves to honoring those who won for us this precious right by 
remaining vigilant and fighting against both the efforts of others to 
abridge or suppress the right to vote and our own apathy in exercising 
this sacred right.

                          ____________________