[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 10094-10095]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF SHELBY COUNTY V. HOLDER

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Saturday was the third anniversary of 
the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision. In this case, a 
divided Court voted 5-4 to gut the Voting Rights Act. The Court struck 
down the provision of the Voting Rights Act that required certain 
jurisdictions with a documented history of discrimination to 
``preclear'' any changes to their voting laws with the Department of 
Justice.
  In the 3 years since Shelby County, Democrats and a small handful of 
Republicans have sought to restore the Voting Rights Act. 
Unfortunately, the majority of Republicans in Congress have obstructed 
efforts to reinstate robust Federal voting protections. As a result, 
2016 will mark the first Presidential election without the full 
protections of the Voting Rights Act since this historic legislation 
was signed into law in 1965.
  The restrictions on voting that many Americans face today can be 
traced back to the 2010 midterm election. After that election, in which 
Republicans won control of several State legislative chambers and 
governorships, State lawmakers across the country introduced burdensome 
voting laws. These laws ranged from strict voter identification 
requirements to cuts in early voting. At the time, the Voting Rights 
Act served as a backstop, preventing States covered by the preclearance 
requirement from implementing changes that had a discriminatory purpose 
or effect.
  That is why the Shelby County decision in 2013 had an immediate 
impact. Released from preclearance requirements, States with 
discriminatory histories were free to move forward with new 
restrictions on voting. For example, within hours of the Shelby County 
decision, Texas State officials announced that they would immediately 
implement a photo ID requirement for in-person voting that Texas first 
tried to put in place in 2011. This burdensome voter ID law had 
previously been blocked by both the Department of Justice and a Federal 
appeals court, due to the law's harmful impact on poor and minority 
voters. As a result of this law going into effect, we heard disturbing 
stories of a 93-year-old veteran and nearly 70-year-old doctor who were 
turned away from the polls in Texas in 2014 because their IDs did not 
meet the onerous new requirements.
  During my time as chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, 
Civil Rights, and Human Rights, I held a series of hearings that 
examined restrictive State voting laws. During these hearings, we heard 
over and over again that these laws have a disproportionate impact on 
lower-income, minority, youth, elderly, and other vulnerable voting 
populations.
  I asked the State officials at each of my hearings whether there were 
any widespread instances of voter fraud to justify these laws, and they 
were unable to point to any examples. There have been only a handful of 
prosecutions over the last decade. This clearly is not a problem in 
need of a solution. This is clearly an effort to restrict the 
opportunity to vote for certain Americans.
  This year, voters in 17 States will face restrictions that they have 
not previously experienced in a Presidential election. Eight of these 
States were previously covered by the preclearance provision in the 
Voting Rights Act.
  Recent primary elections in many of these States gave voters a taste 
of potential problems to come in the general election. In Maricopa 
County, AZ, some voters were forced to endure waits of more than 5 
hours in order to cast their ballots in the March primary election. The 
cause of the delay was a decision by a local election official to 
massively cut the number of polling locations. In the 2008 primary, 400 
polling places were available. In 2016, that number was slashed to a 
mere 60 locations. Prior to Shelby County, such a change would have 
been evaluated and likely challenged by the Justice Department in a 
preclearance review.
  In Wisconsin, a newly implemented voter photo identification law led 
to challenges and confusion in the April primary. Press reports 
recently documented the story of one of the affected voters. Eddie Lee 
Holloway, Jr., moved from my home State of Illinois to Wisconsin in 
2008 and was able to vote without any problems before the voter ID law 
went into effect. After the law was passed, Mr. Holloway went to a DMV 
in Milwaukee with an expired Illinois photo ID, his birth certificate, 
and his Social Security card to obtain a Wisconsin photo ID for voting. 
However, his application was rejected due to a clerical error on his 
birth certificate, which read ``Eddie Junior Holloway.''
  Mr. Holloway spent hundreds of dollars traveling to Illinois to try 
to fix

[[Page 10095]]

this problem. In addition to the Milwaukee DMV, he visited the Vital 
Records System in Milwaukee, the Illinois Vital Records Division in 
Springfield, an Illinois DMV, and his high school in Decatur, IL--all 
in an attempt to obtain sufficient records for a Wisconsin voter ID. 
Ultimately, he was unsuccessful. Despite all of these efforts, Mr. 
Holloway was unable to vote in the April primary.
  What is particularly infuriating about Mr. Holloway's case is that 
Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature were hoping for exactly 
this type of outcome. The chief of staff to a leading Republican State 
senator in Wisconsin resigned last year after witnessing Republican 
legislators who were, ``literally giddy'' over the impact the new voter 
ID law would have on minority and student voters. In an interview with 
the New York Times, the former staffer said, ``I remember when 
Republicans were the ones who helped Johnson pass the civil rights bill 
in the '60s.'' Indeed, it was 51 years ago this year President Lyndon 
B. Johnson signed the bipartisan Voting Rights Act into law--
guaranteeing that the right to vote would not be restricted through 
clever schemes, like poll taxes and literacy tests, devised to keep 
African Americans from voting.
  I wish that, 51 years after we enacted the Voting Rights Act, our 
society had reached a point where its protections were no longer 
necessary, but we clearly have not, and the Voting Rights Act is still 
very much needed today.
  That is why Senator Leahy, Senator Coons, and I introduced the Voting 
Rights Advancement Act last year. This legislation would restore the 
Voting Rights Act. It would ensure that burdensome voting laws will be 
reviewed and, if found to be discriminatory, blocked before they go 
into effect.
  I recently joined Senator Leahy and our Democratic colleagues on the 
Senate Judiciary Committee in sending a letter to the chairman of the 
full committee and the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, 
urging them to hold a hearing on voting rights and the Voting Rights 
Advancement Act. Between 2007 and 2013, Senate Democrats held nine 
hearings to examine the issue of voting rights. In contrast, 
Republicans have not held a single hearing on voting rights since 
taking the majority in 2015.
  This is disappointing. Voting rights has traditionally been a 
bipartisan issue. In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act 
with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Three hundred and ninety Members 
of the House and 98 Senators came together on a bipartisan basis to 
reauthorize the bill. Twenty-one hearings with more than 90 witnesses 
and a 15,000-page record illustrated to us that the Voting Rights Act 
was still very much needed. Three years ago, the Supreme Court ignored 
our efforts in Shelby County, but we can, and we must, come together 
once again to address voting rights.
  Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin, has 
introduced legislation in the House to restore the Voting Rights Act. 
Earlier this year, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times. He noted, 
``Ensuring that every eligible voter can cast a ballot without fear, 
deterrence and prejudice is a basic American right. I would rather lose 
my job than suppress votes to keep it.''
  I urge my colleagues to listen to Congressman Sensenbrenner and join 
us in our fight to restore the Voting Rights Act. It is time to bring 
the bipartisan Voting Rights Advancement Act to the floor and ensure 
that the Federal Government is once again able to fully protect the 
fundamental right to vote.

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