[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9947]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      VOTER RIGHTS ADVANCEMENT ACT

  (Mr. KILMER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. KILMER. Mr. Speaker, with the Shelby County v. Holder decision, 
the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act.
  At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the key protections 
the Court removed from the act were, as he put it: ``extraordinary 
measures to address an extraordinary problem.''
  Sadly and extraordinarily, many of those problems still exist. I 
would argue that the Voting Rights Act was extraordinarily successful.
  Since that decision, the Federal Court commented that a voter ID law 
in North Carolina didn't stop fraud. Instead, the provisions that were 
struck down ``target African Americans with almost surgical 
precision.''
  Courts found significant disenfranchisement caused by new laws in 
Wisconsin as well.
  Mr. Speaker, every American has a right and the freedom to cast their 
vote without interference. People have fought and bled for that right. 
We are in danger of going back to a time when those rights were cast 
aside.
  That is why it is time for Congress to pass the Voting Rights 
Advancement Act to modernize the law, to put back in place provisions 
stripped from the Voting Rights Act, and to ensure that no State can 
discriminate by creating barriers to the ballot box.
  If we want to remain a nation that empowers its citizens, we need 
swift action on this bill.

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