Future Forum

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Absolutely, Representative Swalwell. I appreciate you taking your time to come out to Dallas/Fort Worth.

All the kids that were there, the college campus, the young professionals that we spoke to, the business leaders that we spoke to, really appreciated the fact that you and others in Congress are leading the effort to engage young people and to engage millennials.

They make up such a large portion of our population. They are going to continue to make up a very large portion of our population. We need to engage them to find out what it is they are thinking.

One of the things that we heard when we were in the metroplex, as we like to call Dallas/Fort Worth, is that young people feel like voting is not necessarily easy, that some of the barriers that have been put up recently in place have made it a lot harder for young people to exercise their right to vote.

One of the young people that we met talked about the fact that they had missed one election cycle, they went to go and vote, and they found out that they had been suspended from the voter file, that they had been actually purged.

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Mr. VEASEY. It was very discouraging for her. It makes it seem as if the system is rigged against her, and she didn't understand why that happened. That was really unfortunate.

One of the other things that I am aware of--because I am actually a plaintiff in a lawsuit to roll back the Texas voter ID law--is a lot of our young people, when they go to college, get IDs from their university. At a lot of our State universities, they will get IDs.

These IDs are good if they need to identify themselves to a campus police officer. If they need to be able to use the ID to get on a plane or anything like that, these kids can use these college IDs.

But under the Texas voter ID law, a lot of our young people, if they go back home to vote in their home counties and they show their student ID card--a student ID card, again, that is issued by the State of Texas--they cannot vote. They will be given a provisional ballot. It won't count.

When young people hear things like that, it really discourages them from voting. So we need to do everything we can to engage young people.

One of the things that I hear, Representative Swalwell, from a lot of young people is that--for instance, the young lady that we met that was purged from the voter roll--if there were same-day registration-- actually, same-day registration actually encourages young people to participate in voting.

But a lot of States, like the one that I live in, won't do things like that. They won't take that initiative. They won't take that extra effort to engage young people.

It is no wonder that so many of our young people feel like the system is really rigged against them, that, if they vote, their vote really won't count. It is really, really unfortunate.

I would really think that, in the wake of the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, there is really no better time to assure young voters that they can play a pivotal role in our democracy and to continue to urge them, despite what a lot of States like mine are doing, to really discourage them from voting and discriminate against them, that they will continue to take part in help shaping America. The best way how you can do that is by voting.

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