Voting Rights

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), who represents the Houston and Harris County area, who does such a great job of speaking out on these issues.

Representative Jackson Lee and really the entire delegation down there--Representatives Gene Green and Al Green, along with Representative Jackson Lee--do a great job of keeping this on the forefront of Texans' minds and on the United States' mind.

Texas is such a large State that oftentimes, legislation that is passed out of Texas has an impact on the rest of the Nation. It does seem that much of the discriminatory laws regarding redistricting and regarding voter suppression, like the voter ID bill, sadly, has emanated from our State.

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you just how bad it is in our State. This is going to be really hard for some people to believe. But in the State of Texas, if a young person on a college campus were to find themselves their freshman year lost on the campus, or if they were to find themselves in a little bit of trouble on campus, they would be able to show their student ID to the proper law enforcement official, who is a police officer recognized by the State of Texas, on the campus to identify themselves. That ID works for them to be able to legally identify themselves.

In the State of Texas today, that same young person would not be able to show that same student ID at the voting place, at the voting booth, to be able to cast a vote. If you bring your concealed handgun license in, then you can cast a vote. The student will be given a provisional ballot that wouldn't count, and the person with a concealed handgun license would be able to cast a legal ballot.

Who is that really going to hurt? You have so many young people, particularly young people that don't come from wealthy families, whose parents really struggle to send them to college. They don't have cars in college, so they don't have their driver's license. They really rely on their student identification for everything that they do.

In the State of Texas, they absolutely cannot use that ID.

There are many things about the Texas voter ID law, to be honest with you, I really don't like. I became a plaintiff in the suit to try to scale back what I consider a very egregious act against voters in the State of Texas.

I was very delighted that back in July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit actually upheld a lower court's decision that the Texas voter ID law had a discriminatory effect on minority voters and violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

I hope this means that the proper action will be taken to do something to scale back this law and the impact that it is having on people that simply want to exercise their suffrage, people that simply want to be able to vote. We take it for granted that you can simply vote. But this Texas voter ID law, and many laws from my time in the State legislature that were proposed--luckily, some of them advanced-- would really roll back the clock on individuals that want to exercise their right to vote.

I will tell you what I have done in the meantime is joined as an original cosponsor of the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 that restores the right and advances the voting rights that were provided to us in 1965 by providing a modern day coverage test which will protect our communities from these types of discriminatory practices.

I will tell you, I am very proud to join with Terri Sewell, with Representative Judy Chu, with Representative Linda Sanchez, and, of course, with Representative John Lewis, who understands probably more than anyone in this body what discriminatory laws can do to affect a community.

This bill, Mr. Speaker, provides coverage for 13 States upon enactment: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Arizona, California, New York, and Virginia. I am a very proud Texan--I love everything about our State-- but, unfortunately, we have been at the forefront of discrimination against voters, and Texas is included in this legislation as well. This new geographic formula is based on current conditions and on a 25-year look-back provision.

I hope that we will be able to work together in a bipartisan manner to protect not just some of our voters but to protect every single voter in the United States who would like to cast a ballot. It doesn't matter if a voter is poor and was not able to go and renew his driver's license so that his driver's license may be 61 days expired. It doesn't matter if it is a student whose parents are just putting every little bit of money that they have to get him through college, and, because of that, his only ID is his student identification card, and he would like to use that. We need to be able to make it easier for individuals to vote in our State.

Everybody wants people to be able to lawfully vote, too. We ought to be able to work together in order to pass strong voting rights laws that protect all of our citizens, because we certainly don't want to discourage anyone from voting, and we certainly don't want to look like we are going backwards from where we once were, back in the 1960s.

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