Democracy in Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Hakeem Jeffries from New York and Congresswoman Joyce Beatty from Ohio for everything that they are doing on raising this issue tonight. It is very timely, considering everything that we are going through right now. When you think about the Voting Rights Act, it is literally the single most important piece of legislation that has ever been passed in the history of the United States as it deals with an individual's right to vote.

But as you know, 3 years ago, the Supreme Court regressed and sent us back by gutting section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Not only was that bad because it hurt the Voting Rights Act, but it was also bad because of everything that it did to propel States around the country from also retrogressing and sending us back in the area of voting rights.

You are starting to hear so many stories of States and localities that are passing more and more laws to restrict the right to vote, making it harder for young people to vote--seniors, the disabled, people that move around a lot and are transient, people that don't necessarily have the money that they need in order to obtain the proper identification.

And you heard Congresswoman Sewell when she so eloquently talked about the fact that oftentimes, particularly in the South, people were born by midwives. We have a lot of baby boomers that are out there. People think these things happened a long time ago. That is the thing that you hear all the time. But there are people that are living here today, a lot of baby boomers, that were born down in the piney woods of east Texas, that were born in other parts of the South, that don't have the proper documentation that they need in order to be able to vote.

I have met people since I have been involved in campaigns and elections and as an elected official that didn't have the proper ID to vote. I have to tell you that there are many of them out there.

Just hours after the Supreme Court made the decision in 2013 that my home State of Texas implemented the most egregious voter ID law in the entire country, just hours after the Supreme Court gutted section 4, they moved to reimplement the law. That was very disappointing, considering that an appeals court had already said that the voter ID law in Texas was one of the worst in the country.

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Mr. VEASEY. That is correct. If you have an ID that is issued to you by the University of Texas, or Texas A&M, or Prairie View A&M University, that same ID, that same student ID that can be used to identify yourself to campus police officers, that can be used to identify yourself for other things that you would need an ID for, it will not work in order for you to go and vote. But if you have a concealed handgun license, then you can vote. Concealed handgun licenses are mostly used by White males in the State. It is really unfair that a more diverse form of ID, like the student ID, is not allowed under Texas laws.

That was one of the reasons why I became the lead plaintiff on the voter ID lawsuit, Congressman Jeffries. It is Veasey v. Abbott. We are going to continue to fight. We just got news today that the Fifth Circuit Court is going to take up our case. I am going to continue to work here in Congress, continue to work in Texas, continue to work in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to protect the voting rights of individuals that have been wronged.

I also want to point out that, again, you oftentimes hear people say that we have progressed as a country and we don't need these laws. But when you look at what is going on in Texas and when you look at what is going on across the South, I just think we can't sit back anymore. We can't sit back and be idle and say: Oh, no, well, we are doing a little bit better, so these people that are going to be discriminated against--the transients, the college students, the people that don't necessarily have their birth documentation in order like other people may have--we just can't sit back and say we are going to just move on and forget about them. We have to fight for those individuals as well because it is their right to vote, and we must protect it.

In 2016, I just think we should be making it easier for citizens to vote. We should be talking about things like same-day registration. We should be working together, Democrats and Republicans, on ways to ease lines when it comes to voting in places. We should be looking at ways that we can make it to where we have more days to vote early. You are starting to hear about laws around the country to scale back the number of in-person early voting days. I just think that is wrong.

Again, I want to thank you for your leadership on this issue. I also want to thank you for pointing out that I have introduced the first Congressional Voting Rights Caucus to help aid and fight in the battle, along with so many other task forces and organizations that are here in Congress that are working on those issues.

We want to continue to make sure together again--and we need to do it in a bipartisan manner--that we all protect the right to vote.

I thank the gentleman and the Congresswoman from Ohio, Representative Beatty, for their work and passion on this issue.

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