Voting Rights
Floor Speech
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Ms. MENG. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Voting Rights Advancement Act, H.R. 2867, introduced by my friends and colleagues Representatives Terri Sewell, Linda Sanchez, and Judy Chu. It is long past time that we take up their bipartisan bill, which would restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act.
Mr. Speaker, I think it surprises few of us that following the Supreme Court's misguided decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the right to vote has been increasingly attacked in states across the country. The court's decision invalidated the coverage formula in the Voting Rights Act by which certain states and jurisdictions with a history of discrimination were required to preclear election changes with the U.S. Department of Justice. The results have been grave. Since 2010, twenty-two states have implemented new voting restrictions that make it more difficult for students, seniors, those with disabilities, and minorities to vote. This past summer alone, federal courts struck down new prohibitive voting laws in five different states. Federal protections, such as preclearance, prevent these pernicious laws from being passed in the first place, and this recent surge of court cases only underscores the importance of restoring the Voting Rights Act. Disenfranchisement and voter discrimination are realities that Americans face across the country, including in my district in New York City.
To further investigate the effects of voter discrimination, I hosted a Voting Rights Forum this past May through the leadership of the Democratic Outreach and Engagement Task Force with my colleagues Representatives Velazquez and Jeffries. We were fortunate to host voting rights experts to talk about the effects of the Shelby County decision on our constituents.
I invited Jerry Vattamala from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund to talk about the particular barriers that the Asian- American community faces to participating in the electoral process, and why Congress needs to restore the Voting Rights Act. I include in the Record his testimony from the event: Statement of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund Jerry Vattamala, Esq. Director, Democracy Program Hearing ``Fragile at Fifty: The Urgent Need to Strengthen and Restore the Voting Rights Act'' Before Hon. Nydia Velazquez, Hon. Grace Meng and Hon. Hakeem Jeffries, New York City May 20, 2016
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) is a 42-year-old national civil rights organization based in New York City that promotes and protects the civil rights of Asian Americans through litigation, legal advocacy, and community education.
Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) has been critical in preventing actual and threatened discrimination aimed at Asian Americans in national and local elections. As a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder, Asian American voters have suffered a serious rollback in their right to vote. AALDEF submits this testimony to elucidate the precarious landscape of Asian American voting rights in wake of the decision in Shelby County v. Holder.
AALDEF has monitored elections and conducted annual multilingual exit polls since 1988. Consequently, AALDEF has collected valuable data that documents the continued need for the VRA's protections. In 2012, AALDEF dispatched over 800 attorneys, law students, and community volunteers to 127 poll sites in 14 states to document voter problems on Election Day. The survey polled 9,298 Asian American voters. In 2014, AALDEF surveyed 4,102 Asian American voters at 64 poll sites in 37 cities in 11 states.
Many voting problems that we observed in 2012 have persisted through 2014 and beyond. Operating without the preclearance provisions, the most effective tool of the VRA, the Department of Justice has lost its ability to block voting changes before they occur. As a result, AALDEF and other organizations and individuals have had to engage in more affirmative litigation to protect the fundamental right to vote.
AALDEF has previously submitted testimony to Congress, filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court of the United States, and released detailed reports regarding Asian American voting problems and the continued need for the full protections of the VRA, including Section 5 preclearance.
Asian Americans continue to face pervasive and current discrimination in voting, particularly in jurisdictions that were previously covered for Section 5 preclearance. For example, in the 2004 primary elections in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, supporters of a white incumbent running against Phuong Tan Huynh, a Vietnamese American candidate, made a concerted effort to intimidate Asian American voters. They challenged Asian Americans at the polls, falsely accusing them of not being U.S. citizens or city residents, or of having felony convictions. The challenged voters were forced to complete a paper ballot and have that ballot vouched for by a registered voter. In explaining his and his supporters' actions, the losing incumbent stated, ``We figured if they couldn't speak good English, they possibly weren't American citizens.'' The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigated the allegations and found them to be racially motivated. As a result, the challengers were prohibited from interfering in the general election, and Bayou La Batre, for the first time, elected an Asian American to the City Council.
Also in 2004, New York poll workers required Asian American voters to provide naturalization certificates before they could vote. At another poll site; a police officer demanded that all Asian American voters show photo identification, even though photo ID is not required to vote in New York elections. If voters could not produce such identification, the officer turned them away and told them to go home.
Overt racism and discrimination against Asian Americans at the polls persists to the present day and will worsen without Section 5 to combat such behavior. Prior to the Supreme Court's decision, voting rights advocates used Section 5 to protect Asian American voters in redistricting, changes to voting systems, and changes to polling sites. The following are recent examples of harmful actions against Asian American voters that were stopped by Section 5. Now that the coverage formula has been struck, and many jurisdictions are no longer covered by Section 5, Asian Americans are once again vulnerable to nefarious discriminatory actions such as these that will weaken their voting rights and power.
For example, redistricting plans continue to be drafted with discriminatory intent in states with large Asian American communities. As shown in Perry v. Perez, 132 S. Ct. 934 (2012), the Texas Legislature drafted a redistricting plan, Plan H283, that would have had significant negative effects on the ability of minorities, and Asian Americans in particular, to exercise their right to vote.
Since 2004, the Asian American community in Texas State House District 149 has voted as a bloc with Hispanic and African American voters to elect Hubert Vo, a Vietnamese American, as their state representative. District 149 has a combined minority citizen voting-age population of 62 percent. Texas is home to the third-largest Asian American community in the United States, growing 72 percent between 2000 and 2010.
In 2011, the Texas Legislature sought to eliminate Vo's State House seat and redistribute the coalition of minority voters to the surrounding three districts with larger non- minority populations. Plan H283 would have thus abridged the Asian American community's right to vote in Texas by diluting the large Asian American populations across the state.
In addition to discrimination in redistricting, Asian American voters have also endured voting system changes that impair their ability to elect candidates of choice. For example, before 2001 in New York City, the only electoral success for Asian Americans was on local community school boards. In each election--in 1993, 1996, and 1999--Asian American candidates ran for the school board and won. These victories were due, in part, to the alternative voting system known as ``single transferable voting'' or ``preference voting.'' Instead of selecting one representative from single-member districts, voters ranked candidates in order of preference, from ``1'' to ``9.'' In 1998, New York attempted to switch from a ``preference voting'' system, where voters ranked their choices, to a ``limited voting'' system, where voters could select only four candidates for the nine-member board, and the nine candidates with the highest number of votes were elected. This change would have put Asian American voters in a worse position to elect candidates of their choice.
Furthermore, the ability of Asian Americans to vote is also frustrated by sudden changes to poll sites without informing voters. For example, there have been numerous instances of sudden poll site closures in Asian American neighborhoods in New York City, where the Board of Elections failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that Asian American voters are informed of their correct poll sites. Voters have been misinformed about their poll sites before the elections or have been misdirected by poll workers on Election Day, thus creating confusion for Asian American voters and disrupting their ability to vote.
In 2001, primary elections in New York City were rescheduled due to the attacks on the World Trade Center. The week before the rescheduled primaries, AALDEF discovered that a certain poll site, I.S. 131, a school located in the heart of Chinatown and within the restricted zone in lower Manhattan, was being used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for services related to the World Trade Center attacks. The Board chose to close down the poll site and no notice was given to voters. The Board provided no media release to the Asian-language newspapers, made no attempts to send out a mailing to voters, and failed to arrange for the placement of signs or poll workers at the site to redirect voters to other sites. In fact, no consideration at all was made for the fact that the majority of voters at this site were limited English proficient, and that the site had been targeted for Asian language assistance under Section 203. With Section 5 no longer applicable in most jurisdictions, disruptive changes to polling sites, voting systems, and redistricting plans can now occur unfettered, wreaking havoc on Asian American voters' ability to cast an effective ballot.
American citizens of Asian ancestry have long been targeted as foreigners and unwanted immigrants, and racism and discrimination against Asian Americans persist to this day. These negative perceptions have real consequences for the ability of Asian Americans to fully participate in the electoral and political process. Section 5 of the VRA was an effective tool in protecting Asian American voters against a host of actions that threaten to curtail their voting rights. However, the Supreme Court's recent decision dismantling the coverage formula has left a large gap in protections for Asian American voters that requires Congressional action. We look to Congress to work in a bipartisan fashion to respond to the Court's ruling and strengthen the VRA, as it did during the 2006 reauthorizations and each previous reauthorization. We respectfully offer our assistance in such a process.
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