Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 741, I call up the bill (H.R. 4) to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to revise the criteria for determining which States and political subdivisions are subject to section 4 of the Act, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. NADLER. 4.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019.
H.R. 4 is comprehensive and much-needed legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its full vitality. This bill responds to the Supreme Court's disastrous 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which effectively gutted the act's most important enforcement mechanism, section 5, which requires jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to obtain Justice Department or Federal court approval before any changes to their voting laws can take effect.
The Court struck down the coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions would be subject to preclearance, but it expressly said that Congress could draft another formula based on current conditions. That, among other things, is exactly what H.R. 4 does.
This bill is the result of an extensive process that included 18 hearings before three different House committees. This process developed a record demonstrating that States and localities and, in particular, those that were formerly subject to preclearance, have engaged in various voter suppression tactics, such as imposing burdensome proof of citizenship laws, polling place closures, purges of voter rolls, and significant scale-backs to early voting periods.
These kinds of voting restrictions have a disproportionate and negative impact on racial and language minority voters and deprive them of a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution.
In short, the record is clear that substantial voter suppression exists across the country and that H.R. 4's coverage formula is necessary to address this discrimination.
This legislation not only updates the existing formula to ensure that it accounts for current conditions, but it is also designed so that the formula will update itself regularly as conditions change, thereby directly responding to the Court's concern in Shelby County.
Not surprisingly, the suspension of preclearance unleashed a deluge of voter suppression laws across the Nation, making restoration of this tool even more necessary.
As we consider the record and the need for H.R. 4, it is worth remembering why Congress enacted preclearance in the first place. Before the Voting Rights Act, we saw, essentially, a game of whack-a- mole in which States and localities could engage in voter suppression, secure in the knowledge that any discriminatory law that was struck down by a court could quickly be replaced by another. Preclearance successfully put an end to this game of whack-a-mole.
I want to thank Terri Sewell for crafting this important legislation and for her efforts over the last several years on this bill.
I also want to recognize the leadership of Marcia Fudge, chair of the House Administration's Subcommittee on Elections, for her extraordinary work in conducting numerous field hearings examining voting problems around the country, as well as Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Steve Cohen, who presided over many hearings in the Judiciary Committee to develop the substantial record on which this legislation is based.
The Voting Rights Act represents one of the Nation's most important civil rights victories, one achieved by those who marched, struggled, and even died to secure the right to vote for all Americans. I urge my colleagues to honor their sacrifices and to enable section 5 once again to protect the rights of all Americans to vote.
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Mr. NADLER. Sewell), the chief sponsor of this legislation.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains on each side.
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Mr. NADLER. Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, having participated in the restoration and reinvigoration of the Voting Rights Act in the 2000-2008 period that was bipartisan because there was an understanding by President Bush that the denial of one's right to vote is a denial of human rights, I stand here today as a Member who has joined a number of the congressional hearings. I thank Congresswomen Sewell and Fudge and Congressmen Cohen and Nadler for the work that has been done, and I encourage my good friend, Mr. Collins, to be reminded of the voter suppression in his gubernatorial race that resulted in the loss of Stacey Abrams.
And so I rise today as one who has seen the impact of voting rights, particularly in the State of Texas, and argue vigorously for the restoration through H.R. 4. It is a fair bill: 25-year period on a rolling basis with current conditions, and a 10-year legitimacy for those that pass the test.
President Johnson, during the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, said the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men and women because they are different from other men and women.
I am a victim of voting rights suppression. I am a redistrict district that comes from the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Barbara Jordan would not have come to this House had it not been for the right to vote for someone that you choose.
In 1940, only 3 percent of African Americans living in the South were registered. Only after Barbara Jordan submitted an amendment did we include Hispanics.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Only in the period of the horrible Shelby vote did we have voter suppression with the voter ID law that impacted Hispanics in Texas severely, purging language that I helped put in this present bill and, of course, moving polling places.
If we believe in this document called the Constitution, then we believe in H.R. 4. We want it restored because it is the right of the people to vote.
Mr. Speaker, as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and an original cosponsor, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which corrects the damage done in recent years to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and commits the national government to protecting the right of all Americans to vote free from discrimination and without injustices that previously prevented them from exercising this most fundamental right of citizenship.
I thank my colleague, Congresswoman Terri Sewell of Alabama for introducing this legislation, to Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Nadler, and the Democratic leadership for shepherding this bill to the floor, and to many colleagues and countless number of ordinary Americans who never stopped agitating and working to protect the precious right to vote.
Mr. Speaker, in response to the Supreme Court's invitation in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 193 (2013), H.R. 4 provides a new coverage formula based on ``current conditions'' and creates a new coverage formula that hinges on a finding of repeated voting rights violations in the preceding 25 years.
It is significant that this 25-year period is measured on a rolling basis to keep up with ``current conditions,'' so only states and political subdivisions that have a recent record of racial discrimination in voting are covered.
States and political subdivisions that qualify for preclearance will be covered for a period of 10 years, but if they have a clean record during that time period, they can be extracted from coverage.
H.R. 4 also establishes ``practice-based preclearance,'' which would focus administrative or judicial review narrowly on suspect practices that are most likely to be tainted by discriminatory intent or to have discriminatory effects, as demonstrated by a broad historical record.
Under the bill, this process of reviewing changes in voting is limited to a set of specific practices, including such things as:
1. Changes to the methods of elections (to or from at-large elections) in areas that are racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse.
2. Redistricting in areas that are racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse.
3. Reducing, consolidating, or relocating polling in areas that are racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse; and
4. Changes in documentation or requirements to vote or to register.
It is useful, Mr. Speaker, to recount how we arrived at this day.
Mr. Speaker, fifty-four years ago, in Selma, Alabama, hundreds of heroic souls risked their lives for freedom and to secure the right to vote for all Americans by their participation in marches for voting rights on ``Bloody Sunday,'' ``Turnaround Tuesday,'' or the final, completed march from Selma to Montgomery.
Those ``foot soldiers'' of Selma, brave and determined men and women, boys and girls, persons of all races and creeds, loved their country so much that they were willing to risk their lives to make it better, to bring it even closer to its founding ideals.
The foot soldiers marched because they believed that all persons have dignity and the right to equal treatment under the law, and in the making of the laws, which is the fundamental essence of the right to vote.
On that day, Sunday, March 7, 1965, more than 600 civil rights ``demonstrators, including our beloved colleague, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, were brutally attacked by state and local police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of the right to vote.
``Bloody Sunday'' was a defining moment in American history because it crystallized for the nation the necessity of enacting a strong and effective federal law to protect the right to vote of every American.
No one who witnessed the violence and brutally suffered by the foot soldiers for justice who gathered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge will ever I forget it; the images are deeply seared in the American memory and experience.
On August 6, 1965, in the Rotunda of the Capitol and in the presence of such luminaries as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Roy Wilkins of the NAACP; Whitney Young of the National Urban League; James Foreman of the Congress of Racial Equality; A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis of the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee; Senators Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Everett Dirksen; President Johnson addressed the nation before signing the Voting Rights Act:
``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.''
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was critical to preventing brazen voter discrimination violations that historically left millions of African Americans disenfranchised.
In 1940, for example, there were less than 30,000 African Americans registered to vote in Texas and only about 3 percent of African Americans living in the South were registered to vote.
Poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats of violence were the major causes of these racially discriminatory results.
After passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited these discriminatory practices, registration and electoral participation steadily increased to the point that by 2012, more than 1.2 million African Americans living in Texas were registered to vote.
In 1964, the year before the Voting Rights Act became law, there were approximately 300 African-Americans in public office, including just three in Congress.
Few, if any, African Americans held elective office anywhere in the South.
Because of the Voting Rights Act, in 2007 there were more than 9,100 black elected officials, including 46 members of Congress, the largest number ever.
Mr. Speaker, the Voting Rights Act opened the political process for many of the approximately 6,000 Hispanic public officials that have been elected and appointed nationwide, including more than 275 at the state or federal level, 32 of whom serve in Congress.
Native Americans, Asians and others who have historically encountered harsh barriers to full political participation also have benefited greatly.
The crown jewel of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is Section 5, which requires that states and localities with a chronic record of discrimination in voting practices secure federal approval before making any changes to voting processes.
Section 5 protects minority voting rights where voter discrimination has historically been the worst.
Between 1982 and 2006, Section 5 stopped more than 1,000 discriminatory voting changes in their tracks, including 107 discriminatory changes right here in Texas.
Passed in 1965 with the extraordinary leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, the greatest legislative genius of our lifetime, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was bringing dramatic change in many states across the South.
But in 1972, change was not coming fast enough or in many places in Texas.
In fact, Texas, which had never elected a woman to Congress or an African American to the Texas State Senate, was not covered by Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the language minorities living in South Texas were not protected at all.
But thanks to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the tireless voter registration work performed in 1972 by Hillary Clinton in Texas, along with hundreds of others, including her future husband Bill, Barbara Jordan was elected to Congress, giving meaning to the promise of the Voting Rights Act that all citizens would at long last have the right to cast a vote for person of their community, from their community, for their community.
Mr. Speaker, it is a source of eternal pride to all of us in Houston that in pursuit of extending the full measure of citizenship to all Americans, in 1975 Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who also represented this historic 18th Congressional District of Texas, introduced, and the Congress adopted, what are now Sections 4(f)(3) and 4(f)(4) of the Voting Rights Act, which extended the protections of Section 4(a) and Section 5 to language minorities.
During the floor debate on the 1975 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, Congresswoman Jordan explained why this reform was needed:
``There are Mexican-American people in the State of Texas who have been denied the right to vote; who have been impeded in their efforts to register and vote; who have not had encouragement from those election officials because they are brown people.
``So, the state of Texas, if we approve this measure, would be brought within the coverage of this Act for the first time.''
When it comes to extending and protecting the precious right vote, the Lone Star State--the home state of Lyndon Johnson and Barbara Jordan--can be the leading state in the Union, one that sets the example for the Nation.
But to realize that future, we must turn from and not return to the dark days of the past.
We must remain ever vigilant and oppose all schemes that will abridge or dilute the precious right to vote.
Madam Speaker, I am here today to remind the nation that need to passthis legislation is urgent because the right to vote--that ``powerful--instrument that can break down the walls of injustice''-- faces grave threats.
The threat stems from the decision issued in June 2013 by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 193 (2013), which invalidated Section 4(b) of the VRA, and paralyzed the application of the VRA's Section 5 preclearance requirements.
According to the Supreme Court majority, the reason for striking down Section 4(b) was that ``times change.''
Now, the Court was right; times have changed.
But what the Court did not fully appreciate is that the positive changes it cited are due almost entirely to the existence and vigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
And that is why the Voting Rights Act is still needed and that is why we must pass H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Let me put it this way: in the same way that the vaccine invented by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1953 eradicated the crippling effects but did not eliminate the cause of polio, the Voting Rights Act succeeded in stymieing the practices that resulted in the wholesale disenfranchisement of African Americans and language minorities but did eliminate them entirely.
The Voting Rights Act is needed as much today to prevent another epidemic of voting disenfranchisement as Dr. Salk's vaccine is still needed to prevent another polio epidemic.
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated in Shelby County v. Holder, ``[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.''
However, officials in some states, notably Texas and North Carolina, seemed to regard the Shelby decision as a green light and rushed to implement election laws, policies, and practices that could never pass muster under the Section 5 preclearance regime.
My constituents remember very well the Voter ID law passed in Texas in 2011, which required every registered voter to present a valid government-issued photo ID on the day of polling in order to vote.
The Justice Department blocked the law in March of 2012, and it was Section 5 that prohibited it from going into effect.
At least it did until the Shelby decision, because on the very same day that Shelby was decided officials in Texas announced they would immediately implement the Photo ID law, and other election laws, policies, and practices that could never pass muster under the Section 5 preclearance regime.
The Texas Photo ID law was challenged in federal court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos that Texas' strict voter identification law discriminated against blacks and Hispanics and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Mr. Speaker, protecting voting rights and combating voter suppression schemes are two of the critical challenges facing our great democracy.
Without safeguards to ensure that all citizens have equal access to the polls, more injustices are likely to occur and the voices of millions silenced.
I believe that Texas, the Lone Star State, can be the leading state in the Union.
But to realize that future, we cannot return to the dark days of its past and must remain ever vigilant and oppose schemes that will abridge or dilute the precious right to vote.
That means standing up to and calling out groups and organizations like ``True the Vote'' and its local Houston-based affiliate, the ``King Street Patriots,'' which in recent years have under the guise of poll watchers, improperly interacted with persons at polling stations in Hispanic and African American communities in an attempt to intimidate them from voting.
The behavior of this group was so outrageous in 2010 that I reported its conduct to the Attorney General and requested the Department of Justice to investigate. (See Attachment, Letter from Congresswoman Jackson Lee to U.S. Attorney General Holder (October 28, 2010)).
Mr. Speaker, in many ways Texas is ground-zero for testing and perfecting schemes to deprive communities of color and language minorities of the right to vote and to have their votes counted.
Consider what has transpired in Texas in recent past.
Only 68 percent of eligible voters are registered in Texas and state restrictions on third party registration, such as the Volunteer Deputy Registrar program, exacerbate the systemic disenfranchisement of minority communities.
These types of programs are often aimed at minority and underserved communities that, for many, many other reasons (like demonization by the president, for example) or mistrust of law enforcement are afraid to live as openly as they should.
In Harris County, we had a system where voters were getting purged from the rolls, effectively requiring people to keep active their registrations and hundreds of polling locations closed in Texas, significantly more in number and percentage than any other state.
In addition, the Texas Election Code only requires a 72-hour notice of polling location changes.
Next, take what happened here in Texas earlier this year when the Texas Secretary of State claimed that his office had identified 95,000 possible noncitizens on the voter rolls and gave the list to the Texas State Attorney General for possible prosecution--leading to a claim from President Trump about widespread voter fraud and outrage from Democrats and activist groups.
The only problem was that list was not accurate.
At least 20,000 names turned out to be there by mistake, leading to chaos, confusion, and concern that people's eligibility vote was being questioned based on flawed data.
The list was made through state records going back to 1996 that show which Texas residents were not citizens when they got a driver's license or other state ID.
But many of the person who may have had green cards or work visas at the time they got a Texas ID are on the secretary of state's office's list, and many have become citizens since then since nearly 50,000 people become naturalized U.S. citizens in Texas annually.
Latinos made up a big portion of the 95,000-person list.
Texas Republicans adopted racial and partisan gerrymandered congressional, State legislative redistricting plans that federal courts have ruled violate the Voting Rights Act and were drawn with discriminatory intent.
Even after changes were demanded by the courts, much of the damage done was already done.
Reversing the position by the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Justice has told a federal court that it no longer believes past discrimination by Texas officials should require the state to get outside approval for redistricting maps that will be drawn in 2021.
In addition to affirmative ways to making it harder to vote, we also know face other odious impediments in Texas.
Those of us who cherish the right to vote justifiably are skeptical of Voter ID laws because we understand how these laws, like poll taxes and literacy tests, can be used to impede or negate the ability of seniors, racial and language minorities, and young people to cast their votes.
This is the harm that can be done without preclearance, so on a federal level, there is an impetus to act.
Those of us who cherish the right to vote justifiably are skeptical of Voter ID laws because we understand how these laws, like poll taxes and literacy tests, can be used to impede or negate the ability of seniors, racial and language minorities, and young people to cast their votes.
Consider the demographic groups who lack a government issued ID:
1. African Americans: 25 percent.
2. Asian Americans: 20 percent.
3. Hispanic Americans: 19 percent.
4. Young people, aged 18-24: 18 percent.
5. Persons with incomes less than $35,000: 15 percent.
And there are other ways abridging or suppressing the right to vote, including:
1. Curtailing or eliminating early voting
2. Ending same-day registration
3. Not counting provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct on Election Day will not count.
4. Eliminating adolescent pre-registration
5. Shortening poll hours.
6. Lessening the standards governing voter challenges thus allowing self-proclaimed ``ballot security vigilantes'' like the King Street Patriots to cause trouble at the polls.
The malevolent practice of voter purging is not limited to Texas; we saw it just last year in Georgia, where then Secretary of State and now Governor Brian Kemp purged more than 53,000 persons from the voter, nearly the exact margin of his narrow win over his opponent, Stacy Abrams in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
Voter purging is a sinister and malevolent practice visited on voters, who are disproportionately members of communities of color, by state and local election officials.
This practice, which would have not passed muster under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, has proliferated in the years since the Supreme Court neutralized the preclearance provision, or as Justice Ginsburg observed in Shelby County v. Holder, ``threw out the umbrella'' of protection.
Mr. Speaker, citizens in my congressional district and elsewhere know and have experienced the pain and heartbreak of receiving a letter from state or local election officials that they have been removed from the election rolls, or worse, learn this fact on Election Day.
That is why I worked so hard to secure language in the Manager's Amendment to H.R. 4 that strengthens the bill's ``practice-based preclearance'' provisions by adding specifically to the preclearance provision, voting practices that add a new basis or process for removing a name from the list of active registered voters and the practice of reducing the days or hours of in-person voting on Sundays during an early voting period.
Mr. Speaker, it is the responsibility and sacred duty of all members of Congress who revere democracy to preserve, protect, and expand the precious right to vote of all Americans by passing H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Before concluding there is one other point I would like to stress.
In his address to the nation before signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, President Johnson said:
``Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot.
``But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice and fulfillment.''
In other words, political power--and the justice, opportunity, inclusion, and fulfillment it provides--comes not from the right to vote but in the exercise of that right.
And that means it is the civic obligation of every citizen to both register and vote in every election, state and local as well as federal.
Because if we can register and vote, but fail to do so, we are guilty of voluntary voter suppression, the most effective method of disenfranchisement ever devised.
And in recent years, Americans have not been doing a very good job of exercising our civic responsibility to register, vote, and make their voices heard.
Mr. Speaker, for millions of Americans, the right to vote protected by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is sacred treasure, earned by the sweat and toil and tears and blood of ordinary Americans who showed the world it was possible to accomplish extraordinary things.
So today, let us rededicate ourselves to honoring those who won for us this precious right by remaining vigilant and fighting against both the efforts of others to abridge or suppress the right to vote and our own apathy in exercising this sacred right.
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Mr. NADLER. Jayapal).
(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains on each side.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I would simply comment that this is a restoration of the previously authorized Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court did its dastardly deed.
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Mr. NADLER. Garcia).
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Mr. NADLER. Maloney).
Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4 for the people, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. I thank my colleagues, Representatives Sewell, Fudge, Nadler, and many others, for their extraordinary work on this critical legislation that protects the most basic and fundamental of American rights, the right to vote.
Ever since the 2013 Supreme Court Shelby decision threw out the preclearance requirement, undermining the Voting Rights Act, States and localities with histories of racial injustice have again started discriminatory voting practices, like requiring IDs, which is particularly harmful to Hispanic voters; moving voting places so it is more difficult to vote; and many other steps that disenfranchise countless Americans, particularly men and women of color.
This bill restores the Voting Rights Act in its entirety, repeals the Shelby decision, and gives the Federal Government the tools to hold local election officials accountable for discriminatory practices that deny Americans of this fundamental right.
So many brave Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect this right for our people. By passing this legislation, we honor their sacrifice by protecting the right to vote for every single citizen.
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Mr. NADLER. Moore).
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Mr. NADLER. Lee).
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time each side has left.
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Mr. NADLER. Frankel).
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, we have only one remaining speaker, who will be our closing speaker, so the gentleman from Georgia may wish to close for his side.
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Mr. NADLER. Pelosi), the distinguished Speaker of the House.
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