John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, we have to be clear about what is happening here.
Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to overcome shameful State resistance and barriers that prevented minorities from exercising their right.
But in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court held that continuing to require States to preclear election law changes based upon conduct from a half century ago was an unconstitutional invasion of State sovereignty.
The truth is, as Jim said a moment ago, it is easier today for Americans to vote than it has ever been before in our Nation's history. The VRA worked. Thank the Lord that it did. We overcame those problems.
In fact, voter registration disparities between minority and nonminority voters in States like Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, and my home State of Louisiana, all previously covered under the old VRA provisions, are now below the national average and, get this, they are lower than Democrat-run States like New York, California, and President Biden's home State of Delaware.
H.R. 4 is a radical, unprecedented Federal power grab by unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington that every conscientious American ought to oppose. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time once more.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Tenney).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Fitzgerald).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop).
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, to come to the correct conclusion, a law professor used to say, ``You've got to know the facts.'' And that is what the American people need here: the facts, not emotion.
This bill would comprehensively transfer the power to govern elections in this country from the sovereign States to the Federal Government permanently and everywhere.
So what is the factual premise for so fundamentally concentrating the power here in Washington and diminishing the States? What has happened to justify making pervasive and permanent what Chief Justice Roberts explained was ``a drastic departure from basic principles of freedom'' when it was necessarily undertaken in the 1960s, temporarily and in limited parts of the country?
Well, Democrats offer lurid claims, but the American people are catching on. Like earlier this year, Stacey Abrams claimed that a simple voter ID law would be Jim Crow 2.0, but once the absurdity of that caught up to her, she looked so ridiculous that she tried to deny ever having claimed it.
Nothing epitomizes this better than the slur repeated in the Rules Committee yesterday by my law school classmate and colleague, Congresswoman Ross. She quoted three ultraliberal judges in the Fourth Circuit who said that when the North Carolina legislature enacted voter ID and other reforms in 2013, it ``targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.''
Activists and media have quoted that phrase over 7,500 times, according to Google. But few know that the three judges who stated that finding of fact were appellate judges who were supposed to be bound by the trial judge's finding of fact; or that the trial judge found in a painstaking 400-page analysis that the legislature's bill was not discriminatory. So the three appellate judges abused their power.
Few know how the three liberal appellate judges became the final word, that a Democrat State Attorney General intentionally sabotaged the State's appeal to prevent an upcoming review by the Supreme Court. That AG abused his power.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from North Carolina.
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, when the details are known, the absence of factual basis becomes plain. Nobody is getting wet. A University of Oregon economist showed, just in February, that the Shelby County decision to which this bill purports to respond, has not impaired Black voter turnout at all. There is no Jim Crow 2.0. This bill is about abuse of power.
Democrats wish to entrench themselves in power and to use the Federal Government to obliterate the States in order to achieve it. You have to know the facts.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Buck).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I have the Census Bureau report detailing record turnout in 2020; the Election Integrity Network H.R. 4 fact sheet; the Honest Election Project analysis titled ``H.R. 4 Legal and Constitutional Challenges''; the Independent Women's Forum analysis titled ``D.C. Bureaucrats and Judges Will Steal the Pen in Drawing Voting Districts''; and also the Foundation for Government Accountability analysis titled ``H.R. 4 Isn't Voting Progress. It is a Power Grab.''
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Rodney Davis).
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I have the following reports: an analysis of H.R. 4 titled ``How H.R. 4 Would Let Leftist Extremists Control the Entire Nation's Elections''; the Lawyers Democracy Fund H.R. 4 analysis; a RealClear Politics article titled ``'Jim Crow 2.0' Is Imaginary''; a letter opposing H.R. 4 from the Independent Women's Forum and others; a Heritage analysis titled ``Another Bill in Congress to Give Partisan Bureaucrats Control Over State Election Laws''; and lastly, the Honest Elections Project Action analysis titled ``H.R. 4: The Nancy Pelosi Power Grab.''
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, a foundational dependency of any democracy sustaining is its citizens having confidence in the outcome of its elections. Simply put, if people don't have faith in elections, democracy doesn't work.
According to a recent Gallup poll, America's confidence in our elections has decreased by 20 percent since 2009. Ensuring that our elections are run in a way that makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat increases confidence. A common best practice to ensure election integrity are voter IDs, a way for people to prove they are who they say they are.
For Democrats to equate this with the poll taxes of the early 20th century is a ludicrous, false equivalency. According to the Honest Elections Project, 77 percent of all Americans support voter ID requirements, including 75 percent of independents, 64 percent of African Americans, and 76 percent of low-income voters.
Knowing that, what does the majority do? They include language in H.R. 4 that would restrict commonsense voter ID requirements and require the judicial branch to consider voter ID laws as evidence of voter suppression, and by extension, racism. That doesn't restore faith in elections.
H.R. 4, as introduced, would require preapproval by an unaccountable election czar in the Biden DOJ before any State or locality under preclearance could enact popular, commonsense voter ID laws. H.R. 4 goes even further, requiring almost a dozen States to have their existing voter ID laws examined by the Biden DOJ before they can continue to be enforced.
These are the same election integrity laws that have been in place for years. This is a partisan power grab of maintaining control.
Madam Speaker, if we adopt the motion to recommit, we will instruct the Committee on the Judiciary to consider my amendment to H.R. 4 to strike from the bill the provisions that penalize State and local governments who implement commonsense voter ID requirements.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
The American people can see clearly what is happening here. Democrats in the Congress are more focused on taking Federal control over the election processes in Republican-led States than addressing the ongoing catastrophe that the Biden administration has created in Afghanistan, at our southern border, with inflation, and the ongoing pandemic. There are so many things that should be occupying our time and, yet, they are using it for this.
The cry of voter suppression is not only untrue, but as Mr. Arrington said so well here just a few moments ago, it is also divisive and dangerous. We need to speak truth, as Mr. Hoyer said a little while ago, and we are.
We had six hearings in the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee since January on this. I am the ranking Republican there. Not a scintilla of evidence was presented that said that voters are being suppressed, that the election integrity laws that are being passed by the States, pursuant to their constitutional authority, are in any way inappropriate. To the contrary, they are expanding access to the ballot. As we have said so many times, as I close, it has never been easier in America to vote.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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