Defending Voting Rights

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida and the gentleman from Illinois for putting together this Special Order hour to talk about something that is very important, and that is voting rights in this country.

On the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that happened in Selma, Alabama, 58 years ago, a group of courageous civil rights activists were brutally attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in that city as they marched against legalized segregation, legalized apartheid in America, and voter suppression. One of these activists who was beaten within an inch of his life was our friend and late colleague John Lewis.

Now, nearly six decades later, I am very sad to report to you that a lot of these attacks are starting to take place again, but in a different type of a way, because people are clever. You heard Lee Atwater, on his deathbed, say that if you say it that way, people will stop listening to you, so you have got to say it this way. So people have become very clever about how they unveil these attacks on people's voting rights.

I want to start in my home State of Texas. You know, something interesting, after the Voting Rights Act was passed, for decades, we were probably the leaders when it came to expanding voting rights for citizens in the State of Texas. We had a very generous early vote period; a very generous vote-by-mail period; easy to be able to register to vote; felons could vote after they were no longer, as they say, on paper; and it was a place that enfranchised lots of people.

But now, the right to vote in Texas is under attack. There are six bills in the State of Texas that are moving through the legislature. One is trying to make it illegal for people to vote on college campuses, where election officials can't hold elections on college campuses. That is how crazy and desperate this has gotten. I will talk about that cleverness and how people try to say things a little bit differently because they know if they just blurt it outright that they will just get completely taken to task on that.

So in my home county of Tarrant County, where Fort Worth is located, our county judge and district attorney had a press conference a few weeks ago and said that they were going to use taxpayer dollars to create a voter integrity employee, to presumably try to find someone Black or Hispanic that they could hold up and showcase as committing voter fraud. That is how crazy it has gotten, that people would actually be so desperate that they want to try to find somebody that they can hold up as a political ploy to try and further advance their careers. It is crazy, it is unjust, and we can't let this happen.

Sadly, Republican-led States across our Nation are following Texas' dangerous lead.

That is the reason why I founded the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus. As a Member of the Congressional Black Caucus, I urge us to do everything we can to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and get it signed into law. Because I have got to tell you, this cleverness that is happening right now, it is just going to continue to increase and increase and increase. People are going to say: No, no, no, that doesn't mean that; you can't compare it to then. But like Lee Atwater said, you have to change the wording, because if you don't, people will stop listening to you. That is what is happening now.

We have got to do everything we can to make sure that all Americans, not just people that are going to support us, because that is what we are fighting right now in Europe is that sort of crazy thought. We need everybody, people that are going to be for us and against us, to have the right to vote in this country, because that is what our Constitution is all about.

If you really believe in that, then you will uphold the right of all Americans to be able to exercise their suffrage in this country.

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