Fighting Back Against Dismantling of Voting Rights

Floor Speech

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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Jackson for convening this Special Order hour and for humbling me with such a kind introduction, but mostly for the gentleman's leadership and his steadfast commitment to protecting the Voting Rights Act.

When I was completing my medical residency in Colorado in the early 2000s, I distinctly remember standing in line for hours to vote with two small children in tow at the single polling location available to me. It was hours with toddlers in the glory of Colorado's most unpredictable weather.

That experience was a world away from voting in my home State of Oregon where, since 1996, our State has proudly chosen to vote entirely by mail. It is safe and secure. You can't hack paper. It is harder to intimidate a voter in their own home, and turnout is higher. In fact, in 2023, Oregon had the single highest voter turnout in the Nation.

That is how representative democracy is supposed to work. People should be able to easily exercise their voices and to use their power.

For generations, the Voting Rights Act helped move us closer to that promise. It stood as one of the most successful civil rights laws in our Nation's history, borne from those who marched, bled, and died for the right to have a say in their government.

Today, that promise is under assault. Over the last decade, a series decisions handed down by a radical Supreme Court has steadily weakened voting protections. Most recently, Trump's hand-picked Supreme Court Justices gutted section 2 of the Voting Right Act which allowed voters to challenge racially discriminatory maps.

This has unleashed a wave of racist gerrymandering across the South designed to dilute Black voting power, erase hard-won gains of the civil rights movement, and rig the political system for Republicans to stay in power.

In Alabama, the far-right Republican State legislature is now moving forward with a congressional map that all but erases one of two majority Black districts.

This is a map that judges in Alabama rejected, but that Trump's handpicked, radical Supreme Court is letting move forward.

It is a betrayal, and that betrayal and assault is why last month I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, with Members of Congress from the Northeast to the West to stand in solidarity and to say: We are not going back.

Standing there, I felt the weight of history. The people, including the gentleman's father, courageously led this Nation in the fight against segregation and Jim Crow. They will not stand alone now.

We will fight back, and we have the playbook in front of us. This fight is won in courtrooms and at kitchen tables, at the ballot box and marching in the streets.

Our role here in Congress is clear: to serve as a check on a judiciary that is straying from its constitutional role and weakening the protections that ensure free and fair elections for all Americans. That is why I support term limits for Supreme Court Justices, a binding and enforceable code of ethics for the Court, and to ensure no court and no State legislature can ever again undermine the sacred right to vote.

Congress must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore Federal protections against racial discrimination in voting. The right to vote is the foundation of our democracy. Oregonians sent me here to protect it, and I will keep fighting to do just that.

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