CBC Hour: Voting Rights Act, Section 5

Floor Speech

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, in the run-up to the 2012 elections Republican-controlled legislatures passed a wide range of bills designed to restrict, rather than broaden, access to the ballot box. Despite multiple comprehensive reports and findings demonstrating that impersonating another voter is more rare than being struck by lightning, thirty one states now require ID, fifteen require photo ID, for voting, potentially disenfranchising five million voters mostly minorities, especially African Americans, and senior citizens. Other recent oppressive state laws aim at making it more difficult to register to vote and scale back early voting periods. Several states undertook massive (and subsequently proven fraudulent) purges of the voting rolls. Some of the most egregious attempts at suppressing the vote occurred in states which required pre-clearance under the 1965 Voting Rights Act because of their long history of voter suppression. Without Section 5 in place, many of the roughly 2,400 blocked voting changes proposed since 1982 would have had a significant adverse impact on voters.

Following the Civil War Congress recognized the critical central role of voting in our democracy and passed the fifteenth amendment which gives the Federal Government primary authority to prevent discrimination in voting. The amendment was ratified by the states and the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is a direct implementation of that authority to prevent any attempt to limit access to the ballot. The Supreme Court has itself noted that Congress, not the Court, has the special responsibility to protect voting rights. The fact is that, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote in 2006, Congress found that voting discrimination continues to persist, and it undermines our democracy and therefore reauthorized the VRA for twenty-five years.

This year marks the 48th Anniversary of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act and I join in calling for a new generation of Freedom Riders to join with tens of thousands of original Freedom Riders in standing tall for our hard won voting rights.

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