The Battle Wages On: Securing Equal Voting Rights in the United States

Floor Speech

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I was privileged just recently to stand hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder in Selma, Alabama, with 100 Members of Congress, with civil rights leaders, friends of the movement of all races from every State in the United States, with civil rights luminaries such as Mrs. Abernathy, Dorothy Cotton, Amelia Boynton--113 years old--Doris Crenshaw, and, of course, our very own colleague, John
Lewis, who helped lead a march for a better life and more equality for all of America.

But it was very, very hard to celebrate. There was a very sober mood in the crowd as we realized that the voting rights of Americans, particularly African Americans, were under threat 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed. As the President said in his remarks:

Right now, in 2015, 50 years after Selma, there are laws across the country designed to make it harder for people to vote.

As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood, so much sweat and tears, the product of so much
sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, the Voting Rights Act stands weakened, its future subject to political rancor.

As we think of those martyrs like Viola Liuzzo, James Earl Chaney, Andy Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, it is very, very difficult to deal with the reality that States such as the one that I hail from, Wisconsin, is one of the States who has joined the map of shame and passed one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country.

In the following years since 2011, Wisconsin has been a battleground in fighting this pernicious law. In 2014, a Federal judge ruled that our voter ID law was unconstitutional and violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. It found that 300,000 Wisconsinites lacked the proper ID needed under the law and that the law would have a disparate impact on
Blacks and Latinos.

Despite that powerful finding, the Federal district court was recklessly overturned by a three-judge panel in the Seventh Circuit. Right before our 2014 election, the United States Supreme Court stepped in and enjoined this law in an emergency stay to prevent them from implementing the voter ID law only 6 weeks before the 2014 election.
Recently, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have sent an amicus brief, and I am optimistic that justice will prevail.

I know that there have been many African Americans and people of other races who have marched across that Edmund Pettus Bridge. As a woman, I know that the brave suffragettes fought equal treatment for over 70 years while they faced humiliation and shame from society.

History has made it so very, very clear that voting rights are so fundamental. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution protects voting rights; the 15th Amendment provided that males, even former slaves and males of any race, could vote; women's suffrage; with the 24th Amendment, poll taxes supposedly were eliminated, and the 26th
Amendment allowed 18-year-olds to vote.

Of course, we have the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I think it is very, very clear, when you look at the history of this protection, that it is one of the most constitutionally protected rights that there is.

I would urge my colleagues here in this body to do more than hold hands and sing, ``We Shall Overcome,'' but to really pass laws to strengthen the Voting Rights Act.

We have all heard the adage that history repeats itself, and we have seen a race across the country for Republican legislatures and Governors to pass these voter ID laws, but I think we also have the power to shape our future by drawing from the lessons of the past: our civil rights movement, our march in Selma, where we stood hand in hand,
arm in arm, and fought back against this tide of oppression.

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