Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006

FANNIE LOU HAMER, ROSA PARKS, AND CORETTA SCOTT KING VOTING RIGHTS ACT REAUTHORIZATION AND AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2006 -- (Senate - July 20, 2006)

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Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, today the Senate will debate and consider the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006. We can all agree that the Voting Rights Act was one of the most significant civil rights laws ever enacted in this country. Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee unanimously supported this bill, and today we hope the full Senate will pass it as soon as possible.

This landmark law reversed nearly 100 years of African-American disenfranchisement. It took years for Congress to devise a law that could not be circumvented or ignored through lengthy litigation or creative interpretation. After numerous failures, a stronger remedy free of litigation was needed to break the 95-year-old obstacle to Black voter participation.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided the solution. That law was and remains unique by enforcing the law before a new State voting statute goes into effect rather than fighting it out after the fact for years in court. The section 5 ``pre-clearance'' procedure--along with the banning of literacy texts, poll taxes, and the like--finally worked. Soon, African-American voters did not face an unequal burden to simply exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Yet our work was far from over in 1965. Arguably, the great successes of the act we speak of today would not have been realized had Congress not amended and extended the act in 1970, 1975, 1982 and 1992. Important improvements were made to the Act during that time, including the addition of bilingual voter assistance in certain jurisdictions with a substantial number of non-native English speakers. Accordingly, our bill includes amendments which address recent Supreme Court decisions that have made enforcement of some parts of the act unclear.

As we all know, key provisions of the Voting Rights Act are set to expire next year. We have made enormous gains for voting rights since 1965, but we should not assume that the vigorous protections of the act have outlived their use. To the contrary, extending the act for another 25 years will ensure that these hard-fought rights will remain in place.

Evidence supports this sentiment when one considers that the Department of Justice deemed 626 proposed election law changes discriminatory since the last extension of the act in 1982. Past experience teaches us that we cannot rely upon the courts alone to protect the constitutional right to vote. Quite simply, the Voting Rights Act, and specifically section 5, has worked. The record demonstrates that it continues to be needed to enforce the guarantees of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

We commend Chairman Specter for holding this series of hearings on the Voting Rights Act. Furthermore, we note the House passed its reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act last week without amendment, and I trust we can and will do the same here in the Senate. Most of us believe the record demonstrates that the act should remain in force, and I strongly urge my colleagues to support is extension.

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