Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 1

Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, I also want to thank Senators Udall and Merkley for their extraordinary work on the For the People Act.

We are confronting a crisis in our democracy. We have a President who repeatedly invites foreign intervention in our elections, engages in widespread corruption, attacks the news media as part of a broader assault on the truth, and uses false claims of voter fraud to legitimize voter suppression across the country.

These challenges to our democracy are not limited to the Trump administration, but this President has undoubtedly made things much, much worse. It is why I joined an overwhelming number of my Democratic colleagues of both Chambers of Congress in cosponsoring H.R. 1, the For the People Act.

This crucial piece of legislation is the most expansive and serious attempt to strengthen American democracy in decades. Among its many provisions, this bill would root out corruption by attacking the dark money in our politics. The door was opened in the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. This bill would also secure our elections from foreign interference and restore voter protections that Republicans have spent decades attacking for their own partisan political benefit.

Like many of my colleagues, I am particularly focused on combating the Republican Party's efforts to disenfranchise millions of minority voters. I could spend hours detailing the efforts throughout American history to make it as difficult as possible--or even impossible--for people of color to vote.

But today I want to focus on the impact of the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County. In this 5-to-4 decision, Chief Justice Roberts and the Court's conservative Justices effectively gutted the core protections of the Voting Rights Act. They decided that States with long histories of discrimination no longer had to obtain Federal approval for voting changes under the Voting Rights Act.

As author Carol Anderson explained, Chief Justice Roberts has ``[l]ong [been] an opponent of the Voting Rights Act,'' and in Shelby County he used arguments that had been ``carefully crafted'' over ``several decades'' to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act.

Without the constraints of the Voting Rights Act, States with long histories of discrimination ramped up voter suppression, from racist voter ID laws to eliminating early voting, to purging voter rolls and closing polling places.

In the 6 years following the Shelby County decision, for example, States previously subjected to preclearance under the Voting Rights Act closed at least 1,688 polling sites. Texas alone closed 750 polling places.

The closures had their intended effect. A study at Harvard University found that minority voters are six times more likely than White voters to wait longer than an hour to vote. Longer waits impose greater costs for voting on minorities and deter them from voting in future elections. We saw the impact of these policies just last week on Super Tuesday, which saw inordinately long lines in minority precincts in Texas.

Mr. Hervis Rogers waited more than 6 hours to vote, but he was determined to make his voice heard. So when he got to his polling place at Texas Southern University, a historically Black college in Houston, he patiently waited in line until he could cast his vote at 1:30 in the morning.

Mr. Rogers's experience last week speaks to one part of a broader problem. The Republican Party is so invested in voter suppression because they view it as an effective tool to win elections, and these efforts had devastating consequences for our country in the 2016 Presidential election--the first Presidential election held in 50 years that did not have the protections of the Voting Rights Act.

We saw plummeting minority turnout across the country, including in the key swing States of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Carol Anderson observed that in 2016, 50,000 fewer people voted in 1--just 1--overwhelmingly African-American county in Wisconsin. Donald Trump, by comparison, won Wisconsin by only 27,000 votes.

Efforts to further suppress the minority vote in swing States continue to date. Last year, for example, a conservative interest group sued Wisconsin's State Elections Commission to force a purge of 209,000 infrequent voters from the voter rolls. Although a lower State court granted the conservative group's request, a Wisconsin appeals court put the voter purge on hold while the fight in court continues.

These ongoing voter suppression efforts serve as stark reminders of why we need to pass the For the People Act. This bill not only blocks common strategies Republicans have used to make it harder for minorities to vote, but it also includes critical democracy reforms to make their votes count.

This legislation would also set strong national standards to protect voting access that reflect and improve upon steps that have already been taken by States like Hawaii. Last year, for example, Hawaii became the fourth State in the country to provide mail-in ballots to all voters. Our State also has same-day voter registration, preregistration for residents under the age of 18, and a 10-day early voting period.

While some States are stepping up to protect voting rights, Congress needs to take strong and decisive action to restore voting rights and end voter suppression across the country.

We also need to take an equally strong stand against Donald Trump's efforts to pack our Federal courts with judges who have dedicated their careers to undermining the voting rights of minorities.

At the Supreme Court, where Donald Trump has appointed two Justices, there have been a number of cases attacking the voting rights of minority communities, and there are real concerns that the Roberts Court will continue to uphold these voter suppression efforts.

In the lower courts, Trump judges include Andrew Brasher, now an Eleventh Circuit judge, who argued in support of gutting the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case; and Kyle Duncan, now a Fifth Circuit judge, who defended North Carolina's discriminatory voting law that the Fourth Circuit found--and I quote the Fourth Circuit-- ``target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision.'' These are overt acts to suppress voting.

President Trump's hostility to voting rights is so extreme. He is appointing anti-voting rights advocates even to courts that do not handle voting issues, such as Stephen Schwartz for the Court of Federal Claims and Stephen Vaden for the Court of International Trade. Both have no experience with these courts, but both have defended North Carolina's discriminatory voting law.

The right to vote is one of our most sacred rights, and we must do all that we can to protect it for all Americans. That is why I will continue to fight back against Donald Trump's court packing and fight for the passage of critical legislation like the For the People Act.

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