Defending Voting Rights

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to coanchor the CBC Special Order hour along with my distinguished co-lead, Representative Jackson.

For the next 60 minutes, members of the CBC will have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people on voting rights, an issue of great importance to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress, constituents we represent, and all Americans.

In 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 4, with more than 64 percent of the voters. This historic constitutional amendment automatically restored voting rights to most Floridians with past convictions who had completed the terms of their sentence.

Before this vote, Florida was one of only four States that enacted permanent felony disenfranchisement, which affected about 1.7 million felons.

However, in June 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a misguided law that prohibited returning citizens from voting unless they pay off certain legal financial obligations imposed by a court pursuant to a felony conviction.

This abhorrent, undemocratic law has created a pay-to-vote system in the State of Florida and overwhelmingly targets Black and Brown communities.

Florida has no centralized system to tell what a person might owe, so it is often impossible for people with past convictions and election officials to know who is eligible to vote.

Last year, the DeSantis administration started prosecuting people with past convictions for making honest mistakes about their eligibility, intimidating potential voters, and further undermining the rights that Amendment 4 gave to millions of Floridians.

Many of the people arrested were told by local election officials that they were eligible to vote. Due to the confusing law that Tallahassee Republicans put into law, these officials mistakenly misled these individuals by telling them that they were eligible to vote.

Armed with the new election police unit, the DeSantis administration arrested 20 people who were among the 11 million Floridians who voted in the 2020 election.

The Republicans in Tallahassee and Washington are using fear and misinformation to disenfranchise millions of voters because they know their policies are not popular.

It is time that Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature honor the will of our constituents and implement Amendment 4 as it is written.

It is now my privilege to yield to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell).
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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Horsford for spearheading our Special Order today.

I now have the privilege of yielding to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson), my co-anchor.

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey, the Honorable Donald Payne, Jr.
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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I thank so much Representative Troy Carter for his words.
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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Emilia Sykes.

Lee).

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Lee for her words.

Jackson Lee).

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentlewoman from Florida and the gentleman from Illinois for their distinguished leadership of the CBC Special Order and to acknowledge our chairman, Steve Horsford, and the leadership to be able to acknowledge a very important moment.

Mr. Speaker, this is a time that draws memories, it draws emotions, and it draws a lot of tears.

I am very privileged and honored to have worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as a college student in a program called SCOPE. How fortunate I was in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King to meet his foot soldiers, which included James Orange, Hosea Williams, Andy Young, Reverend Dr. Ralph Abernathy, and a young man by the name of Jesse Louis Jackson, who we are privileged and honored to be able to not only know but to have his wisdom and his brilliance in leadership even with us today.

Amongst those great leaders was a young man as well by the name of John Lewis, who continued, in his admiration for Dr. King, his own journey and fight. He was in the Freedom Riders, beaten at that time, as fellow riders, who did not look like him, were beaten bloody and even lost their life. Many Americans don't recall that history. Some call it the second civil war and the aftermath the second reconstruction.

There were many people who were willing to sacrifice their lives because of the right to vote--the right to vote, which was denied. The amazing aspect of their fight was that it was nonviolent.

They trained extensively to suffer at lunch counters. They were spit upon, beaten, hit in the head, pulled off the stools. There were multiple movements that could contribute to this question of civil rights and voting rights.

Many people were reminded of the ``I Am a Man'' campaign to try to bring dignity to garbage workers and sanitation workers that Dr. King fought for in Memphis, Tennessee, where he saw his untimely and brutal death.

This weekend was a commemoration of Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday actually happened on March 7, 1965.

Mr. Speaker, we are here on this day, the actual March 7, 1965. It was a group of nonviolent churchgoers, one might say, that walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to be able to make a move from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery to show the State of Alabama and then-Governor Wallace, a raging segregationist, who later was reformed and reborn--to be able to say that they needed the right to vote or to show our President, our southern President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, that they needed the right to vote.

It was that march that was bloody. John Lewis was beaten near death, and others were beaten. Preceding that, Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot dead.

A little girl named Sheyann, who was 8 years old, was there this weekend. She was there, as we were all there, in memory of John Lewis, Martin King, Hosea Williams, many other foot soldiers, and the women that were involved as well from Alabama and the surrounding South.

We gathered together, Members of Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus, Cabinet officers, and the President of the United States, to say that Congress has not done its job.

The demise of the Voting Rights Act started with the Shelby case in 2013 in Alabama. It was simply a case of a city council person trying to get and make sure that he had fairness with every person having a right to vote. Unfortunately, the case went up to the United States Supreme Court, and the arguments were shocking to most of us.

It was: Why do we need this? We have thousands of African-American elected officials. Yes, they had been gained by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but it was clear that if you are able to get rid of polio because we have the polio vaccine, as one Justice said--as I recall, it was Justice Ginsburg--then why would you get rid of the polio vaccine just because you have been able to get rid of polio because of the vaccine? Why would you get rid of the Voting Rights Act, particularly section 5, just because you have found some progress?

Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that as we have seen the loss of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, we have not been able to reauthorize a simple bill that was four or five pages long that simply says that you have the right to vote unfettered. It doesn't have color in it. It indicates no person can be discriminated against.

Yet, we have seen a mountain of discriminatory laws, voter suppression; purging; gerrymandering; not getting a drink of water; cutting out hours, if you will, with respect to voting, making sure that people who work night shifts can't vote, people who work hourly wages can't vote; no same-day registration. Here we are in 2023.

Mr. Speaker, I would offer to say that we are long overdue with the Voting Rights Act. It is really crafted in the Constitution because the 15th Amendment said we have the right to vote unfettered without discrimination; the 14th Amendment, equal protection of the law; and, of course, the 13th Amendment, so personal to many of us of African descent and those who are the descendants of enslaved Africans. It was the 13th Amendment where the United States said for once that slavery was over.

Voting rights capture the very essence of who we are as a democracy.

To Selma, I thank you for being another cradle of democracy. For those marches of those individuals and children, Mr. Speaker, were utilized--it was a children's march that was utilized in order to ensure that we could vote.

As a Member of the United States Congress and the Judiciary Committee, I have been part of a bipartisan reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. It was in 2006, and it extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. We passed the P.L. 109-246, H.R. 9.

It is well known that large numbers of Members of the House-- bipartisan--voted for the Voting Rights Act, and 98 Members of the Senate. This is the reauthorization. We also renamed it the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization. Ultimately, at a later time, we added the Honorable Barbara Jordan and a number of other Texans who were engaged in voting empowerment, and we did it in a bipartisan manner.

It troubles me that we cannot come together and pass a voting rights bill that does nothing but allow Americans to vote. The Shelby case has dismantled the infrastructure of safe voting, constitutional privileges of equal protection of the law, and of course, the fear of voting-- people being arrested just for activating the right to vote, not being cautioned that they may not have had their registration right but put in jail--outright intimidation.

It is important for us to be on the floor today to be able to reinforce and to extend a hand of friendship and partnership. Why can't we reauthorize this bill? Why can't the Senate accept the John Robert Lewis Voting Enhancement Act with a new formula dealing with section 4 that deals with the formula under section 5? I am pleading with our colleagues to do so.

It is important, as I conclude my remarks, to recognize that voting is unfettered, and it is a choice of the American people. In this democracy--a two-party system most often, though there are other parties--we are either elected or unelected. That is the greatness of America.

Over the years, we have accepted the peaceful transfer of power until that day, January 6, 2021. I hope we will never see that day again.

That is no excuse for not passing the Voting Rights Act. It is no excuse for not recognizing that the importance of the Voting Rights Act is wrapped up in the history of African Americans, even though voting is for everyone. It is wrapped up in our basic history of not being counted as a whole person in the Constitution. As slaves, we were never able to even muster that sacred right to vote.

Landed people voted; unlanded did not. White women didn't have the right to vote, and unlanded people did not have the right to vote, if I might use that term.

Over the years, things changed. A brief moment of reconstruction that was just like a blink of an eye--barely even saw it. Then we went into the darkness of Jim Crowism and the viciousness of the Klan, which lasted into the 20th century.

I would think with that kind of history, America, which is the greatest country in the world and has overcome so much, would want to be that bright and shining city on the hill, to be able to show the world what democracy really is and what voting really is, that you can oppress people at one point and lift them up at another point. You can oppress the descendants of enslaved Africans. You can oppress slaves. You can do it into the 1800s and into the 1900s. Yet, you can do better.

Mr. Speaker, I would also say that we must not be afraid of the kind of words that make us a great country. Let us not be afraid of diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. When has that ever hurt anyone?

It only says that all of us, whether you are a person of faith or otherwise--I say all of God's children, but if you are not, it says all Americans, patriots, have every right to be in this country with all the benefits of the Constitution.

I do believe in the Declaration of Independence, that we all are created equal with certain inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Let me also say to you, as we look at this idea of voting, African Americans and others, Americans, have fought in every war. We have been in every war from the Revolutionary War. We have shed blood in every single war and conflict alongside our brothers who don't look like us.

Mr. Speaker, in my final words, we have not been able to study slavery the way we should have. We did have Juneteenth. I hope that we will have the whole Nation celebrating Juneteenth, a Federal holiday that acknowledges the time of slavery and late time of release out of Texas 2 years later.

What we have not done is we have not passed H.R. 40, a simple bill, just a commission to study slavery and develop reparation proposals. What would that be? Just an analysis of the economic, social, psychological, health, and educational impact of slavery in this Nation and why the trajectory shows that the indicia of how African Americans are today in America is related to the connection of slavery.

Every discipline will show that our numbers are down. We should not be judged by--wealthy this person and wealthy that person. You need to look at the respective communities, rural and urban, and you will find Black people without healthcare, large numbers; without wealth, large numbers; without psychological, scientific, and sociological analysis. We can do something and bring this country together.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that reparations and the legislation of H.R. 40, an executive order that the President could do tomorrow, would be a healing, restoring, and repairing time in our life.

Mr. Speaker, I conclude my remarks by citing Harriet Tubman, one of the greatest generals we ever had, who freed many slaves, risked her life to go back to get those who were not free. She was part of the Underground Railroad, and it keeps me going.

Just like the words of John Lewis: Never give up, never give in, never give out.

In the framework of freeing the slaves, if you hear the dogs, keep on going. If you see the lights, keep on going. If you hear the noise, keep on going.

Mr. Speaker, if you want a taste of freedom, we need to keep on going. That is America. I hope tonight that my colleagues and those who are viewing us will keep on going, for freedom is before us, and we need to keep on going.

Mr. Speaker, I have said it once and I will continue to say it until it gets done: we have to pass the Voting Rights Act, which corrects the damage done in recent years to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and commits the national government to protecting the right of all Americans to vote free from discrimination and without injustices that previously prevented them from exercising this most fundamental right of citizenship.

We cannot have free and fair elections without this essential legislation.

In the 58 years since its passage on this day in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has safeguarded the right of Americans to vote and stood as an obstacle to many of the more egregious attempts by certain states and local jurisdictions to game the system by passing discriminatory changes to their election laws and administrative policies.

Mr. Speaker, for most of the past 56 years, support for the Voting Rights Act and protecting, preserving, and expanding the right to vote of all Americans has been an issue that Americans have supported in overwhelming numbers across the nation.

On July 9, 1965, the House passed the Voting Rights Act by a 333-85 vote, with Democrats voting 221-61 and Republicans 112-24. The House later approved the VRA conference report on August 3 by a 328-74 vote (Democrats 217-54, Republicans 111-20).

The Senate passed the VRA on August 4 by a 79-18 vote, with Democrats voting 49-17 and Republicans 30-1 and this landmark legislation, P.L. 89-10, was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson as on August 6, 1965.

Five years later, on June 22, 1970, the VRA was renewed for five years as Public Law 91-285, passing the House by a vote of 272-132 and the Senate by a vote of 64-12.

Five years after that, on June 4, 1975, Congress extended the VRA for seven years, enacting Public Law 94-73, with majorities of 341-70 in the House and 77-12 in the Senate, and on June 29, 1982, a Republican- controlled Senate joined with a Democratic House to pass Public Law 97-205, extending the VRA for 10 years, with the vote in the Senate of 85-8 and the vote in the House of 389-24.

Ten years later, the bipartisan Voting Rights Language Assistance Act was passed as Public Law 102-344 on August 26, 1992. And on July 27, 2006, the Voting Rights Act was extended for 25 years when the Congress passed Public Law 109-246 (H.R. 9), the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006. The vote for H.R. 9 was 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate.

Every extension of the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by a Republican President, from Richard Nixon to Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

This chain of bipartisan support for voting rights stood solid and unbreakable until the Supreme Court's horrendous decision in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013).

Between 1982 and June 25, 2013, Section 5 of the VRA stopped more than 1,000 discriminatory voting changes in their tracks, including 107 discriminatory changes in Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I was a member of this Committee in 2006 when, led by Republican Chairman James Sensenbrenner, it compiled a 15,000 page record documenting the continuing need for the Voting Rights Act, and especially its Section 5 preclearance provisions, and reported favorably H.R. 9, the legislation reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act for 25 years, which in turned passed the House by an overwhelming 390- 33 vote and passed the Senate by a unanimous 98-0 vote.

I was never prouder to be an American and a Member of Congress than I was the day I attended White House signing ceremony where President George W. Bush signed the bill into law.

So, it really should not have been necessary and urgent for us to be here, as the Voting Rights Act was authorized until 2031.

But on June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 193 (2013), which invalidated Section 4(b) of the VRA, and paralyzed the application of the VRA's Section 5 preclearance requirements, which protect minority voting rights where voter discrimination has historically been the worst.

The current conservative Supreme Court majority has simply never understood, or refuses to accept, the fundamental importance of the right to vote, free of discriminatory hurdles and obstacles.

It was predicted at the time by me and other defenders of the precious right to vote that the Supreme Court's misguided and naive decision would usher in a wave of state and local initiatives intended to suppress and nullify the rights of black Americans, persons of color, young adults, and marginalized communities to exercise the most basic act in the political process: voting.

As we have seen in recent elections, this prediction has tragically come to pass.

To increase transparency and to ensure there is time for effective remedial action, the Voting Rights Act should be strengthened by adding a new section that requires each State and subdivision to identify all new laws, regulations, or policies that include voting qualifications or prerequisites to voting covered by the Act and ensure that no covered practice is implemented unless it has been precleared.

It is useful, Mr. Speaker, to recount how we arrived at this day.

The reason it is important to review this history is so that we always remember the true and fundamental purpose of the Voting Rights Act, and that was to protect and empower black Americans, who had for two centuries been exploited, victimized, persecuted, scapegoated, cheated, and treated with both benign and malignant neglect all because they were excluded from participating in the political process and the making of decisions that affected their lives.

It is interesting to note the absence of the current frantic efforts to disenfranchise black voters and other person of color had no antecedent in 1994, when unexpectedly Republicans won the House majority for the first time in 40 years and majorities in several state legislatures across the country.

Nor did it happen in the after of the 2010 elections when Republicans recaptured the House majority after holding the White House for two consecutive terms.

What accounts for the lack of vote suppression action then and the desperate actions we see now?

I believe the answer is clear and simple: 29 years ago in 1994, and as recent as 13 years ago in 2010, conservative Republicans still believed they could compete for democratic political power fair and square and that ideas and principles could attract majority support.

With the demographic changes and generational replacement taking place in America, the maturation and coming of age of the beneficiaries of the Great Society, and the rise of what social and political scientist call the ``Obama Coalition,'' they no longer believe that.

They now hold it as an article of faith that they cannot win if they do not cheat; instead of taking their ideas and arguments to the voters, they have opted to change the rules so they can handpick the voters.

They have disenfranchised voters, but voters have continuously overcome those efforts.

Black voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin braved a deadly pandemic to exercise their right to vote in an act of political self-defense against the most corrupt, incompetent, indifferent, and racist administration since the end of the Civil War.

In so doing, they vindicated and made prophetic the words of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the greatest legislative strategist and tactician of our lifetime, who saw clearly the need and power for good of the Voting Rights Act:

``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.''

Fifty-eight years ago today, in Selma, Alabama, hundreds of heroic souls risked their lives for freedom and to secure the right to vote for all Americans by their participation in marches for voting rights on ``Bloody Sunday,'' ``Turnaround Tuesday,'' or the final, completed march from Selma to Montgomery.

Those ``foot soldiers'' of Selma, brave and determined men and women, boys and girls, persons of all races and creeds, loved their country so much that they were willing to risk their lives to make it better, to bring it even closer to its founding ideals.

The foot soldiers marched because they believed that all persons have dignity and the right to equal treatment under the law, and in the making of the laws, which is the fundamental essence of the right to vote.

On that day, Sunday, March 7, 1965, more than 600 civil rights demonstrators, including our beloved former colleague, the late Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, were brutally attacked by state and local police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of the right to vote.

``Bloody Sunday'' was a defining moment in American history because it crystallized for the nation the necessity of enacting a strong and effective federal law to protect the right to vote of every American.

No one who witnessed the violence and brutally suffered by the foot soldiers for justice who gathered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge will ever forget it; the images are deeply seared in the American memory and experience.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was critical to preventing brazen voter discrimination violations that historically left millions of African Americans disenfranchised.

In 1940, for example, there were less than 30,000 African Americans registered to vote in Texas and only about 3% of African Americans living in the South were registered to vote.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats of violence were the major causes of these racially discriminatory results.

After passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited these discriminatory practices, registration and electoral participation steadily increased to the point that by 2012, more than 1.2 million African Americans living in Texas were registered to vote.

In 1964, the year before the Voting Rights Act became law, of there were approximately 300 African Americans in public office, including just three in Congress.

Few, if any, African Americans held elective office anywhere in the South.

Because of the Voting Rights Act, in 2007 there were more than 9,100 black elected officials, including 46 members of Congress, the largest number ever.

Mr. Speaker, the Voting Rights Act opened the political process for many of the approximately 6,000 Hispanic public officials that have been elected and appointed nationwide, including more than 275 at the state or federal level, 32 of whom serve in Congress.

Native Americans, Asians and others who have historically encountered harsh barriers to full political participation also have benefited greatly.

We must all do our part to preserve this most important legislation because it was earned with the sacrifices and the lives of our ancestors.

The right to vote is a ``powerful instrument that can break down the walls of injustice'' and must be protected against attack from all enemies, foreign and domestic, using all the legal tools at our disposal.

I look forward to the discussion of these matters with our witnesses.

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I would inquire as to how much time is remaining.

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK.

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Jackson for his remarks.

I ask, Mr. Speaker, that we secure voting rights for all Americans. We must honor the legacy of civil rights advocates like John Lewis and those who came before by standing strong in the face of adversity. Every American deserves to be able to vote freely without the fear of reprisal.

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