Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015
Floor Speech
Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I support the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015, an important step on the road to protecting the right to vote for all Americans. It responds to a recent Supreme Court ruling that rolled back critical voting protections that had proven effective for decades and that Congress had reauthorized several times.
This landmark legislation would reaffirm the importance of the vote as a pillar of our democracy and restore a powerful shield to combat voting discrimination. I thank Senator Leahy for his leadership on this bill, and I am proud to be an original cosponsor of a bill that protects access to the ballot box for all American citizens.
Mr. President, 50 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965, legislation that he called ``a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield.'' At the time he signed the bill into law, millions of Americans were denied the right to vote based on the color of their skin.
President Johnson called this ``a clear and simple wrong'' and acknowledged that the Voting Rights Act's ``only purpose is to right that wrong.'' With the stroke of a pen, President Johnson enacted a bill that threw open the doors of democracy for all Americans and promised that the precious right to vote would be protected.
The United States has had a long and bumpy road to even achieving that promise. In the decades before the Voting Rights Act, Blacks had been denied their right to vote and participate in the political process. They were harassed and intimidated from going to the polls. Ordinary Americans who marched for themselves or their fellow citizens to exercise the right to vote were beaten, arrested, jailed, or even murdered.
On June 21, 1964, 51 years ago this week, three civil rights workers--two white young men from New York City and one black Mississippian--were killed in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan simply for trying to help register African Americans to vote. Their sacrifice inspired countless others to fight to make our union more perfect. Even in my home State, in Cherry Hill, NJ, stands a monument that pays tribute to these three civil rights workers who died in the struggle for equality.
Few things made African Americans feel less equal in America than being deprived of the basic right of citizenship--the right to vote. They even suffered the indignity of having to count beans in a barrel, take a literacy test, pay a poll tax, or recite from memory the preamble to the Constitution without a glitch just to cast a ballot. As a result of disenfranchising tactics, no Black southerner served in Congress from 1901 to 1973. For decades, the promises of liberty and justice for all embedded in our national charter were simply words on paper.
But the Voting Rights Act changed America. By the end of 1966, 1 year after it became law, only 4 out of the traditional 13 Southern States had less than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote. In Mississippi alone, Black voter turnout increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969. Throughout the South, and indeed our entire country, Blacks and Latinos were elected into public office in significant numbers.
The Voting Rights Act has been the most powerful tool to defend minorities' voting rights. The law established new ground to curb voter discrimination by requiring Federal ``preclearance''--that is, Federal review--of voting law changes in areas with histories of discrimination. And therein lies its power. There is no remedy for citizens after an unfair election has occurred. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was the only Federal remedy that could prevent unfair elections before they took place.
The lesson of history is clear--section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has made America live up to its promises of liberty and justice by ensuring that every citizen has an equal opportunity to participate in our democracy. That is why preserving the Voting Rights Act is so important. That is why Presidents Reagan, Ford, and Nixon had signed prior reauthorizations of the act. That is why in successive Congresses--both Republicans and Democrats--repeatedly reauthorized section 5.
In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by an overwhelming bipartisan margin. The law was reauthorized 98 to 0 in the Senate and 390 to 33 in the House and President George W. Bush signed the bill into law. It was a testament to the fact that men and women from across the aisle could come together to protect what is most important to our democracy, the right to vote. A right the Supreme Court has called fundamental because it is preservative of all other rights.
Congress developed an expansive record during its 2006 reauthorization that justified the need for section 5 as a necessary and effective tool to protect minority voters. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees found ample evidence that, even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, States and localities continued to engage in overt and subtle tactics that discriminated against minority voters.
Two years ago, a narrowly split and deeply divided Supreme Court disregarded extensive findings of Congress and gutted the Voting Rights Act. In a case known as Shelby County v. Holder, five Justices on the Supreme Court put the Voting Rights Act on life support by striking down the formula by which Congress determines which States and localities are subject to preclearance.
That 2013 decision has nullified the ability of the Federal Government to use the preclearance requirement. Section 5 has protected constitutional guarantees against discrimination in voting even when civil rights laws tried for over 100 years to achieve the success of the Voting Rights Act. The Court reached its decision despite Congress finding an overwhelming record of contemporary voting discrimination. Even the Chief Justice wrote, ``voting discrimination still exists: no one doubts that.''
Yet, the Shelby County decision rested on a flawed logic that the Voting Rights Act was a victim of its own success. Justice Ginsburg's dissent noted a ``catch-22'' in the majority's logic. She said:
If the statute was working, there would be less evidence of discrimination, so opponents might argue that Congress should not be allowed to renew the statute. In contrast, if the statute was not working, there would be plenty of evidence of discrimination, but scant reason to renew a failed regulatory regime.
I agree with Justice Ginsburg that the Court's decision to strike down section 5 ``when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you're not getting wet.''
Even in the aftermath of Shelby County, States continued to enact laws that make it harder for American citizens to cast their ballot. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Nation's foremost civil rights coalition, released a report last year entitled ``The Persistent Challenges of Voting Discrimination.'' That report documented 148 voting rights violations in America since 2000. Because each voting rights violation often impacts thousands of voters, the report underscored that the impact of racial discrimination in voting is much more profound than the nearly 150 documented violations suggest.
New State laws erect barriers to voting, which restrict voter registration drives, eliminate same-day voter registration, reduce the early voting period, and require photo identification and proof of citizenship to vote. So far, 32 States have passed laws requiring voters to show some kind of identification at the polls, which often have a disparate impact on minority and low-income voters.
The Voting Rights Advancement Act would help prevent voting practices that are likely to be discriminatory before they cause harm. It would create a new nationwide coverage formula requiring States and localities to obtain preclearance for voting changes that have historically been found to be discriminatory. It would enhance the authority of courts to order a preclearance remedy, require greater transparency regarding voting changes, and clarify the Attorney General's authority to send Federal observers to monitor elections across the country.
In his ``I Have a Dream'' speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ``When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.'' The Voting Rights Act has been one of our most important tools to fulfill that promise and protect voters against discrimination. Congress now has a historic opportunity to ensure that the critical provisions in that law are restored and strengthened.
Now is the time to recommit ourselves to the cause of justice. Now is the time to safeguard our democratic values. Now is the time to protect the progress so many Americans worked so hard to establish. I urge all Senators to support this bill that would combat voter discrimination and breathe life back into the Voting Rights Act.
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