Future Forum

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Thank you so much for putting this together for us to be able to speak to the American people and speak to this body about voting rights, its importance, and the difficulties, that many groups are feeling disenfranchised from the voting system.

The Voting Rights Act is probably one of the most important pieces of legislation that this Congress has put forward. It was passed in 1965 to prohibit discrimination in voting.

According to the Department of Justice, the Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation. That was back in 2009 when they said that.

The Department of Justice has had a history of blocking racial gerrymandering, which was covered in section 4 of the act. In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was reaffirmed by an act of this Congress.

The Senate voted for it 98-0, and the House voted 390-33 in favor of the Voting Rights Act, which lets us know that this is a fundamental right that most Americans believe.

But there are still these barriers that many groups feel. I know, Congressman Swalwell, you have gone around the country. You have heard from young people, you have heard from poor people, you have heard from those who live in rural areas, the difficulty they have in exercising this fundamental right.

In the Virgin Islands, we are facing an even greater constitutional issue that we are bringing court cases to the United States about. Many years ago, Congress decided that the right to vote was not a fundamental right for people that were living in the territories.

Under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act, if you live in the United States in any of the 50 States, if you decide to move to Paris, if you decide to move to Timbuktu, you can still vote. But if you decide that you are going to live in one of the United States territories, you have given up that right to vote for your President in your Federal election. In places like Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, we have the highest veteran rate per capita in the United States. In the Virgin Islands, we have the highest casualty rate per capita of people who have volunteered to serve this country, but cannot vote for their Commander in Chief.

We are bringing case law--and I am part of an effort--to ensure that people who decide to live in the Virgin Islands, who are from the Virgin Islands, can retain that right to exercise their voice in our Federal elections and not something that we are fighting for right now.

This goes along with many of the other what we believe to be historic discrimination that has gone on. There is an enormous amount of racial gerrymandering that is happening in this country. The great Mr. John Lewis, our colleague, has issued H.R. 12, I believe it is, which is a bill to expand voting rights and the ability for people to vote.

I know that as you go around this country and you speak with people, Representative Swalwell, you will hear about the difficulties, particularly those people who are discriminated against in many ways, from their ability to vote.

One of the things that I recall writing about when I was in law school was individuals who have been incarcerated and the ability that they no longer have to vote. We know that in the Black community there is a disproportionate amount of our young men and women who are incarcerated and then have lost their right to vote. The difficulties they have reinstating that right and that ability to vote absolutely excludes not only their dignity and their ability to voice their opinions, but they are feeling part of the American Dream, feeling included in this American mission. What message are we saying to them when they need to be reintegrated back into this country and to be productive citizens that they can work, we want them to work, we want them to do everything that they are supposed to do, but they cannot have that fundamental right to vote.

These are the things that I am glad you are speaking about tonight and that you are making the American public available to. I don't know what the Twitter feed is working on right now, but I am hoping that people will tweet about this and will get this word out and will really create an echo chamber of young people, and even those who are not young, who are concerned about millennials and concerned about the next generation being able to be a part of the American process.

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