Voting Rights

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLYBURN. Mr. Speaker, in just three days, the National Museum of African American History & Culture will officially open its doors to the public. One hundred years in the making, the museum explores the richness and diversity of the African American experience.

As a former public school history teacher in Charleston, South Carolina and a lifelong student of history, I have always worked to improve our understanding of the past. History frames our views on current events and has been called the study of human nature by using examples.

The struggle for the right to vote is an important part of that history. It's a history that I know quite well--having lived through some of it. I met my wife while in jail for helping to organize one of the biggest student demonstrations in the South. More than one thousand students from South Carolina State and Claflin University assembled to march to downtown Orangeburg in March 1960. 388 of us were arrested.

A few months later, in October 1960, I met John Lewis and Dr. King on the campus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. We were seeking the right to vote.

When the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in August 1965, it restored the promise of the 19th amendment. It prohibited racial discrimination in voting and has been called the most successful piece of civil rights legislation in American history.

It was reauthorized by Congress on a strong bipartisan basis in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992 and, most recently, in 2006.

I testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights in support of extending Section 5, with its strong preclearance requirements, in 1981. I was South Carolina's Human Affairs Commissioner at the time. At the time, the preclearance requirements were necessary to prevent states with a history of discrimination from engaging in further discriminatory practices. They were necessary again in 1992, in 2006, and they still are necessary today.

With no coverage formula in place for the last three years, states have been free to engage in nefarious schemes to suppress minority turnout, dilute the voting strength of communities of color, erect new barriers to the ballot box and make it harder for millions of Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

And they have.

When Americans go to the ballot box in less than fifty days they'll find new voting restrictions in place in 17 states for the first time in a presidential election.

Nearly 8 million Latino voters living in previously covered jurisdictions will be vulnerable to voting discrimination and changes in election administration.

Five federal lawsuits involving Native American voting rights in ND, UT, SD, AZ and AK have been filed since Shelby County v. Holder.

North Carolina's legislature got to work within hours of the Shelby County decision on its ``monster'' voting law which imposed strict photo ID requirements and cut back early voting. The state has spent more than $5 million defending the law--which the 4th Circuit said, ``target[ted] African Americans with almost surgical precision'' and ``impose[d] cures for problems that did not exist.''

Six former preclearance states have closed voter registration offices and moved or closed polling places. And six local jurisdictions have redrawn districts or changed the rules to dilute minority votes.

In Georgia alone, 372,000 voters have been purged or removed from the voter rolls in the last two years with little or no awareness. And in Hancock County, one in twenty voters--virtually all African-Americans-- were removed from the voting rolls and sheriff's deputies began showing up at their homes commanding they defend themselves at board meetings as a so-called ``courtesy.''

Texas has spent more than $3.5 million defending its discriminatory photo ID law and just yesterday, was ordered by a federal court to stop purposefully misleading voters about the requirements to vote.

A recent study from 2006-2014 found that the racial turnout gap doubles or triples in states with strict voter ID requirements. They concluded that ``strict voter identification laws substantially alter the makeup of who votes and ultimately skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right.''

I'm not reading from a history book. This is happening right now--in the United States of America in 2016.

This Congress--Republicans in this Congress--have done little more than pay lip service to voting rights for the last three years. As we approach the upcoming election, I cannot help but feel as if the lessons of history are creeping up on us. Let us not be doomed to repeat it.

Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act. We can do it immediately and we should.

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