OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Voting Rights

Floor Speech

Date: March 8, 2019
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Elections

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Ms. DEAN. Mr. Speaker, last weekend Members of Congress traveled to Alabama for a civil rights pilgrimage. In Selma we marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge alongside Congressman John Lewis.

Mr. Speaker, 54 years ago yesterday, Congressman Lewis was on that same bridge with hundreds of other brave Americans young and old. They were marching for the right to vote, and they were met with a wave of teargas and billy clubs. Representative Lewis was beaten unconscious.

The trip for me was a powerful and terrible history lesson.

Today States no longer use terror to prevent citizens from voting, but they do use other means. Since the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby decision, nearly two dozen States have implemented restrictive voter ID laws, closed polling places, and used other means to suppress minority voting.

H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, will erase these trends, and H.R. 1, which we passed today, strengthens democracy by ensuring clean, fair elections, prohibiting voter roll purges, and ending gerrymandering. Democracy means government by the people for the people. It lives up to the legacy of those marchers 54 years ago. Ultimately, it means making voting easier, not harder.

Let's keep our eye on the prize.

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