Protect the Right to Vote

Floor Speech

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Ms. SEWELL. Madam Speaker, this great Nation was founded on a fundamental promise, a promise that, as Americans, we shall all have a say in the decisions that affect our lives.

But as you know, this Nation has not always lived up to that promise. Indeed, the story of American democracy is a story of ordinary Americans daring to make extraordinary sacrifices in order for the promise to become a reality for all Americans, regardless of their race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or class.

Madam Speaker, today is a day of great significance and great consequence. We, in the House, passed the John Robert Lewis Voting Rights Act, as well as the Freedom to Vote Act. Now, today, the Senate will take up and debate both bills and vote on the future of our democracy.

What is at stake is clear. The current state of voting rights is very clear. Old battles have become new again, as State legislatures across this Nation have erected deliberate barriers to the ballot box in an all-out assault on the right to vote.

Though we no longer have a poll tax, nor do we have to count how many jelly beans are in a jar, we do know that the modern-day restrictions are no less pernicious: Long lines, closed polling stations, purged voter rolls, bans on early voting, and the list goes on and on. In Georgia it is now a crime to hand out food and water to a voter in line. And so I ask you, What are we afraid of?

Madam Speaker, the significance of this moment is not lost on me for, you see, representing Alabama's 7th Congressional District, voting rights are very personal. People in my district fought, marched, prayed, and, yes, some died for the equal right of all Americans to vote.

I know that this body reveres our late, great Congressman John Lewis. It was John who said that the struggle for voting rights is not a struggle for one day or one year, it is a struggle for a lifetime.

So we have to fight--every generation does--to protect the progress of the past and to advance it. And that is exactly what the John Robert Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act does.

I ask our Senators; how will they be remembered? Years from now, when our children and grandchildren look back on this moment and ask, What did you do to fight for voting rights? How will you be remembered?

Now, we are not asking our Senators to march. We are not asking them to sacrifice. We are not asking them to bleed on a bridge.

We are asking them to do their jobs.

To do their jobs.

We are asking them to have the courage of their convictions, to use their position of great power to save our democracy in this critical moment.

Madam Speaker, to my colleagues, voting rights advocates, and stakeholders, I say, no matter what the outcome is today, we cannot be deterred. John Lewis and those brave foot soldiers did not give up. Think of where our country would be if John and Hosea Williams and those that were bludgeoned on that bridge hadn't picked themselves up 2 days later and marched again.

Voting rights is a struggle of a lifetime, and we have to be in that fight. We cannot be tired. We can be frustrated. We can be downright mad. But we cannot give up. We have so many more miles to go before we declare victory. And victory we must have because our democracy depends on it.

Our colleague, Jim Clyburn, this past weekend invoked the Bible. He said, it is darkest before the dawn. Indeed, by not taking this moment to protect the right to vote, we are allowing extremists to strip away the power of the people.

We all celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday on Monday. Dr. King said that `` . . . the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.'' But it only bends if we Americans decide to challenge it, decide to make sure that this Constitution lives up to its ideals. It is time for the Senate to do their part.

In remembrance of the sacrifices of others, the Senate must reform its rules. We all have a role to play. And I say to the activists and to the Senators, the time to act is always now.

King said it is always time to do what is right. We must get into some good trouble. We must keep our eyes on the prize, and the prize is our democracy and restoring the right to vote.

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