Providing for Consideration of S. Veterans Accessibility Advisory Committee Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Law- Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Undersea Cable Protection Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Securing America's Critical Minerals Supply Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, voting rights are sacred. Many members of my family fought tooth and nail to be able to exercise that sacred right.
History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
My great-grandfather, at the turn of the 19th century, in the name of making sure that citizens voted and election integrity, had to take a literacy test and find three White men to vouch for his character. He got all the questions right. Because his name was on a list of people that the State of Alabama didn't want to register to vote, the registrar said: ``I need more questions because this nigger got them all right.'' He got all of them right, and he registered to vote. Yet, my father and my grandfather had to pay poll taxes to be able to vote in Tennessee.
All of this was done to make sure that local election officials could deny people they didn't want to vote the ability to vote. I took my oath of office on the Bible where my father kept his poll tax receipt, which is behind me. He kept it in there because it was a sacred right.
I swore to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, all of it. That includes the 24th Amendment, which banned poll taxes.
Yet, the SAVE America Act is a modern-day poll tax because every ID that you would have to use to register and to vote, with maybe one exception, costs money. The one that is free is a military ID.
For our military who are overseas or not able to get home to register in person, it is an added burden. For rural communities, it is an added burden. For people of color, it is an added burden. For the 21 million American citizens who don't have ready access to these documents, it is a burden.
The right to vote is sacred, and I will fight any effort to put more barriers in citizens' way to exercise it, and that is exactly what the SAVE America Act does. That is why I will oppose it.
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