Voter Suppression

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) for 5 minutes.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

In 2011, we see that voter suppression is real and rearing its ugly head in too many Republican-led legislatures across this country. With only 15 months left before the next Presidential election, Republicans are rewriting voting laws to require photo identification at the polls, reduce the number of days of early voting, and to enhance voting restrictions against ex-felons and out-of-state students.

Since January, voter ID laws have passed in Florida, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Kansas, and Tennessee. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Governor Rick Perry of Texas both signed laws this year that would require each voter to show an official, valid photo ID to cast a ballot, despite the fact that studies show up to 11 percent of eligible voters nationwide don't have government-issued IDs.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott signed a bill to tighten restrictions on third-party voter organizations and shorten the number of early voting days. Governor Scott also helped to pass a ban on felon voting rights, forcing nonviolent offenders to wait 5 years after completing their sentences to apply to have their rights restored.

The Florida legislature also passed new laws that makes it tougher for get-out-the-vote groups to register new voters and reduces the number of early voting days from 14 to 8.

Make no mistake: We've been down this road before with Jim Crow laws. These smoke-and-mirror policies are poll taxes and literacy tests by another name. Communities must be alert and aware of these new laws. We will not allow the work, sacrifice and death of our forefathers and civil rights leaders to have been in vain. We are prepared for this fight, and fight we will.

The new voter ID laws and other restrictions have the potential to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. Minorities, poor people, seniors, and students are among those that will be impacted the most.

The Justice Department must get involved. They must make sure that these laws that we have fought so hard for on voting rights are not undermined.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, when I became a Member of Congress, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. And I rise today to affirm that commitment by speaking out against State efforts to undermine the basic right to vote--a right that has been affirmed by no less than three amendments to the Constitution: the Voting Rights Act; over 150 years of litigation, blood, sweat, tears, and lies. No right under the Constitution has been more defended by the American people. Yet Wisconsin just passed a very restrictive voter ID, photo ID card in order to vote.

I can remember when then-Representative Walker and I, the Governor of Wisconsin, debated this issue. And he, like so many other people, said, Well, what's the big deal? What's wrong with having a photo ID? You need a photo ID to go to Blockbuster's and get a video. You need a photo ID to drive. You need a photo ID to get medicine. Well, getting a video from Blockbuster's is not a right. The right to vote is a very, very important badge of democracy in this country. We need a very high bar before we make it more difficult to exercise our rights as U.S. citizens.

And what's the bar that Wisconsin uses to justify its law? The Wisconsin Attorney General's office found in the 2-year Election Fraud Task Force investigation that there were 20 instances of possible voter fraud out of 3 million votes cast. That's seven-thousandths of 1 percent. And a photo ID would not have prevented any of these discrepancies.

People of color are singled out for disenfranchisement when you consider in Wisconsin that 55 percent of African American women, 49 percent of African American men, 59 per of Latinas, 46 percent of Latinos don't have this kind of ID. And when you consider the 18- to 24-year-old group, 78 percent of African American males don't have this ID and 66 percent of African American women don't have the ID. I wonder who they're trying to disenfranchise.

We implore the Department of Justice to intervene and prevent these extremely transparent efforts to burden likely Democratic voters at the polls.

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