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“THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF SHELBY COUNTY V. HOLDER” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S4714-S4715 on June 29, 2016.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF SHELBY COUNTY V. HOLDER
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Saturday was the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision. In this case, a divided Court voted 5-4 to gut the Voting Rights Act. The Court struck down the provision of the Voting Rights Act that required certain jurisdictions with a documented history of discrimination to
``preclear'' any changes to their voting laws with the Department of Justice.
In the 3 years since Shelby County, Democrats and a small handful of Republicans have sought to restore the Voting Rights Act. Unfortunately, the majority of Republicans in Congress have obstructed efforts to reinstate robust Federal voting protections. As a result, 2016 will mark the first Presidential election without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act since this historic legislation was signed into law in 1965.
The restrictions on voting that many Americans face today can be traced back to the 2010 midterm election. After that election, in which Republicans won control of several State legislative chambers and governorships, State lawmakers across the country introduced burdensome voting laws. These laws ranged from strict voter identification requirements to cuts in early voting. At the time, the Voting Rights Act served as a backstop, preventing States covered by the preclearance requirement from implementing changes that had a discriminatory purpose or effect.
That is why the Shelby County decision in 2013 had an immediate impact. Released from preclearance requirements, States with discriminatory histories were free to move forward with new restrictions on voting. For example, within hours of the Shelby County decision, Texas State officials announced that they would immediately implement a photo ID requirement for in-person voting that Texas first tried to put in place in 2011. This burdensome voter ID law had previously been blocked by both the Department of Justice and a Federal appeals court, due to the law's harmful impact on poor and minority voters. As a result of this law going into effect, we heard disturbing stories of a 93-year-old veteran and nearly 70-year-old doctor who were turned away from the polls in Texas in 2014 because their IDs did not meet the onerous new requirements.
During my time as chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, I held a series of hearings that examined restrictive State voting laws. During these hearings, we heard over and over again that these laws have a disproportionate impact on lower-income, minority, youth, elderly, and other vulnerable voting populations.
I asked the State officials at each of my hearings whether there were any widespread instances of voter fraud to justify these laws, and they were unable to point to any examples. There have been only a handful of prosecutions over the last decade. This clearly is not a problem in need of a solution. This is clearly an effort to restrict the opportunity to vote for certain Americans.
This year, voters in 17 States will face restrictions that they have not previously experienced in a Presidential election. Eight of these States were previously covered by the preclearance provision in the Voting Rights Act.
Recent primary elections in many of these States gave voters a taste of potential problems to come in the general election. In Maricopa County, AZ, some voters were forced to endure waits of more than 5 hours in order to cast their ballots in the March primary election. The cause of the delay was a decision by a local election official to massively cut the number of polling locations. In the 2008 primary, 400 polling places were available. In 2016, that number was slashed to a mere 60 locations. Prior to Shelby County, such a change would have been evaluated and likely challenged by the Justice Department in a preclearance review.
In Wisconsin, a newly implemented voter photo identification law led to challenges and confusion in the April primary. Press reports recently documented the story of one of the affected voters. Eddie Lee Holloway, Jr., moved from my home State of Illinois to Wisconsin in 2008 and was able to vote without any problems before the voter ID law went into effect. After the law was passed, Mr. Holloway went to a DMV in Milwaukee with an expired Illinois photo ID, his birth certificate, and his Social Security card to obtain a Wisconsin photo ID for voting. However, his application was rejected due to a clerical error on his birth certificate, which read ``Eddie Junior Holloway.''
Mr. Holloway spent hundreds of dollars traveling to Illinois to try to fix this problem. In addition to the Milwaukee DMV, he visited the Vital Records System in Milwaukee, the Illinois Vital Records Division in Springfield, an Illinois DMV, and his high school in Decatur, IL--
all in an attempt to obtain sufficient records for a Wisconsin voter ID. Ultimately, he was unsuccessful. Despite all of these efforts, Mr. Holloway was unable to vote in the April primary.
What is particularly infuriating about Mr. Holloway's case is that Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature were hoping for exactly this type of outcome. The chief of staff to a leading Republican State senator in Wisconsin resigned last year after witnessing Republican legislators who were, ``literally giddy'' over the impact the new voter ID law would have on minority and student voters. In an interview with the New York Times, the former staffer said, ``I remember when Republicans were the ones who helped Johnson pass the civil rights bill in the '60s.'' Indeed, it was 51 years ago this year President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bipartisan Voting Rights Act into law--
guaranteeing that the right to vote would not be restricted through clever schemes, like poll taxes and literacy tests, devised to keep African Americans from voting.
I wish that, 51 years after we enacted the Voting Rights Act, our society had reached a point where its protections were no longer necessary, but we clearly have not, and the Voting Rights Act is still very much needed today.
That is why Senator Leahy, Senator Coons, and I introduced the Voting Rights Advancement Act last year. This legislation would restore the Voting Rights Act. It would ensure that burdensome voting laws will be reviewed and, if found to be discriminatory, blocked before they go into effect.
I recently joined Senator Leahy and our Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee in sending a letter to the chairman of the full committee and the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, urging them to hold a hearing on voting rights and the Voting Rights Advancement Act. Between 2007 and 2013, Senate Democrats held nine hearings to examine the issue of voting rights. In contrast, Republicans have not held a single hearing on voting rights since taking the majority in 2015.
This is disappointing. Voting rights has traditionally been a bipartisan issue. In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Three hundred and ninety Members of the House and 98 Senators came together on a bipartisan basis to reauthorize the bill. Twenty-one hearings with more than 90 witnesses and a 15,000-page record illustrated to us that the Voting Rights Act was still very much needed. Three years ago, the Supreme Court ignored our efforts in Shelby County, but we can, and we must, come together once again to address voting rights.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin, has introduced legislation in the House to restore the Voting Rights Act. Earlier this year, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times. He noted,
``Ensuring that every eligible voter can cast a ballot without fear, deterrence and prejudice is a basic American right. I would rather lose my job than suppress votes to keep it.''
I urge my colleagues to listen to Congressman Sensenbrenner and join us in our fight to restore the Voting Rights Act. It is time to bring the bipartisan Voting Rights Advancement Act to the floor and ensure that the Federal Government is once again able to fully protect the fundamental right to vote.
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