Date: 2016-02-11
Speaker: WATSON COLEMAN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. before I start. let me extend my condolences to those who are mourning the death of our former Congressman. That was 60 minutes worth of very. very nice tribute. As I am sure all of my colleagues are aware. we are now in primary election season. This year the American people will elect a new President of the United States. Unfortunately. there is a great possibility that hundreds of thousands of Americans will be barred from casting their vote because of this bodys failure to act. In 2012. I watched. horrified. as voters were forced to stand in outrageous lines at their polling places. Meanwhile. States across the country have set up new barriers to voting. cutting back on early voting hours. and adding difficult new identification hurdles that limit young people and communities of color more than anyone elseand this as we call ourselves the model of democracy for the whole world to follow. Instead of embracing every possible opportunity to improve and facilitate one of the cornerstones of our democracy. we are allowing it to crumble. There is quite a bit to fix. yet Congress isnt willing to do anything about it. Mr. Speaker. our States have wildly different voting systems. Early voting is allowed some places but not others. sameday registration is offered in one State but not in the next. I can think of few better tasks for Congress to take on than to set standards for Federal elections. at a minimum. and to provide the biggest possible opportunity for our constituents to pick the people that represent them. We have Americans that have made mistakes in their pasts but have completed their sentences for nonviolent convictions. They have put in their effort to change and have come back to society as taxpaying. lawabiding citizens. Unfortunately. we ban millions of these Americans from the ballot box despite their rehabilitation. It seems to me that Congress should get involved in offering individuals like those one of the most fundamental rights that we have as Americansbut we are not. Mr. Speaker. there is also a conversation for this body to have about technology. Smartphones and other mobile devices have fingerprint sensors. I can wave a key fob over a terminal and pay for lunch without swiping a credit card or even signing my name. I acknowledge that there are very real challenges we face in bringing technology to the ballot box. but we should be talking about how we can use digital advances to expand access instead of trying to manufacture excuses to limit access. Right there alone. there are three steps we could take on voting rights in our Nation. Unfortunately. we cant even begin these discussions because we seem to have traveled back to a dark place in our Nations history when it was both legal and common to limit access to polling places. Despite so many opportunities to move forward. we are rolling backward. Since 2010. 22 States have passed laws that make it more difficult for Americans to vote. most commonly in the form of voter ID laws that disproportionately impact communities of color. women. seniors. students. and lowincome individuals. Unfortunately. the Voting Rights Act. which had previously curtailed these dangerous restrictions. was gutted in 2013 by the Supreme Court. In the socalled firstinthenation primary held this week in New Hampshire. voters encountered new ID laws for the first time. a law that allowed poll workers to vouch for voters without approved IDs and gives them the leeway to discriminate against some voters while validating others. Laws like the one in New Hampshire were passed to protect elections from voting frauda specter that Republicans have used time and again to scare Americans into thinking that some dark figure is hijacking their election. a notion that has been discredited and disproved time and again. Between 2002 and 2005. the Department of Justice made prosecuting voter fraud a top priority. In that timeframe. hundreds of millions of votes were cast. yet only 38 cases were brought to trial. and then only one involved impersonation fraud. which is what photo ID laws protect against. More recently. a professor at the Loyola University Law School has tracked every allegation of voter fraud since 2000 and has found just 31 casesjust 31 casesof impersonation. That is 31 ballots out of more than 1 billion that have been cast. The fact of the matter is the kind of intentional shady voter fraud these laws were based on simply did not exist. Mr. Speaker. of the many tasks this body has. protecting the right to vote. the foundation that built our democracy. the right for which countless Americans have fought over the course of a more than 200year history. protecting. expanding. and strengthening that right seems like it should be one of our greatest priorities. I hope that my colleagues can begin to see that also and to join me and many of my colleagues on the Democratic Caucus in taking action that will facilitate. expand. and provide opportunities for every eligible person who can vote to be able to vote. I yield back the balance of my time.