F. Sensenbrenner

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green) for a unanimous consent request. (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), my distinguished ranking member.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence). (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to my distinguished ranking member, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, the amendment offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is not really a 10-year reauthorization. It is a 9-year reauthorization since the Voting Rights Act's temporary provisions do not expire until August 6, 2007. So this really is kind of a little bit less than what has been advertised. The last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized, it was reauthorized for 25 years; and there is no reason why it should not be reauthorized for another 25 years. Minority citizens register, turn out, and cast meaningful ballots as a result of the protections extended by the Voting Rights Act. And while we have made great strides in achieving Martin Luther King's goal of having people judged by the depth of their character rather than the color of their skin, without the Voting Rights Act's being there, their vote will not be treated equally with the votes of every other citizen in that jurisdiction or of the United States of America. History has also shown that when Federal oversight is eliminated, minority voters suffer the most. And the purpose of this legislation is to protect the progress made by minority voters over the last several decades and to continue that progress for the next 25 years. The 12 hearings conducted by the Judiciary Committee and the enormous evidentiary record shows that all Voting Rights Acts violations that have occurred in covered jurisdictions support the conclusion that renewal of the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years is warranted. Anyone who votes for this amendment will have to tell their constituents why the following information and testimony did not justify the full 25-year renewal of the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The committee report makes clear ``more section 5 objections were lodged between 1982 and 2004 than were interposed between 1965 and 1982.'' So we are talking about the fact that the number of actions that have required objections in precleared States have not gone away or significantly diminished. And since 1982, the Department of Justice has objected to more than 700 voting changes that have been determined to be discriminatory. And I have talked earlier in this debate about the number of objections, both since 1982 and since 2004, that have been objected to as being discriminatory. Let me say that with the 9 years proposed in the Gohmert amendment rather than the 25 years, when this act comes up for renewal in 2016, as the gentleman from Texas wants, there will be significantly less record because it is a significantly shorter period of time. And believe me, the people who have been opposed to the Voting Rights Act, and we have heard a lot from them today and will continue to hear a lot from them, will say, look, things are getting much better. The last time it came up they had 24 years of records and it was yea big, and now let us look at this. It has not been quite as much. And believe me, a court is going to take judicial notice of that as well. Now, in the face of the current evidentiary record of abuse, it would be shortsighted and irresponsible not to reauthorize the VRA for at least as long as the last reauthorization President Reagan signed into law in 1982. Moreover, renewing the preclearance and Federal observer provisions of the Voting Rights Act for an additional 25 years is necessary to allow a meaningful change to be measured and to make eradication of discrimination in the voting process an achievable goal. Most activity under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act occurs during redistricting, which only happens every 10 years following each census. If the Voting Rights Act is not renewed for an additional 25 years, it will capture only one redistricting cycle, and that will not provide enough evidence of the past use and practice to allow Congress to make the same reasoned determination regarding renewal 10 years from now that this Congress is allowed to make on the previous record of 25 years. For this reason adopting this amendment will effectively preclude the Congress from ever reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act again because it will deny Congress the sufficiently large set of data the Supreme Court has held necessary for the Voting Rights Act to be reauthorized. Further, this amendment, if adopted, would completely nullify the current incentive the VRA provides to encourage covered jurisdictions to maintain clean voting rights records for 10 years in order to be eligible to utilize the bailout process. This amendment sends the message to covered jurisdictions that the VRA will not apply to them in the future regardless of their conduct over the next 10 years. In sum, to protect minority voting rights for decades to come, to prevent tying Congress' hands in 10 years by denying it the sufficient record on which to decide future renewals as required by the Supreme Court, and to prevent nullifying the current Voting Rights Act's incentive to maintain clean voting records for 10 years, this amendment should be soundly defeated. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Chairman, let me just set the record straight. When the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) conducted the hearings before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, he allowed nonmembers of the Judiciary Committee to come and participate in the hearings and to ask questions of the witnesses that came before the hearing. And I know that the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Westmoreland, did participate very actively. We were very happy that he came, and appreciate the contributions that he made. So we have not been exclusionary at all. And a lot of other committees simply do not allow nonmembers of the committee to participate. Mr. Chabot did. But I would like to point out that much of the impetus behind this amendment comes from Georgia. And I think the fallacy of the amendment of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) is that he wants to base coverage exclusively on voter participation and not on any other factors, and that is what the constitutional flaw is. The reason that section 5 does have the preclearance requirement is based on a number of factors, including the past history of discrimination and discriminatory voting practices. In Georgia there have been 91 objections since the last reauthorization by the Department of Justice, and seven of them have been objections that have resulted in withdrawal of voting changes since 2002. So the arguments that Georgia isn't doing all this bad stuff anymore are not borne out by the statistics of what has been submitted to the Justice Department and where preclearance has been rejected. During the general debate today, I introduced two rather extensive reports into the record from outside groups that gave the history of section 5 objections and voting rights problems in the State of Georgia since the 1982 reauthorization. Now, the amendment that Mr. Norwood has proposed is a Trojan horse. It is designed to make the section 5 protections unconstitutional. And I guess the argument that I am hearing, the result of which is that if you can't win here, jiggle the law so that it ends up being declared unconstitutional in court. This has been an important part of the Voting Rights Act. We should not run the risk of changing the formula that has met the test of time with repeated constitutional challenges. That is why the Norwood amendment should be rejected. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case) to explain why Hawaii does not have a history of discrimination and should not be covered under the Norwood amendment.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment guts the Voting Rights Act, and let's make no bones about it. It does so by altering its coverage formula to cover only those jurisdictions in which voter registration and turnout fell below 50 percent in the 2004, 2000, and 1996 Presidential elections. Based on the Census Bureau Current Population Survey, there is not a single State, except Hawaii, with voter registration and turnout below the 50 percent level required by this amendment. That means that only the State of Hawaii in its entirety would be covered, along with random scattershot jurisdictions across the country that do not have the century-long history of discrimination that the covered States do, and which the Supreme Court requires for the application of the preclearance and Federal observer conditions contained in the VRA. The amendment not only guts the bill, but turns the Voting Rights Act into a farce. To give you a sense of the absurdity of this amendment, let's take the example of Montana. In Montana, the amendment would only cover Glacier County, where there has been absolutely no evidence of voting discrimination, but where voter registration and turnout fell below the thresholds established by this amendment. That is the little blue spot on the Canadian border on Mr. Norwood's map. The amendment, however, would not cover Blaine County, where just a few years ago a Federal District Court and a U.S. Court of Appeals found widespread evidence of discrimination against American Indians, who comprised one-third of all of the voters. This amendment would also not cover Big Horn County, where a Federal court documented the virtually complete disenfranchisement of American Indian voters, nor would it apply to several other counties in Montana where voting discrimination has occurred, such as Rosebud County. Under this amendment, similarly absurd results apply in 38 other States. So you might want to check on how this amendment affects your State before deciding whether to vote ``yes'' on it. In addition, the amendment would render the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. This amendment is designed to make all of the expiring provisions unconstitutional, and it simply guarantees that the Supreme Court of the United States will wipe this act off the books. As recently as 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the current coverage formula in the Voting Rights Act. In 1999, 7 years ago. In Lopez v. Monterey County, the Supreme Court upheld the Voting Rights Act's voting rule preclearance requirement finding that it ``burdens State law only to the extent that the law affects voting in jurisdictions properly designated for coverage.'' By radically altering the coverage formula of the Voting Rights Act in a way that severs its connection to jurisdictions with proven discriminatory histories, this amendment will render H.R. 9 unconstitutional and leave minority voters without the essential protections of the preclearance and the Federal observer requirements central to the VRA. The elimination of these provisions would threaten to destroy the advances of voting rights the VRA has made possible to date and must continue to protect and advance in the future. There is broad agreement on this point. Justice Scalia, in his opinion in the recent Texas redistricting case, joined by the Chief Justice, Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, makes its clear that the Voting Rights Act with its current coverage formula will be upheld as constitutional, and that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act applies only to jurisdictions with a history of official discrimination. The existing formula triggering coverage under the Voting Rights Act is not at all outdated in any meaningful sense of the term, and States covered are not unfairly punished under the coverage formula. Sixteen States are covered in whole or in part under the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The formula does not limit coverage to a particular region, but encompasses those States and jurisdictions where less than 50 percent of the citizens of voting age population registered or turned out to vote in 1964, 1968 or 1972. But coverage is not, and I repeat ``not'' predicated on these statistics alone. States are not covered unless they applied discriminatory voting tests. And it was this aspect of the formula that brought these jurisdictions with the most serious histories of discrimination under Federal scrutiny. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has held that ``Obviously, the preclearance requirements of the original act and its reauthorization had a much larger purpose than to increase voter registration.'' On the occasion of each reauthorization, Congress reviewed voting progress, including increases in registration and turnout, and the necessity of continuing coverage under the act. The review was no different in 2006. The Judiciary Committee had 12 hearings, called 46 witnesses, and compiled more than 12,000 pages of evidence of continued discrimination in covered jurisdictions. In Georgia alone, 91 objections were interposed by the Justice Department since 1982, including four since 2002. In Texas, 105 objections were interposed. All of these incidents involved voting rule changes that the Department of Justice determined to be discriminatory. Indeed, the reauthorization of this formula in H.R. 9 is based on recent and proven instances of discrimination in voting rights compiled in the Judiciary Committee's 12,000-page record. Moreover, the Voting Rights Act as it exists already includes provisions that allow for the expansion and reduction of covered jurisdictions as necessary, which ensures that the list of covered jurisdictions is appropriately revised and updated. Insofar as voting conditions have improved over the years in the covered jurisdictions, that improvement is due precisely to the Voting Rights Act itself and the requirements preventing discriminatory voting rule changes from going into effect. This amendment would abolish exactly those provisions that are directly responsible for the enhanced voting protections that the VRA has secured for millions of Americans. As a result, the amendment undermines the VRA's goal of ensuring that progress made by minority voters continues and that America never backslides in its protection of minority voting rights. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, following the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) is always a very tough act, but I would like to reiterate what he so eloquently said. We need the Voting Rights Act, and we need the Voting Rights Act because in the last 25 years the covered jurisdictions have not come clean. Let's look at Georgia. Since 1982, there have been 91 objections, 91 objections submitted by the Department of Justice. And since 2002, there have been seven voting rule changes that were withdrawn by the State because of DOJ objections. Texas, 105 objections imposed by DOJ since 1982, and 14 voting rule proposals were withdrawn by the State because of voting rights concerns in the last 4 years. Mississippi, 112 objections since 1982, and Federal observers have been sent to this State 14 times to monitor elections since 2002, most recently last year. Louisiana, 96 objection since 1982, eight Department of Justice objections to voting rules have been lodged since 2002, most recently in 2005, and 10 voting rule proposals withdrawn by the State in the last 4 years. South Carolina, 73 objections since 1982. North Carolina in the covered jurisdictions, 45 objections since 1982. And Alabama, 46 objections, and Federal observers have been assigned to the State 65 times since 2000 to monitor elections. Arizona, 17 objections since 2002, and Federal observers have been assigned to that State 380 times since 2000 to monitor elections, including 107 since 2004. Now, I think these figures ought to make it very clear that we need this bill, and we need this bill without any of the four amendments that are about ready to be offered. And, finally, before we get into the debate on the amendments, I would like to offer my thanks to the staff people who have helped put together this record, Paul Taylor, the chief counsel of the Subcommittee on the Constitution; Kim Betz, the subcommittee counsel; Stephanie Moore, the Democratic counsel to the Committee on Judiciary and counsel to Mr. Watt; and, most particularly, Philip Kiko, who is chief of staff and general counsel of the committee, who is part of the institutional memory, because he helped me get the Voting Rights Act extension passed and signed in 1982. We put in the work on this, we have done the hearings, the record is replete. We need this law extended, and we need it extended for 25 years. Vote ``yes'' on the bill, ``no'' on the amendments, and let's go down in history as the House that did the right thing.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill (H.R. 9) to be considered shortly.