[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




 
                  OVERSIGHT OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT:
                 A CONTINUING RECORD OF DISCRIMINATION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

  SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                         THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-24

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
         
         
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               Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
               
               
               
                         ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
46-229                WASHINGTON : 2022               
               
                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                    JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chair
                MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania, Vice-Chair

ZOE LOFGREN, California              JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Ranking Member
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas            STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee               LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,      DARRELL ISSA, California
    Georgia                          KEN BUCK, Colorado
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida          MATT GAETZ, Florida
KAREN BASS, California               MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York         ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island     TOM McCLINTOCK, California
ERIC SWALWELL, California            W. GREG STEUBE, Florida
TED LIEU, California                 TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland               THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington          CHIP ROY, Texas
VAL BUTLER DEMINGS, Florida          DAN BISHOP, North Carolina
J. LUIS CORREA, California           MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania       VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas              SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado                 CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon
LUCY McBATH, Georgia                 BURGESS OWENS, Utah
GREG STANTON, Arizona
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
MONDAIRE JONES, New York
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
CORI BUSH, Missouri

       PERRY APELBAUM, Majority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
               CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                

            SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS,
                          AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

                     STEVE COHEN, Tennessee, Chair
                DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina, Vice-Chair

JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland               MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana, Ranking 
HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,          Member
    Georgia                          TOM McCLINTOCK, California
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas              CHIP ROY, Texas
CORI BUSH, Missouri                  MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas            BURGESS OWENS, Utah

                       JAMES PARK, Chief Counsel
                       
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                         Thursday, May 27, 2021

                                                                   Page

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

The Honorable Deborah Ross, Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee on the 
  Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties from the State 
  of North Carolina .............................................     1
The Honorable Michelle Fischbach, a Member of the Subcommittee on 
  the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties from the 
  State of Minnesota.............................................     3
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the Committee on the 
  Judiciary from the State of New York...........................     4

                               WITNESSES

Janai Nelson, Associate Director--Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense 
  and Educational Fund
  Oral Testimony.................................................     7
  Prepared Testimony.............................................     9
Jon M. Greenbaum, Chief Counsel and Senior Deputy Director, 
  Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
  Oral Testimony.................................................    28
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    30
T. Russell Nobile, Senior Attorney, Judicial Watch
  Oral Testimony.................................................    45
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    47
Wendy R. Weiser, Vice President, Democracy, Brennan Center for 
  Justice
  Oral Testimony.................................................    59
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    61

          LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

Materials submitted by the Honorable Sylvia Garcia, a Member of 
  Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil 
  Liberties from the State of Texas for the record
  Testimony from the Honorable Sylvia Garcia, June 25, 2014......    98
  A letter to Attorney General Garland from the Texas Democratic 
    Delegation...................................................   143
  A letter to the Honorable Charles Schumer, Majority Leader of 
    the U.S. Senate from the State of Texas from the Texas 
    Democratic Congressional Delegation..........................   146

Materials submitted by the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Member 
  of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and 
  Civil Liberties from the State of Texas for the record
  Statement from the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, dated June 25, 
    2014,........................................................   150
  An article entitled, ``Gov. Abbott limits mail ballot drop-off 
    locations, forcing Harris County to close 11 sites,'' Houston 
    Chronicle....................................................   162
  An article entitled, `` `Racist voter suppression': Texas laws 
    keep Latinos from the ballot box, groups say,'' NBC News.....   164
  An article entitled, ``Analysis: It's harder to vote in Texas 
    than in any other state,'' The Texas Tribune.................   169
  An article entitled, ``Texas Supreme Court again blocks Harris 
    County from sending mail-in ballot applications to all 
    voters,'' Texas Tribune......................................   171
  An article entitled, ``Greg Abbott's Voter Suppression Methods 
    Have Become More Subtle--But They're Still Transparent,'' 
    Texas Monthly................................................   173

                                APPENDIX

Materials submitted by Jon M. Greenbaum, Chief Counsel and Senior 
  Deputy Director, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 
  submitted by Steve Cohen, a Member of Subcommittee on the 
  Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties from the State 
  of Tennessee for the record....................................   182
Materials submitted by Wendy R. Weiser, Vice President, 
  Democracy, Brennan Center for Justice, submitted by Steve 
  Cohen, a Member of Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 
  Rights, and Civil Liberties from the State of Tennessee for the 
  record.........................................................   182


                  OVERSIGHT OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT:

                 A CONTINUING RECORD OF DISCRIMINATION

                              ----------                              


                         Thursday, May 27, 2021

                     U.S. House of Representatives

            Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights,

                          and Civil Liberties

                       Committee on the Judiciary

                             Washington, DC

    The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., via 
Zoom, Hon. Deborah Ross [Vice Chair of the Subcommittee] 
presiding.
    Members present: Representatives Nadler, Raskin, Ross, 
Johnson of Georgia, Garcia, Bush, Jackson Lee, Jordan, and 
Fischbach.
    Staff present: David Greengrass, Senior Counsel; John Doty, 
Senior Advisor; Moh Sharma, Member Services and Outreach 
Advisor; Jordan Dashow, Professional Staff Member; Cierra 
Fontenot, Staff Assistant; John Williams, Parliamentarian; 
James Park, Chief Counsel for Constitution; Keenan Keller, 
Senior Counsel; Will Emmons, Professional Staff Member; Matt 
Morgan, Counsel for Constitution; Betsy Ferguson, Minority 
Senior Counsel; Ken David, Minority Counsel; Caroline Nabity, 
Minority Counsel; James Lesinski, Minority Counsel; Andrea 
Woodard, Minority Professional Staff Member; and Kiley 
Bidelman, Minority Clerk.
    Ms. Ross. The Committee on Judiciary Subcommittee on the 
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties will come to 
order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare 
recesses of the Subcommittee at any time. I welcome everybody 
to today's hearing on Oversight of the Voting Rights Act: A 
Continuing Record of Discrimination.
    Before we continue, I would like to remind Members that we 
have established an email address and distribution list 
dedicated to circulating exhibits, motions, or other written 
materials that Members might want to offer as part of our 
hearing today. If you would like to submit materials, please 
send them to judiciarydocs @mail.house.gov and we will 
distribute them to Members and staff as quickly as we can.
    Finally, I would ask that all Members and witnesses mute 
your microphones while you are not speaking. This will help 
prevent feedback and other technical issues. You may unmute 
yourself at any time you seek recognition. I will now recognize 
myself for an opening statement.
    Last month, the Reverend Dr. William Barber from North 
Carolina reminded us in testimony before our Subcommittee that 
our Constitution says that we must establish justice. Our 
Constitution requires equal protection under the law and our 
Constitution commands that you cannot deny or abridge the right 
to vote on account of race or color.
    When you suppress the right to vote, in essence, you are 
suppressing people's humanity. You are saying that they are not 
worthy of whole citizenship. Unfortunately, African Americans 
and other racial, ethnic, and language minorities know what it 
is like to have their right to vote, that is their humanity and 
their full inclusion in our nation's body, politically 
suppressed.
    Throughout our nation's history, federal, state, and local 
governments as well as individuals and hate groups have tried 
to undermine voting rights for minority voters. Civil rights 
leaders like our late colleague John Lewis put their lines on 
the line to ensure the right to vote for everyone. Their work 
led to the enactment of one of the most important civil rights 
measures in our country's history, the Voting Rights Act of 
1965.
    While the passage of the Voting Rights Act did not end 
attacks on the right to vote, it did offer a powerful tool to 
prevent states and localities from implementing discriminatory 
voting measures or to overturn such measures when they had 
already been implemented.
    Since the Supreme Court's effective gutting of the act's 
pre-
clearance provision in Shelby County v. Holder, states have 
introduced and, in some cases, acted into law new voting 
restrictions. Before Shelby County, the act's preclearance 
provision required certain jurisdictions with a history of 
voting discrimination against racial and language minority 
groups to obtain approval from the Justice Department or the 
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia of any changes 
to their voting laws or procedures prior to such measures being 
able to take effect. This mechanism provided significant 
protection to minority voters by preventing potentially 
discriminatory voting practices from taking effect before they 
could harm voters and their right to vote. Unfortunately, in 
Shelby County, the Supreme Court struck down the geographic 
coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions would be 
subject to preclearance, meaning that the preclearance 
provisions remain inactive until Congress adopts a new coverage 
formula.
    Last Congress, the Subcommittee held numerous hearings in 
which it gathered significant and extensive evidence of ongoing 
voter suppression since the Shelby County decision, especially 
by those jurisdictions that were once subject to preclearance. 
As a North Carolinian and former State representative, I have 
seen up close how the gutting of the Voting Rights Act 
preclearance formula has led to increased efforts to erode the 
right to vote.
    Before Shelby County, many counties within North Carolina 
were subject to the preclearance requirement. Once this pre-
clearance requirement was effectively eliminated, the 
legislature moved quickly to pass a sweeping voter suppression 
law that a federal appeals court would later strike down 
because it intentionally targeted African Americans with almost 
surgical precision. Sadly, that law was not the only voter 
suppression law my State enacted. There are ongoing legal 
challenges to a voter ID law that the State enacted in 2018 to 
implement a new State constitutional amendment, and other forms 
of voter suppression continue to impact minority voters' 
ability to vote in North Carolina. North Carolina is not alone 
in its efforts to restrict the right to vote. States across the 
country have enacted dozens of restrictive voting laws since 
2013, including six states that have enacted restrictive voting 
laws this year alone. According to the Brennan Center for 
Justice at New York University Law School, as of March 2021, 
there have been 361 bills with restrictive voting provisions 
introduced in 47 states as part of this year's State 
legislative sessions and those numbers have certainly grown 
since then.
    Many of these bills seek to make absentee voting or voting 
registration harder, reduce early voting, impose stricter voter 
ID requirements, or undermine the power of local elected, 
election officials. In the absence of an effective preclearance 
provision, it is unsurprising that discriminatory measures 
continue to erode our democracy, undermining the voting rights 
of racial and language minorities and eroding our democracy.
    The way forward for Congress to address this latest form of 
discrimination and voter suppression is clear: A fully updated 
and improved Voting Rights Act. Congress must create a new 
coverage formula to restore the act's preclearance regime and 
strengthen its other provisions to improve our ability to 
combat discriminatory voter suppression. Our witnesses today 
will make clear how relevant our record of voter suppression 
from last Congress remains today and the need for congressional 
action. I thank our witnesses for joining us today and look 
forward to their testimony.
    It is now my pleasure to recognize the Ranking Member of 
the Subcommittee for this Subcommittee hearing, the gentlelady 
from Minnesota, Ms. Fischbach, for her opening statement.
    Ms. Fischbach. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
    Voting is a fundamental right in the United States. The 
election clause of the U.S. Constitution gives State 
legislatures the authority to prescribe the times, places, and 
manner of holding elections. The 15th amendment requires that 
states ensure that voting is accessible and available to every 
American. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to 
overcome State resistance and barriers that prevented 
minorities from exercising their right to vote guaranteed by 
the 15th Amendment.
    Congress has reauthorized the VRA since its passage, most 
recently extending the law for another 25 years in 2006. 
However, at that time, Congress did not alter what is known as 
the coverage formula for the VRA, and so states and counties 
who had violated their citizens' voting rights in the 1960s and 
1970s were still required to undertake onerous steps to update 
their voting laws, regardless of their more recent records.
    In 2010, Shelby County, Alabama challenged the 
constitutionality of the VRA's coverage formula for subjecting 
them to these continued requirements based on conduct decades 
ago. It is worth noting that between 1965 and 2010, Shelby 
County and the cities and towns within it have submitted at 
least 682 requested election law changes to the Department of 
Justice in accordance with the VRA, and the DOJ had objected to 
just five of them.
    In 2013, the Supreme Court agreed that continuing to 
require states to preclear election law changes based upon 
conduct from decades ago was an unconstitutional invasion of 
State sovereignty. In announcing its opinion in Shelby County 
v. Holder, the Supreme Court found that, and I quote, ``The 
conditions that originally justified these measures no longer 
characterize voting in the covered jurisdiction.'' Some of my 
colleagues argue that the Court's opinion in Shelby County has 
unleashed a flood of State election law changes designed to 
disenfranchise minority voters, but this is a misunderstanding 
of the intent and the result of State election changes.
    Georgia, recently in the news for its law to tighten 
election security after a very controversial election cycle, 
has higher rates of African American voter registration and 
participation according to the Census Bureau data than 
Democratic-controlled states of Illinois, New York, and 
California. Similarly, Arizona, another State recently under 
scrutiny for its election laws, has higher voter turnout among 
minority groups than neighboring California.
    Laws designed to increase election security and integrity 
are not the same thing as voter suppression or voter 
discrimination. After a very controversial election, many 
states should indeed reexamine their election laws for ways to 
promote greater voter confidence in our election system. The 
Court's decision in Shelby County in no way invalidated 
existing voting protections in the VRA or other federal laws 
and authorities have continued to use these laws when 
appropriate.
    After the Shelby County decision, then Attorney General 
Eric Holder announced the DOJ would, and I quote, ``shift 
resources to the enforcement of Voter Rights Act provisions 
that were not affected by the Supreme Court's ruling, including 
Section 2.'' There was no wave of enforcement because there was 
no wave of voter suppression. The Obama Administration filed 75 
percent fewer section 2 cases than the Bush Administration and 
similarly made little use of other voting right authorities. 
Therefore, there is no record that merits reinstating the 
section 4 coverage formula and section 5 preclearance regime as 
previous legislation has sought to do.
    Republicans want every legally cast vote to count. We want 
robust elections in our country where everyone has confidence 
in the outcome. I hope today we can have a productive 
conversation about the VRA and how we can best assist states in 
enhancing voter protections and preserving the integrity of our 
elections. I want to thank all our witnesses for appearing 
today and I look forward to hearing all of the testimony.
    I thank you, Madam Chair, and I yield back.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Ms. Fischbach.
    It is now my great pleasure to recognize the Chair of the 
Full Committee, the gentleman from New York, Mr. Nadler, for 
his opening statement.
    Chair Nadler. Thank you, Madam Chair. The purpose of 
today's hearing is to continue the subcommittee's oversight of 
the Voting Rights Act, in part, by revisiting the extensive 
record we compiled during the 116th Congress documenting voting 
barriers in various jurisdictions. Indeed, since the 
subcommittee's hearing last Congress, states have only 
intensified their efforts to enact laws that suppress minority 
voting rights.
    To begin with, it is important to reflect on the origins of 
the Voting Rights Act as we consider how to amend the Act to 
address the current barriers to voting faced by too many 
Americans today. In response to public pressure from the civil 
rights movement, the Federal Government took renewed interest 
in protecting minority voters.
    Starting in the late 1950s, the Federal Government engaged 
states and localities with a history of discrimination in a 
cat-and-mouse chase over their attempts to rob racial 
minorities of a meaningful participation in a democratic 
process. Every time a court struck down a jurisdiction's 
discriminatory voting measure as a result of a successful legal 
challenge, that jurisdiction would simply implement another way 
to discriminate against minority voters in response. Meanwhile, 
as a case slowly worked its way through the courts, racial 
minorities would continue to be denied the constitutional right 
to vote.
    Congress sought to put an end to this unending cycle, often 
referred to as the whack-a-mole in which minority rights were 
the casualty, by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The VRA 
proved a potent remedy for the most egregious forms of overt 
voting discrimination and the voting rights landscape changed 
significantly following its enactment. Under the VRA section 5 
preclearance regime, states, and localities with a history of 
discrimination against racial and ethnic minority voters had to 
submit changes to their voting laws to the Justice Department 
or to a federal court for approval prior to taking effect.
    While preclearance did not fully eliminate State attempts 
to discriminate against minority voters, it did end the cat-
and-mouse chase, and minority voter registration and political 
participation increased markedly compared to its previously 
abysmal levels. In the decades following its initial passage, 
Congress reauthorized and amended the VRA several times on a 
bipartisan basis to keep pace with states and localities that 
still stubbornly refused to stop discriminating against their 
minority citizens.
    In 2013, however, the Supreme Court effectively gutted the 
Voting Rights Act's most important enforcement mechanism, the 
section 5 preclearance provision, in its disastrous ruling in 
Shelby County v. Holder. In that decision, the Court struck 
down the formula for determining which states and localities 
are subject to preclearance, effectively rendering the 
preclearance provision null and void. In her dissent, the late 
Justice Ginsburg compared throwing out preclearance when it has 
worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes 
to throwing your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not 
getting wet.
    Last Congress, we heard testimony from dozens of witnesses 
about examples of voting discrimination post-Shelby County that 
illustrated this point. They testified that at least 23 states 
had enacted restrictive voting laws since the Shelby County 
decision including strict voter ID laws, barriers to voter 
registration such as requiring proof of citizenship documents, 
allowing challenges of voters in the voting rolls, unfairly 
purging voters from the voter rolls, reductions in early 
voting, and the moving or elimination of polling places. In 
fact, within just 24 hours of the Shelby County decision, both 
Texas Attorney General and North Carolina's General Assembly 
announced that they would reinstitute draconian voter ID laws. 
The federal courts later found that both laws were 
intentionally racially discriminatory.
    Unfortunately, these are just two of the most egregious 
examples of State and local efforts to discriminate against 
minority voters from the past eight years. Indeed, since this 
Subcommittee began examining these issues last Congress, these 
efforts have only intensified. As of May 24th, a nonpartisan 
organization voting rights lab is tracking 410 antivoter bills 
at various stages of the enactment process.
    The dozens of bills that would curb minority voting rights 
have actively been moving through State legislatures and six 
states have already enacted restrictive voting laws: Arizona, 
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and Utah. These recent bills 
have been justified under the false pretense of addressing the 
baseless allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election that 
have been promoted by former President Trump and his allies.
    Let me be clear. There is absolutely no evidence that 
significant voter fraud or voting irregularities in any way 
affected the outcome of the 2020 election and it is clear that 
these laws will suppress minority voters.
    Prior to Shelby County, the Voting Rights Act had been an 
unqualified success in helping to reduce discriminatory 
barriers to voting and expanding electoral opportunities for 
people of color to federal, state, and local offices. While it 
continues to play an important role in remedying discriminatory 
barriers to voting, the VRA remains weakened without an 
effective preclearance provision. Too many Americans are still 
denied the right to vote because of their race, ethnicity, or 
language minority status.
    Without the full protection of the VRA, the right to vote 
remains under considerable threat. I look forward to hearing 
from the excellent witnesses participating in today's panel on 
how we can best strengthen the VRA, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Chair Nadler.
    We are going to go right into our witness testimony right 
now and thank them very much for being with us this morning. We 
welcome our witnesses, and I will now introduce each of the 
witnesses and after each introduction will recognize that 
witness for his or her oral testimony. Please note that each of 
your written statements will be entered into the record in its 
entirety; accordingly, that I ask that you summarize your 
testimony in five minutes. To help you stay within that time, 
there is a timer visible on your screen in the grid view, and I 
may remind you.
    Before proceeding with the testimony, I would like to 
remind all our witnesses appearing on that you have a legal 
obligation to provide truthful testimony and answers to this 
Subcommittee and that any false statement you make today may 
subject you to prosecution under section 1001 of title 18 of 
the United States Code.
    Our first witness is Janai Nelson. Ms. Nelson is Associate 
Director-Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 
Inc. She is also a member of LDF's litigation and policy teams 
and was one of the lead counsel in Veasey v. Abbott, a federal 
challenge to the Texas voter ID law. Prior to joining LDF in 
June 2014, she was associate dean and faculty scholarship and 
associate director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil 
Rights and Economic Development at St. John's University School 
of Law, where she was also a full professor of law.
    Ms. Nelson received a J.D. from the University of 
California Los Angeles School of Law where she served as 
articles editor of the UCLA Law Review. She received her B.A. 
from New York University. Upon graduation from law school, she 
clerked for the honorable Theodore McMillan on the United 
States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the 
honorable David Coar on the United States District Court for 
the Northern District of Illinois.
    Ms. Nelson, you are recognized for five minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF JANAI NELSON

    Ms. Nelson. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Ross, Chair 
Nadler, and Ranking Member Fischbach and Members of the 
committee. My name is Janai Nelson, and I am associate 
director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational 
Fund. Since our founding in 1940 by Thurgood Marshall, LDF has 
led the fight to secure, protect, and advance the rights of 
Black voters.
    Despite the guarantees of the 14th and 15th Amendments, the 
Voting Rights Act, and other federal statutes, racial 
discrimination and targeted suppression of the Black vote 
persist. In the years since the infamous 2013 Supreme Court in 
Shelby County v. Holder, methods of voter suppression have 
metastasized across the country. By disabling section 5 of the 
Voting Rights Act, the Shelby decision unleashed devastating 
attacks on the voting rights of racial and language minorities.
    In that decision, Chief Justice John Roberts expressly 
invited Congress to update the Act to respond to these modern 
conditions. However, in the eight years since, Congress has 
failed to do so leaving voters of color and our democracy 
woefully unprotected. Our report, Democracy Diminished, State 
and local threats to voting post-Shelby County v. Holder which 
we have entered into the record, tracks, monitors, and 
publishes a record of discriminatory voting changes in 
jurisdictions formerly protected by section 5 and which section 
5 likely would have prevented.
    For example, in 2013, LDF sued the State of Texas to stop 
implementation of its stringent voter ID Law SB 14, the same 
law previously blocked by section 5 in 2012 and that Texas 
revived within hours of the Shelby decision. The litigation 
produced multiple federal court findings that Texas's voter ID 
Law violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, including a 
finding of intentional racial discrimination against Black and 
Latinx Texans. Although LDF and our partners succeeded at 
improving that law, by the time the case concluded in 2018, 
thousands of Texas voters had been disenfran-chised in hundreds 
of local, state, and federal elections.
    In 2016, the largely White city of Gardendale, Alabama, 
attempted to secede from the more racially diverse Jefferson 
County School Board. Gardendale's secession would have 
transferred Black voters from the County School Board's 
election system in which Black voters have some representation 
to Gardendale City Council's at-large election system in which 
Black voters have no representation at all. The Eleventh 
Circuit blocked the secession in 2018 after LDF successfully 
proved that Gardendale was motivated by racial discrimination.
    Also in 2018, LDF filed a suit on behalf of students at 
Prairie View A&M University, an Historically Black University 
in the majority Black city of Prairie View in Waller County, 
Texas. The city refused to provide any early voting location on 
Prairie View's campus during the first week of voting, even 
though it provided this opportunity to other voters. This 
denied Prairie View students an equal an adequate opportunity 
to vote. Although modest modifications were made, that 
litigation is still ongoing.
    Finally, in 2019, LDF and other civil rights groups sued to 
stop Florida from overriding the will of its voters enshrined 
in amendment 4, by mandating that people with past felony 
convictions pay all their civil or other fees before 
registering to vote. However, the en banc Eleventh Circuit 
reversed the district court's favorable ruling, effectively 
denying voting rights of thousands of people with past felony 
convictions.
    Each of the discriminatory voting laws or changes in this 
representative sample would have been subject to preclearance. 
Instead, civil rights groups were forced to try to vindicate 
the rights of voters through protracted litigation. Litigation, 
while powerful, is a blunt instrument, and elections occurring 
under conditions later found to be racially discriminatory have 
consequences that existing methods of defense cannot combat. 
The inability of courts to retroactively correct these wrongs 
means that thousands if not millions of voters are 
disenfranchised during the pendency of litigation.
    We urgently need prophylactic legislation that allows 
federal authorities to stop discrimination before it infringes 
on the right to vote. It is unacceptable that in 2021, 56 years 
after the passage of the Voting Rights Act by a bipartisan 
super majority, the right to vote remains under threat and 
under protected. It is the obligation of this generation of 
lawmakers to respond to the call of the majority of Americans 
who support new legislation to protect the vote.
    Congress must once again use the power enshrined in the 
Constitution and entrusted to this body to ensure the franchise 
for all citizens and create a 21st century democracy that is 
representative of and responsive to our increasingly diverse 
nation. It is the obligation of this Congress to guard our 
democracy and to continue the work of perfecting our union by 
protecting the right to vote. Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Nelson follows:]
    
 [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]   
        
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Ms. Nelson.
    Our next witness is Jon Greenbaum. Mr. Greenbaum is the 
Chief Counsel and Senior Deputy Director of the Lawyers' 
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he is responsible 
for managing the Committee's efforts to seek racial justice. He 
oversees the Committee's legal projects on among other things 
criminal justice, fair housing, and voting rights. He 
previously served as director of the Lawyers' Committee's 
voting rights project.
    He also is a Co-Chair of the Voting Rights Task Force of 
the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the 
national umbrella organization of American civil rights groups. 
Mr. Greenbaum received his J.D. from the University of 
California Los Angeles School of Law and his undergraduate 
degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
    Mr. Greenbaum, you are recognized for five minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF JON GREENBAUM

    Mr. Greenbaum. Chair Ross, Ranking Member Fischbach, and 
Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify today on oversight of the Voting Rights Act as the 
Judiciary Committee addresses the issue of whether and how to 
respond to the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. 
Holder, which effectively immobilized the preclearance 
provision of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by finding its 
underlying coverage formula unconstitutional.
    In my view, Congress needs to respond to the Shelby County 
decision in a manner akin to the bill passed by the House last 
session, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I come 
to this conclusion based on 24 years of working on voting 
rights issues nationally at the United States Department of 
Justice and at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under 
Law. Since the Shelby County decision, the Lawyers' Committee's 
own contribution of compiling the record of discrimination have 
been substantial and my testimony today provides an opportunity 
to introduce these contributions into the legislative record.
    These documents establish the following: First, the 
effectiveness and efficiency of section 5 in preventing voting 
discrimination prior to the Shelby County decision. Second, the 
high level of voting discrimination since the Shelby County 
decision especially in the jurisdictions formerly covered by 
section 5. Third, the hole the Shelby County decision left in 
the federal enforcement scheme to combat voting discrimination. 
Fourth, the need for Congress to address Shelby County by 
enacting legislation that will prevent discriminatory voting 
changes from going into effect in places where voting 
discrimination is greatest.
    Since Shelby County, the Lawyers' Committee has had to 
litigate voting rights cases more frequently than prior to 
Shelby County, and a substantial majority of these cases have 
involved jurisdictions that were covered by section 5, even 
though less than half the country is covered by section 5. 
Moreover, we have sued seven of the nine states that were 
formerly covered by section 5 as well as the two states that 
were not covered but had a substantial percentage of the 
population covered locally.
    In 2019, the Lawyers' Committee conducted a 25-year review 
of the number of times that an official entity made a finding 
of voting discrimination. This preliminary analysis of 
administrative actions and court proceedings identified 340 
instances. We found that successful court cases occurred in 
disproportionally greater numbers in jurisdictions that were 
previously covered by section 5.
    Voter turnout by race is an additional measure of the 
distance we have to go in eliminating voting discrimination in 
Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and North Carolina, all of 
which were covered by section 5 in whole or in part, and these 
states where voter data by race is available in the November 
2020 election, White voter turnout was substantially greater 
than Black turnout in all four of these states.
    Section 5 was designed to prevent a specific problem: 
Prevent jurisdictions with a history of discrimination from 
enacting new measures that would worsen the position of 
minority voters, the concept known as retrogression. Section 2 
is quite different. It evaluates whether the status quo is 
discriminatory and thus must be changed. The section 2 results 
inquiry is complex and resource-intensive to litigate. My 
written testimony identifies four examples from the Lawyers' 
Committee's litigation record that illustrate why section 2 is 
an inadequate substitute for section 5.
    Let me discuss the most recent. It involves a law in 
Georgia, a previously covered jurisdiction, enacted this year. 
The law SB 202 is a 53-section, 98-page law that changes many 
aspects of Georgia elections. It has spawned several lawsuits 
including one the Lawyers' Committee is involved in. For the 
Shelby County decision, SB 202 would not have been allowed to 
take effect until there was an opportunity to determine its 
impact on voters of color. At least some aspects of SB 202 
appear to be clearly retrogressive and probably would not have 
been proposed in the first place, let alone passed.
    This is perhaps most thoroughly demonstrated by Georgia 
introducing several restrictions focused on voting by mail 
where these restrictions were adopted after the November 2020 
election where, notably, voters of colors used absentee ballots 
to an unprecedented degree, and in the cases of Black and Asian 
voters used absentee voting at higher rates than the White 
voters. In the eight years since the Shelby County, since the 
Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder have left 
voters of color the most vulnerable to voting discrimination 
they have been in decades.
    The records in the Shelby County decision demonstrates what 
voting rights advocates fear that without section 5 voting 
discrimination would increase substantially. Without 
legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act 
that addresses the hole in the Voting Rights Act left by the 
Shelby County decision, our democracy is at grave risk.
    [The statement of Mr. Greenbaum follows:]
    
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    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Greenbaum, for your testimony.
    Our next witness is T. Russell Nobile. Mr. Nobile is a 
senior attorney for Judicial Watch and from 2005 to 2012, he 
served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the 
U.S. Department of Justice including five years in the 
Division's voting section. He also previously was a legislative 
assistant for a Member of the House Financial Services 
Committee. Mr. Nobile received his J.D. from the Mississippi 
College of Law and his B.A. from University of Mississippi. He 
served as a law clerk to the Supreme Court of Mississippi.
    Mr. Nobile, you are recognized for five minutes.

                 STATEMENT OF T. RUSSELL NOBILE

    Mr. Nobile. Good morning, Chair Ross, and Ranking Member 
Fischbach and Chair Nadler and the other Members of the 
subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you 
today.
    As Chair Ross noted, I have been litigating and involved in 
election and voting cases dating back to 2005, including 
bringing cases against Prairie View A&M in 2008 and being a 
part of the section 5 redistricting case involving the State of 
Texas around 2011. The Committee has my written testimony. I am 
not going to rehash it all. What I would like to do draw the 
committee's attention to three points from H.R. 4 that was 
considered in the previous Congress.
    The first point is that H.R. 4 grants 14th amendment 
standing to the Attorney General of the United States, which is 
a sea change in the Administration and the prosecution of 
constitutional laws in the United States. Shelby County and 
virtually none of the Voting Rights Act litigation preceding 
that ever had anything to do with granting the Attorney General 
14th amendment standing to bring due process in equal 
protection claims, and I worry that, and I caution the 
Committee about the significant impact that will have on both 
the Department and the relationships between the United States 
and its inner states.
    The second point I would like to talk about in H.R. 4 is 
the new coverage formula that has been proposed. I believe it 
has been the same proposed, it is the same formula that has 
been around since 2014, though I am sure it has changed some. 
The new formula actually sets up an incentive system so that 
activist groups will go around targeting jurisdictions and it 
replaces the previous data-driven metric for determining 
coverage under section 5 which was struck down in Shelby.
    Now Shelby, it is important to note, wasn't struck down 
because it relied on data. It was a question about whether or 
not the data was adequate enough based on 1965 to reauthorize 
section 5 in 2006. So, the problem with the coverage formula 
proposed in H.R. 4 is it shifts away from the data-driven 
metric and moves to something called a voting rights violation, 
or a voting violation.
    That is very broadly defined and as the Committee may know, 
there are a lot of reasons why jurisdictions will settle a 
voting claim brought against it without any consideration as to 
the legitimacy of the claim. There are obviously political 
questions, public finance questions, and good-faith reasons to 
settle that have nothing to do with their view of the 
legitimacy of the claims.
    The third point I would like to draw to the committee's 
attention is the proposed nationwide coverage of section 5 or a 
section 5-like as being considered. Whatever you can say about 
the current circumstances of voting litigation and voting 
rights issues and disputes, it is safe to say that if the 
circumstances weren't bad enough to provide section 5 coverage 
nationwide in 1965, it is hard to see the data supporting 
driving, or data supporting covering the Nation in section 5 
coverage in 2021.
    Again, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the 
Committee and I look forward to answering any questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Nobile follows:]
    
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    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Nobile. You get the gold star for 
coming in under time, so thank you for doing that so quickly.
    Our final witness is Wendy Weiser. Ms. Weiser directs the 
democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York 
University's School of Law. Her program focuses on voting 
rights and election, money in politics and ethics, 
redistricting and representation, government dysfunction--maybe 
we will hear a little bit about that--rule of law and fair 
courts. She founded and directed the program's voting rights 
and elections project directing litigation, research, and 
advocacy efforts to enhance political participation and prevent 
voter disenfranchisement across the country. Ms. Weiser 
received her J.D. from Yale Law School and her B.A. from Yale 
Law School. She served as a law clerk to the honorable Eugene 
Nickerson of the United States District Court for the Eastern 
District of New York.
    Ms. Weiser, you are recognized for five minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF WENDY WEISER

    Ms. Weiser. Thank you, Chair Nadler, Vice-Chair Ross, 
Ranking Member Fischbach, and Members of the Subcommittee. 
Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify on 
strengthening the Voting Rights Act which is one of the 
foundational tests of America and a critical bulwark against 
discrimination in our voting system. Unfortunately, in the 
eight years since the Supreme Court gutted the law's most 
powerful provision, its preclearance requirement, it has become 
clear that the remaining provisions are simply not strong 
enough to protect Americans from increasingly pervasive acts of 
discrimination in voting. The John Lewis Voting Rights 
Advancement Act is urgently needed.
    Today, American democracy and our most cherished values are 
under attack from within and core to that attack is a fierce 
assault on Americans' right, Americans' freedom to vote. As we 
have heard, as of March 31st, the Brennan Center counted more 
than 360 bills to curb voting in 47 states this year alone, and 
will be publishing new, larger numbers tomorrow. Many of these 
bills clearly target voters of color. They restrict access to 
voting options that voters of color used in recent elections, 
and they even empowered poll watchers to harass or intimidate 
voters with fewer limits. These bills are being driven by the 
false and often racially-tinged claim that the 2020 election 
was stolen, the same claim that fueled the January 6th 
insurrection at the Capitol. More and more, proponents are 
brazenly admitting that their goal is to subtract voters from 
the electorate. Now, as of today, more than a dozen states have 
already enacted new restrictions and bills are actively moving 
in many more.
    We at the Brennan Center have been tracking vote 
suppression legislation for over a decade and the current 
antivoter attacks are breathtaking in their scale, their scope, 
and their speed. It is the biggest legislative assault on 
voting since Reconstruction. Although the problem has grown 
more acute, it is not new. Since Shelby County, we have found 
that attacks on voting rights are especially severe in states 
and localities that were previously covered by section 5 of the 
Voting Rights Act.
    In my written testimony, I present recent evidence of 
racial discrimination in the voting process; it is 
overwhelming. For example, dozens of court cases have found 
that State and local voting laws and practices to be racially 
discriminatory and in some intentionally so. In a Texas 
redistricting case, for example, a three-judge court found that 
the record contained more evidence of discriminatory intent 
than we have space or need to address.
    Our research shows that since Shelby County voter purge 
rates have soared and the bulk of this growth was in counties 
that were previously covered by section 5. In 2018, the median 
purge rate in those counties was 40 percent higher than in 
others, and in 90 out of a hundred counties in North Carolina, 
for example, people of color were overrepresented among those 
purged. I note that the Constitution does not only prohibit 
racially discriminatory voting restrictions where Members of 
targeted groups have low turnout, turnout is caused by many 
factors including hotly contested races.
    We are also heading into the first redistricting cycle in 
more than half a century without preclearance, posing a high 
risk to fair representation for communities of color. These 
forceful threats to our democracy demand an equally forceful 
response. Congress has the power and the moral duty to stop 
these attacks, to protect Americans against further erosion of 
their rights, and to help realize the Constitution's vision of 
an inclusive democracy.
    The VRAA is extremely well-tailored to combat these modern 
racially discriminatory practices consistent with the Supreme 
Court's guidance. It is more than justified by the record 
already before Congress. While critical, the VRAA alone is not 
enough to address current threats. To fully counter the scourge 
of vote suppression we are seeing today, we also need the For 
the People Act, H.R. 1. While the VRAA specifically targets 
race discrimination in voting, H.R. 1 sets baseline national 
standards for voting access for all Americans and it addresses 
other threats as well.
    Both bills enjoy broad and bipartisan support across the 
country, and both are desperately needed. We strongly urge this 
Congress to work diligently to send an updated VRAA and the For 
the People Act to President Biden's desk for signature this 
year. Thank you.
    [Statement of Ms. Weiser follows:]
    
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    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Ms. Weiser.
    We will now proceed under the five-minute Rule with 
questions, and I will begin by recognizing myself for five 
minutes and my first question is for Ms. Nelson.
    Ms. Nelson, according to your previous testimony, in the 
years since Shelby County your organization has documented a 
significant increase in the enactment of discriminatory voting 
practices across numerous jurisdictions including North 
Carolina and including those previously covered by section 5 
preclearance. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has also filed many 
successful lawsuits challenging these practices under section 2 
of the Voting Rights Act. However, is section 2 litigation 
alone adequate to remedy such widespread voter discrimination?
    Ms. Nelson. Thank you very much for that question. The 
short answer is that no, section 2 is wholly inadequate to 
prevent the deluge of voter suppression efforts that we see 
proliferating across the country. Section 5 operated as a 
gatekeeper for intentional discrimination and for retrogressive 
actions of states. It allowed jurisdictions to go to the 
Federal Government to ensure that any new voting change would 
not harm the status quo for minority communities in their 
jurisdiction.
    That was an incredibly powerful tool to ensure that 
elections would not occur, and elected officials would not be 
elected to bodies to govern to determine the fate and lives of 
people within their jurisdiction and later to find out that the 
tool that helped get them there was, in fact, discriminatory 
and that election and any subsequent actions could not be 
undone.
    If we think about the work that section 2 does, it is an 
after-the-fact tool to prevent a remedy and seek a forward-
acting remedy for past discrimination. Section 5 prevents that 
discrimination from ever occurring, so section 2 is no 
replacement for section 5. As powerful as it is and as much as 
we utilize it, it is alone not sufficient to prevent racial 
discrimination in voting.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Ms. Nelson.
    Ms. Weiser, it is suggested that one way Congress could 
avoid a lengthy debate regarding updated preclearance coverage 
would be to adopt a nationwide preclearance regime. What are 
your thoughts on this idea?
    Ms. Weiser. Thank you very much for that question. I 
believe that the approach taken by the John Lewis Voting Rights 
Advancement Act, a modern geographic formula for preclearance 
coupled with coverage of practices known to be discriminatory, 
has been very carefully tailored to address modern threats to 
voting consistent with the Supreme Court's guidance and there 
is strong reason to fear that a nationwide preclearance 
approach would not survive a constitutional challenge before 
the current U.S. Supreme Court.
    As you know, in the Shelby County decision, the Court has 
made clear that there needs to be very strong justification to 
require states to submit their voting laws and practices for 
federal preclearance and strong evidence that this requirement 
addresses a real and current threat to discrimination in voting 
process. Congress has already amassed a wealth of evidence of 
discrimination in the voting process and in recent years that 
supports the preclearance requirements that are in the VRAA.
    While I do agree that the problem of discriminatory voting 
requirements is now spreading nationwide, I think it would be 
very difficult for Congress to make a similar showing with 
respect to every voting jurisdiction and every voting practice 
nationwide or at least one that would pass muster before the 
current U.S. Supreme Court. So, and I do note that there is as 
we have heard, even in the current VRAA, a nationwide 
preclearance provision that is tailored to a defined set of 
specific practices that are known to be discriminatory and so 
there is a nationwide component in there already.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much.
    We are now going to move to the Ranking Member. Ms. 
Fischbach, you are recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Fischbach, we can't hear you.
    We will give her just a second and we may have to come back 
to her.
    Ms. Fischbach, we can't hear you, so I am going to go to 
Chair Nadler and then hopefully you will be ready when he 
finishes.
    So, Chair Nadler, you are recognized for five minutes.
    Chair Nadler. Thank you.
    Ms. Weiser, in striking down the VRA's coverage formula in 
the Shelby County decision, the Supreme Court emphasized that 
the extraordinary remedy of section 5 preclearance must be 
justified by current needs. The Court noted that the increase 
in minority voter registration and participation in covered 
jurisdictions since the VRA's initial enactment demonstrated 
that a preclearance formula did not reflect current needs. The 
Court suggested that widespread voter discrimination was a 
problem of the past.
    How do voting laws and practices your organization has 
documented in the last decade demonstrate that despite what the 
Supreme Court suggested in 2013, widely, widespread voting 
discrimination continues to exist, to persist in jurisdictions 
obvious, previously covered by section 5 even before the 
Court's decision in Shelby?
    Ms. Weiser. Thank you, Chair.
    We have been documenting some both before and after the 
Shelby County decision a growing push to restrict access to 
voting across the country and growing discriminatory voting 
measures at both State and local levels. In the immediate 
aftermath of the Shelby County decision, there was a flood of 
new State laws and even local practices that were immediately 
put into effect that had been previously blocked by section 5 
of the Voting Rights Act. You have heard an example already, 
two examples already, from Ms. Nelson and that were put in 
effect, only later to be challenged for years before being 
struck down as discriminatory.
    I note that the VRAA is very well-tailored to address these 
modern threats to voting that we are seeing today. Unlike the 
prior section 4, the touchstone is not registration and turnout 
numbers. It is actual proven acts of discrimination that this 
Congress is amassing and there are a lot of them in the records 
that have been out there today.
    Chair Nadler. Ms. Nelson, do you see parallels between the 
current post-Shelby era and the unending cycle of voter 
discrimination litigation that defined the pre-VRA section 5 
era?
    Ms. Nelson. Absolutely. We were litigating cases well 
before Shelby County v. Holder and continue to do so after 
Shelby County released just an onslaught of attacks on the 
right to vote. We saw, literally, the day of the decision, 
states that were previously covered under section 5 
resurrecting the same laws that the Federal Government had said 
were discriminatory and putting them into effect. If that 
doesn't indicate the willingness of too many jurisdictions in 
our country to knowingly and implement laws that they know will 
discriminate against American voters, then I don't know what 
other proof we need.
    So, there is a direct line between the efforts pre-Shelby 
and those that are now permitted post-Shelby.
    Chair Nadler. Thank you.
    Mr. Greenbaum, you note in your written testimony that an 
oft-overlooked side effect of the Shelby County decision is the 
reduced number of federal observer appointments under the 
section 8 of the VRA. Instead, DOJ has relied on so-called 
monitors to ensure jurisdictions with a history of 
discrimination conduct the election process in a fair manner 
that does not disenfranchise minority voters.
    Can you explain the difference between these monitors and 
observers and what impact the reduction in full-fledged 
observers has had on the efficacy of voting rights enforcement?
    Mr. Greenbaum. Thank you, Chair Nadler. There is a dramatic 
difference. Observers, federal observers have a federal right 
to observe each step of the voting process to make sure that it 
is nondiscriminatory and fair to all voters. So, it is very 
powerful in terms of preventing any discrimination at the polls 
and the lead-up to the election and on election day. When I was 
at the Department of Justice and did observer coverage, I saw 
that in practice.
    Post-Shelby County when DOJ sends monitors out to the 
polls, those monitors do not have a right to be there. If a 
jurisdiction allows them to observe parts of the process that 
is okay, but a jurisdiction can throw them out in much the same 
way that most people can be thrown out from observing the 
election process. So that protection against discrimination 
that exists when you have the federal observers has gone away.
    One of the things that we are seeing in some of the 
legislation that is being proposed in states this year are 
rules that are going to make it more difficult for poll workers 
to be able to throw out partisan poll watchers who may be 
disruptive. I think in one state, Texas, they are even 
contemplating allowing partisan poll watchers to be able to 
videotape what is going on at the polls, which has a long 
history of photographing and videotaping and being a measure 
that has been used to intimidate voters of color.
    Chair Nadler. Thank you. My time has expired. I yield back.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    We are going to try Ms. Fischbach again.
    Ms. Fischbach, are you still with us?
    I am not hearing her, but we are going to keep trying, and 
we are going to move to Mr. Johnson.
    You are recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Johnson of Georgia. I thank the Chair for holding this 
hearing. Racism is defined as a belief that inherent 
differences among the various human racial groups determine 
cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea 
that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate 
others or that a particular racial group is inferior to others. 
When the Europeans landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, they 
came with the idea that they were a superior race and the 
Native Americans known as ``Indians'' or even ``Injuns'' were 
subhuman.
    This idea of White supremacy was further evidenced was 
further evidenced with the start of the transatlantic slave 
trade just twelve years later in 1619, 401 years ago. Racism 
has never suddenly disappeared from the hearts and minds of the 
people it afflicts, and, in fact, racism has been foundational 
and permeates the soil of America. It has manifested itself in 
the area of voting rights for nonwhite people in America. 
Because racism still exists in America, the racist knife of 
voters' disenfranchisement is alive and well.
    The lie of voter fraud in American elections is just the 
latest iteration. It has entrenched itself into the American 
psyche and proven resistant to fact checks and studies. The 
poison of Donald Trump's big lie has put our democracy in 
peril. The protections embedded in the 14th and 15th Amendments 
to the United States Constitution enabled Congress with the 
responsibility to pass laws that protect and enforce the sacred 
right to vote. I thank the Chair for continuing this 
Subcommittee's commitment to upholding and protecting that 
fundamental right.
    Ms. Nelson, in your testimony you State that the Voting 
Rights Act preclearance process was ``successful at dismantling 
the continuation of Jim Crow subjection in the electoral 
arena.'' Can you explain to us why the Voting Rights Act was so 
successful and how did it achieve success?
    Ms. Nelson. That was tremendously successful. In fact, it 
wasn't until the Voting Rights Act was passed that our 
democracy really earned its name, and it fulfilled the promise 
of the 15th amendment that the right to vote should not be 
denied because of race, color, or a previous condition of 
servitude and it advanced the 14th Amendment's guarantee of 
equal protection under the law and it did that in many ways.
    It, for example, banned literacy tests that we know were 
used to disenfranchise African Americans. It provided 
protections through section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by 
allowing the government and civil rights organizations and 
individuals to bring lawsuits against tests and devices and any 
other method of affecting the right to vote that ultimately 
resulted in discrimination because of race. All importantly, it 
created section 5 which was a filter for discrimination in our 
society.
    Not only did it allow a federal district court in DC or the 
Department of Justice to examine new laws in certain 
jurisdictions, it also had a chilling effect in those 
jurisdictions and made them think twice before they would 
introduce a law that could potentially have a discriminatory 
impact on African American and other mar-
ginalized voters.
    Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Well, let me stop you right there 
and turn your attention to the fact that in Georgia, premised 
upon the big lie, in Georgia and other states, laws have been 
signed into operation. I would like for you to describe how 
those laws based on not having section 5 preclearance 
requirements, how these laws are acting to suppress the votes 
of Black people and people of color in America.
    Ms. Nelson. Yes, we are actually engaged in litigation in 
Georgia because of the law that was recently passed that on 
many aspects, but particularly mail-in voting, and we know that 
that is a direct result of the fact that many African Americans 
availed themselves of this all-important tool and widely 
embraced tool to vote up until recently, because they turned 
out in record numbers and this was a direct backlash to that 
impressive turnout and that impressive exercise of the 
fundamental right to vote.
    The Georgia law also limits the ability of people to 
receive sustenance as they wait online to vote. It criminalizes 
the provision of water and food to voters as they wait to 
exercise their right to vote. The very targeted way in which 
that law responded to the turnout and the particular challenges 
that face African American voters in Georgia is a reveal, and 
the particular process that was used to enact that legislation 
also demonstrated that the legislature was willing to do all it 
could to get this bill passed with no transparency, virtually 
no public comment, and no rigor as to how it would affect 
Georgia residents.
    That is but one example of the very many bills and laws 
that the Brennan Center does such an excellent job of tracking 
and that we are seeing proliferate across the country.
    Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Thank you.
    My time has expired, and I yield back.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you so much.
    We are going to try Ms. Fischbach again.
    Ms. Fischbach. All right, can you hear me now?
    Ms. Ross. Great job. You are recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Fischbach. Thank you, Madam Chair, for your patience. I 
appreciate it. Remote internet is also a challenge so, and now 
I am on my phone so using my phone today. I thank you again.
    I just wanted to ask Mr. Nobile a couple of questions if I 
could. In your opinion, do you think that states have used the 
Shelby County decision to institute measures that amounted to 
voter suppression or did covered states wait until after this 
decision to institute changes to voting practices that would 
have previously been blocked by the preclearance regime?
    Mr. Nobile. That is correct, Congresswoman Fischbach. It 
is, I enforced section 5 in the voting section for six years. I 
have represented covered jurisdictions in my time since then, 
and section 5 was effective, but what it did was increase 
regulation to stop discrimination and it increased costs to 
make minor changes to voting laws. So, there really is no 
surprise that following Shelby there was a flood of laws that 
people had either delayed or been thinking about implementing 
but just didn't because the expenses would have been so much. 
So, the degree of that and how many of those there are, it is 
tough to say, but just because things were implemented post-
Shelby doesn't mean they were done with discriminatory intent 
or effect or were retrogressive effect.
    Ms. Fischbach. Well, thank you very much. I just wanted to 
ask you if you have anything else to add? I know you have been 
listening, and if you had anything to add to some of the 
questions that have already been asked, maybe from your 
opinion.
    Mr. Nobile. Well, I think everyone has different views on 
election integrity. Some people think it is inherently racist. 
Some people think it is good to have procedures to ensure chain 
of custody in ballots and to make sure that there is proper 
observation in the electoral process.
    As you know, as everyone knows, Arizona is undergoing an 
audit as we speak right now. There was a series of letters from 
the Secretary of State and the sum of some of her complaints 
was that there was an inadequate chain of custody of the 
ballots during the auditing process. Basically, what she is 
arguing is that there is inadequate chain of custody post-
election through the audit to justify the legitimacy of the 
audit, which is, honestly, some of the very same things that 
people have been saying pre-election. There is concern about 
chain of custody, ballot drop boxes and how these things are 
being used. Maybe there is someone out there, but most people 
don't have a problem with the drop box. They have a problem 
with the drop box that isn't monitored because they want to 
make sure there is no malfeasance.
    As everyone knows, politics in elections doesn't bring out 
always the best in human nature, and politics in elections are 
a form of human competition. For at least 2,500 years, over the 
history of democracy, people have been using whatever they need 
to do to get a competitive advantage in the election. People 
cheat and humans cheat in a variety of contexts, whether it is 
cheerleading competitions, sumo wrestling, or the Kentucky 
Derby, recently, people are going to do whatever they need to 
do to get a competitive advantage.
    Now, I suspect we all disagree on the quantity of that, but 
it is confusing to me as someone, that someone who has actually 
sat and observed elections firsthand to see why the context it 
brings out some of the worst behavior in human behavior, 
suddenly there is no cheating or people trying to get a 
competitive advantage. Whatever people's disposition towards 
election integrity, I think human nature shows us that people 
will strive to get a competitive advantage in the electoral 
process and so it is appropriate to have measures to try to 
ensure the legitimacy of the vote.
    I honestly believe that the civil rights era, the Civil 
Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act was a voter integrity measure 
to some extent because the legitimacy of the elections was 
suspect in the '60s and before then, because large swaths of 
the American South were not allowed to participate in the 
electoral process. So, it is tough to evaluate human or popular 
opinion without having people vote.
    I am sorry, Chair Fischbach. I can't hear you.
    Ms. Ross. Yes, Ms. Fischbach. We can't hear you. Are you 
yielding back?
    Ms. Fischbach. I am sorry. I guess that muted automatically 
for some reason and I apologize. Thank you very much. My time 
has expired, so I yield back.
    Ms. Ross. Okay, thank you.
    I see we have Mr. Raskin. You are recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Ms. Ross, for calling this important 
hearing. I want to pick up with something that Mr. Nobile just 
said and perhaps, Ms. Nelson, you could address this.
    I appreciate Mr. Nobile's candor about this because 
sometimes what we get from our friends on the other side is a 
denial of the history of disenfranchisement and suppression of 
the right of people to vote, and he seemed to acknowledge that 
it would come back again if we don't do anything to stop it. He 
attributed it to human nature; Mr. Johnson attributed it to our 
history of racism and political White supremacy in the country, 
but we are already seeing it coming back.
    Ms. Nelson, let me ask you about Georgia. We know there are 
hundreds of bills across the country that are meant to 
dismantle early voting, weekend voting, or make people go out 
and get a notary public before they ask for an absentee ballot 
or whatever. In Georgia they have already signed into law a 
bill making it a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to 
pass somebody a bottle of water or a chocolate chip cookie who 
has been waiting in line for six hours to vote.
    So, you say, correctly, this will have a disproportionate 
effect in African American communities, where I think it has 
been shown the lines are longer in a lot of the minority 
communities, so let's say a State comes up with a law like that 
which will definitely have a severely disproportionate effect 
on the minority community.
    In the wake of Shelby County v. Holder, Ms. Nelson, what 
can you do as a lawyer to stop it? If everybody agrees, if a 
reasonable person would agree that this has targeted the 
minority community, what can you do to stop it? Does 
preclearance work anymore or can you go get an injunction 
against it? What can you do?
    Ms. Nelson. Well, if section 5 were in place, we would have 
that law screened by the Federal Government. There would have 
to be an examination by a federal district court or the 
Department of Justice, and the analysis would be whether 
minority voters are put in a worse position as a result of the 
passage of that law, and I think the answer would be a 
resounding yes.
    As you mentioned, minority voters are exponentially more 
likely to have to wait in long lines, to have to endure 
obstacles for a variety of reasons as they try to exercise the 
fundamental right to vote. There have been studies in Georgia 
that show that Georgia voters waited in longer lines this past 
election and in previous elections. So, this type of targeted 
legislation that makes that wait, makes that burden even more 
difficult and more onerous to bear is something that I am 
certain a federal court or a Department of Justice that was 
doing its job would recognize puts minority voters in a hard 
place.
    Mr. Raskin. I am sorry. So, now what, do you have any means 
in your arsenal to deal with it now?
    Ms. Nelson. Yes. We can use section 2 as we are and the 
Constitution to bring litigation to try to seek injunctive 
relief, but that is a very, very high bar. Courts are not 
inclined to grant injunctive relief without a very significant 
showing of a likelihood of success and the hope is that the 
injunction would be granted before any election occurs. That is 
not something that we can rely on and short of--
    Mr. Raskin. In fact, isn't there a canon of construction 
where the courts favor not getting involved in an election 
before it occurs? You see what has happened with the removal of 
section 5, is the burden has been put on the voters all over 
the country--in Georgia, Alabama, Texas, and California, 
wherever it might be to go and get a court to get involved and 
to overcome all the burdens in doing that as opposed to simply 
the Department of Justice or a Federal Court looking at what 
their plan is and then examining whether it has got a 
discriminatory effect.
    Well, let me go to Ms. Weiser. If we do adopt this attempt 
to save the precoverage formula where now we are covering based 
on proven voting rights violations that Mr. Nobile has already 
given us a preview of what the right-wing attack on that is 
going to be. They are going to say, well, there are a lot of 
reasons that you might have adjudicated cases of violations 
they might just want to settle the case and so on.
    So, what is going to save us from the Supreme Court just 
again finding another reason to strike it down the way that 
they did in Shelby County v. Holder? That leads to my final 
question, which is: Do we need a constitutional amendment 
guaranteeing the right to vote so we are not constantly playing 
whack-a-mole or hide-the-ball with people who fundamentally 
don't want to allow huge populations of Americans to vote?
    Ms. Ross. Ms. Weiser, Mr. Raskin's time has expired so if 
you could do it in ten seconds, it would be great. I think the 
last one is a yes or no question.
    Ms. Weiser. The last one is that would certainly help, but 
I don't think it is necessary because under properly 
interpreted under grand doctrine, the Constitution does protect 
the right to vote not only through multiple amendments but also 
through the first and 14th Amendments. On the proven cases of 
discrimination, Mr. Nobile's objections seemed to only be to 
the settlements prong. I think that there aren't other reasons 
why there would be judgments or on the settlements, if they are 
excluded then we will certainly lose a bunch of instances of 
discrimination.
    This is something that Congress can balance, the incentives 
on both sides and that--
    Ms. Ross. Thank you for doing that.
    Ms. Garcia, you are recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair, and it is great to see 
you at the gavel.
    To the Ranking Member, I am so sorry about all the 
technical problems. I know, I have had them. So, I know that it 
is, we all have to work together through all these even though 
we have been doing it now for almost a year. We still seem to 
have some of these difficulties.
    I want to thank you, Madam Chair, for putting this great 
panel together on this very important topic. It is important 
that we know that the Voting Rights Act in its history, as my 
colleague Representative Raskin has mentioned, has a rich 
history of the need for the Act and it is as one of the 
witnesses said, it kind of puts a ribbon on what our democracy 
is because it is, in fact, the right to vote that helps us 
protect all our other rights.
    So, that is why it is important that we have this 
discussion because it is not really just about protecting the 
rights to vote for Latinos and for African Americans and Asian 
Pacific Americans, it is to protect everyone's right to vote. 
So, even when attempting to register, organize resist voters at 
registration, sometimes it has meant risking our jobs, it has 
meant risking our lives. It has meant putting our homes and 
ourselves at risk, but people have a right to vote and we 
better make sure that they can exercise that right.
    It is unfortunate that even with this rich history that we 
fast-track to today, we are still finding these assaults on our 
democracy through assaults on the right to vote. As it has been 
mentioned already by many of you and some of my colleagues, 
Texas, regrettably, is a leader in this area. Republicans today 
are in Austin legislating and as has been mentioned Georgia has 
passed some laws, now Texas is trying to mirror passage of all 
those laws to restrict the right to vote and making it harder 
for communities of color and people to be able to cast their 
ballots.
    So, in light of this attack on voting rights and extreme 
concerns about the impact to our communities, it is important 
that I share with you, and I ask for unanimous consent to add 
to the record a letter from the Texas congressional delegation 
to the Department of Justice to provide what actions the 
Department may take to review and challenge these laws from 
Texas should they become law. The session is still about three 
or four more days to end, so we will know soon just what we 
will have to challenge.
    The 2020 election has repeatedly shown to be secure, safe, 
and accurate and, in Texas, this last election brought the 
highest turnout in 30 years. So, it is no surprise that we are 
seeing all these additional suppression and intimidation 
through the ballot, through these laws that are being proposed. 
So, I implore my colleagues from across the aisle in Texas to 
stop attempting to suppress the minority vote and let the 
people vote. That is the core of our democracy. So, I think it 
is high time that we pass the John Lewis act.
    I also, Madam Chair, wanted to include a unanimous consent 
for a letter from the congressional delegation to Majority 
Leader Schumer urging him to pass their companion bill. Also, 
of course, a copy of my written testimony from June 2014, when 
I was a State Senator and spoke before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee on updating the Voting Rights Act in response to the 
Shelby case. So, Madam Chair, I ask for unanimous consent.
    Ms. Ross. All great additions to the record.
    Ms. Garcia. All right. Thank you, ma'am.
    So, I want to start, Ms. Nelson, with you. Mr. Raskin put 
you through some of the items that have been passed in Georgia. 
I am sure you are keeping track, as many of you are, of the 
bills that are being proposed in Texas, and the question 
becomes, how are we really going to be able to challenge it? 
What would be the cost of litigation should we choose to 
challenge any one of these bills that, unfortunately, at least 
a couple of them are getting through?
    If we can't do it under section 5, then we have got to use 
the constitutional basis. It is a hard bar as you said, but 
what about the cost? I mean, can your average litigant afford 
this?
    Ms. Nelson. That is an excellent question and just in 
brief, no. These cases cost hundreds of thousands of dollars 
and sometimes into the millions to litigate. As many of my 
colleagues on this panel know because we were all involved in 
the Veasey v. Abbott case and that litigation has wrapped and 
we are dealing with attorneys' fees and they are significant, 
it takes enormous resources to challenge these laws and the 
complex bill that Texas is attempting to pass would require an 
intense amount of time, money, and commitment to challenge it 
and it is not something that the average voter is likely to be 
able to do own and it is very challenging for civil rights 
organizations like ours to continue to bear the burden of 
protecting our democracy from these assaults and from these 
discriminatory laws.
    So, it is we absolutely need prophylactic legislation that 
would prevent us from the need to litigate at this clip and at 
this scope.
    Ms. Garcia. It takes a long time, doesn't it?
    Ms. Nelson. It takes a very long time, and during that time 
elections happen, and leaders are elected under discriminatory 
conditions. That cannot be how our--
    Ms. Ross. Ms. Nelson, we are going to need to have you wrap 
up because we are going over time, so.
    Ms. Nelson. Thank you. That is not how our democracy can 
continue to operate.
    Ms. Garcia. Well, thank you again and thank you to all the 
groups. Without you, we could not get some of this success so 
thank you for your work, and I yield back.
    Ms. Ross. Okay. Without objection, all your additions to 
the record are added.
    [The information follows:]


      

                       MS. GARCIA FOR THE RECORD

=======================================================================
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    Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
    Ms. Ross. Finally, we have Ms. Jackson Lee.
    Ms. Jackson Lee, you are recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
    Thank you to the witnesses for their testimony. I was 
openly wanting to submit five articles into the record and 
would like to specifically read a quote into the record. One 
article says, ``Racist voter suppression Texas laws keep 
Latinos from the ballot box.'' A particular quote, ``Texas has 
a long history. It is a State that has the most pronounced 
overt, racist voter suppression tactics that we know of.''
    I can assure you that is extremely accurate inasmuch as 
that my district is a voting rights district. It has been a 
voting rights district since Barbara Jordan went to the United 
States Congress and it has been a voting rights district since 
I was elected in 1994. But, for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund 
and counsel, this district would be the target along with 
others for extinction. Right now, we are in the line of 
redistricting, and we are likewise the target.
    So, I want to ask these questions, and I cannot, Madam 
Chair, see the time, so I appreciate your help. I would like to 
ask this to Mr. Greenbaum, and I would like to ask a question 
as well to Ms. Nelson, if you would.
    There is, obviously, a discussion about the practical 
aspects of voting and that is mail ballots, ballot locations, 
re-enfranchising felons--those are all very important and I 
advocate for them strongly. Even there is an idea of a voting 
or a redistricting commission, which one would also note that 
it may not be a perfect commission in every state. Tell me how 
preclearance section 5, Mr. Greenbaum, in particular, indicates 
that the efficiency of section 5 is the element that gets to 
stopping what is voting discrimination at the door and how 
relevant that is in comparison to forcing the section 2 
procedures. Also, if you would, the former President routinely 
undermined election integrity. He did it in the election in 
2020. Considering these base attacks on election integrity, 
equity, can you explain what is at stake if we do not address 
the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act?
    I would like both of you to answer that question and 
realize that my time is probably already gone.
    Madam Chair, I ask to submit five articles into the record. 
I would appreciate that.
    Ms. Ross. Without objection.
    [The information follows.]



      

                     MS. JACKSON LEE FOR THE RECORD

=======================================================================

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
    So, both of you would ask that question quickly, please.
    Mr. Greenbaum. Sure. Congresswoman Jackson Lee, section 5 
is effective and efficient because, number one, it stopped 
voting rights discrimination before discriminatory changes 
could be put into effect. It followed a pretty straightforward 
retrogression test; whether all our voters of color were worse 
off under the change than they were before. In comparison to 
that litigation, under section 2 or under causes of action is 
time-consuming and expensive. Going back to the Texas ID case 
as an example that it took us three and a half years to 
successfully litigate and during that time there were a lot of 
elections that took place under the discriminatory law, and 
then at the end of it we recovered over six million dollars in 
fees that is now on appeal. The State as of 2016 spent three 
and a half million on its own not to mention the expense of the 
Department of Justice.
    Democracy--and really quickly in terms of your second 
question, I really think democracy is at risk, at serious risk 
right now, and some of the laws that we are seeing enacted in a 
number of states we will see what happens in Texas over the 
next couple days, it is really scary. As I alluded to in my 
testimony, I think the Georgia law is a great example of that. 
That suddenly after a number of years of having vote by mail in 
Georgia, it is after the election in which Black, in particular 
Black and Asian voters turned out in large numbers in terms of 
voting by mail and in bigger numbers than in White voters, that 
suddenly you have these restrictions.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
    Can I quickly go to Ms. Nelson, and as you answer the 
question, remember preclearance for drawn a Congressional 
District, a preclearance as opposed to a section 2 action, why 
the John Robert Lewis bill is so crucial in restoring section 
5.
    Ms. Nelson?
    Ms. Ross. Again, very briefly. We have run out of time, so 
quickly.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you, Madam. I cannot see the clock 
where I am. Thank you so very much.
    Ms. Ross. No, that is okay. Okay.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
    Ms. Nelson. Yes, we have talked about the durability of 
some of these discriminatory laws and decisions and how 
elections take place in that timeframe that we are challenging 
and litigating them, but I think in the redistricting context 
it is even more acute. You have lines drawn that often last the 
better part of the decade of redistricting that entrench power 
in a way that is not easily undone.
    If we don't have a gatekeeping mechanism, if we don't have 
the ability to examine these redistricting plans before they go 
into effect, it will certainly wreak havoc on our democracy and 
severely undermine the legitimacy of it and of those elected 
officials who ultimately are produced based on discriminatory 
redistricting plans. Thank you.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you so very much.
    Madam Chair, thank you so very much. I yield back.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you.
    Is Ms. Bush here? I don't know. I haven't seen her. If she 
is not, then this concludes today's hearing.
    Ms. Bush. I am here.
    Ms. Ross. Oh, are you here, Ms. Bush? Yes. Okay, you are 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Bush. All right, thank you very much. St. Louis and I 
thank you, Madam Chair, for convening this hearing.
    To all my colleagues here today and elsewhere, we are 
running out of time. Republicans have been scrambling to 
suppress votes and they are doing so with urgency. As of March, 
more than 250 laws have been introduced in at least 45 states 
aimed in doing one thing which we all know, silencing the 
voices of Black and brown and indigenous voters. From Georgia 
court challenges to the 2020 elections to the ongoing election 
audits in Arizona, Michigan, and New Hampshire, the Republican 
Party has planted their flag and it is squarely in the camp of 
undermining our right to vote. This is not new and it will not 
change if Congress neglects our duty to protect the rights of 
all people, not just White people, to vote.
    I want to highlight three things today. First, which I know 
has been stated, the preclearance formula, a key element of the 
Voting Rights Act which required many states to get federal 
approval to change their voting laws is not enough. In fact, 
several states like my own State of Missouri have not 
previously been covered by the preclearance formula. Our 
Republican-controlled State government has made clear in recent 
years that it is committed to surgically suppressing the votes 
of nonwhite Missourians including in predominantly Black 
communities like St. Louis. Missouri's obstructive voter ID 
laws have disincentivized thousands of people from even trying 
to vote.
    Second, we cannot solely rely on the protections of section 
2 of the VRA which prohibits discriminatory voting laws. 
Section 2 is reactionary. It can only be used after states 
implement their racist voting laws instead of protecting those 
rights on the front end. The Shelby v. Holder decision made 
clear that those section 2 protections are not enough.
    Finally, it is precisely because of these debates that H.R. 
4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, must be 
accompanied by H.R. 1, has to be, which addresses many voter 
protections such as preventing voter purges and long wait times 
and expanding early voting nationwide. As Ms. Nelson mentioned, 
we cannot rely on the course to retroactively fix these issues. 
We have to stop voter suppression before it happens.
    For those of in Missouri who were not covered by the pre-
clearance formula and those of us who live in states with a 
clear pattern of voter suppression, the protections put forward 
in H.R. 1 are crucial. For these reasons, I call on my 
colleagues in the Senate to urgently pass this legislation.
    So, Ms. Nelson, the record here is extensive, but can you 
please briefly highlight the most problematic changes to voter 
laws and practices those states have enacted since Shelby 
County, including states like Missouri?
    Ms. Nelson. There are so many, but I will try to pinpoint 
the ones that I think are particularly deleterious. Certainly, 
voter identification laws that are targeted to exclude minority 
voters and that are designed by their particular requirements 
to make it more difficult to vote, registration limitations 
that not only limit the ability of parties, third parties to 
help register people, they have a deterrent effect on voter 
registration drives and get out the vote efforts because people 
are concerned that they may be violating laws and ultimately 
prosecuted making voter registration more difficult through 
needing to produce identification or to request an absentee or 
mail-in ballot with missed signature requirements and those 
types of means of making it just so much more challenging to 
just access the ballot. All of this has been greatly 
exacerbated by the pandemic where we are putting people at risk 
if they need to have contact with a third party or go to an 
administrative office to register or exercise the right to 
vote.
    There are many other ways in which our voting laws are 
limiting the ability to turn out and vote. We talked about the 
criminalization of providing sustenance to voters as they wait. 
We talked about the idea that many early voting places have 
been cut short, the hours are not consistent across the country 
and across even State jurisdictions. There are not often the 
adequate and equal allocation of voting machines and voting 
apparatus. I could go on and on, there are so many ways in 
which our democracy is not equitably administered.
    Ms. Bush. Yes, I need--Thank you. I just have one more 
quick question. Well, I am thinking my time is up, but thank 
you.
    This concludes today's hearing. I want to thank all our 
witnesses for appearing. Without objection, all Members will 
have five legislative days to submit additional written 
questions--so, Ms. Bush, you can submit your last question--for 
the witnesses or additional materials for the record. With 
that, the hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]



      

                                APPENDIX

=======================================================================

    Materials submitted by Jon M. Greenbaum, Chief Counsel and 
Senior Deputy Director, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights 
Under Law, National Commission for Voting Rights, submitted by 
Steve Cohen, a Member of Subcommittee on the Constitution, 
Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties from the State of Tennessee 
available at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/20210527/
112700/HMTG-117-JU10-20210527-SD010.pdf.

    Materials submitted by Wendy R. Weiser, Vice President, 
Democracy, Brennan Center for Justice, , submitted by Steve 
Cohen, a Member of Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 
Rights, and Civil Liberties from the State of Tennessee 
available at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/20210527/
112700/HMTG-117-JU10-20210527-SD011.pdf.