Eric Holder

The beauty of preclearance was that you stopped negative action before it began.

I am concerned that without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, that which we have seen in the past decade can continue into the following decade.

The reauthorization of the act was supported almost unanimously by Republicans and Democrats in the House as well as in the Senate.

Yeah. To favorably place Democrats in a position to fight for fairness.

Well, I would look at voter participation. I would look at the way in which lines were drawn when it comes to gerrymandering.

Well, I think that what we would have to do is do what the Congress did back in 1965, which is to conduct hearings, as you are doing now, come up with ways in which you look at States that have----

The Court in the Shelby decision actually invited congressional action, and I think the efforts that are being led by Chairman Butterfield here are consistent with what the Shelby County decision mandated.

I think we certainly have to respond to the findings of the Shelby County decision, holding hearings like this, creating a record that shows the impact of the Shelby decision--1,700 polling place closures, unnecessary voting purges--to…

One can look at words and mischaracterize them. With all due respect, Congressman, you are looking at those words and mischaracterizing them.

Let me just say that that is a mischaracterization of the intent of that filing.

I am very concerned about what this will mean. We have seen what State legislatures have done since the Shelby County decision.

I am asking for nothing more radical than that which is at the heart of the American experiment, the idea at the core of American democracy, free and fair elections where the people--all the people--are heard, and all of the people are…

We need to end gerrymandering so that all people, including people of color, can be represented by public servants of their choice.

We need to repair the damage being done to our democracy.

Since the Shelby County decision, millions of Americans have unnecessarily been purged from voter rolls.

Now, before 2013, Section 5, relying on Section 4, had helped prevent discriminatory voting laws from taking effect.

Eight years ago tomorrow in the Shelby County decision, a very divided Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As you know, we are having this important conversation at a very important moment.

Very clear violations of the Justice Department policy and a really serious issue.

It seems they have violated that policy. I`m not surprised by that.

That story is appalling.

The Justice Department has got to be aggressive. They have to be forward leaning and trying to make sure that what’s going on in these different states if it violates federal law needs to be stopped.

Let me be clear, there’s absolutely no indication that the last election was conducted in anything other than an appropriate way.

What we said in the policy, what I said in the policy is that if you want access to records related to reporters, you should first go to the publishers, people who run newspapers, people who are in charge of the television stations.

The policy we left in place was probably violated. I put that policy in place because I thought in our pursuit of leak cases, we had gone too far and concerns raised by the media were, in fact, valid ones.