Sam Brownback: “I rise to speak on the Voting Rights Act, and I thank my colleague from Massachusetts who was here before me for…”

“I rise to speak on the Voting Rights Act, and I thank my colleague from Massachusetts who was here before me for allowing me to now speak briefly on this particular issue. The right to vote is quite literally the bedrock of the representative democracy we enjoy today. We must enable American citizens to fully participate in the political process if we are to truly be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is central, and it is central that everybody is given that right in equal regard. The importance of the Voting Rights Act cannot be underestimated. It has transformed the face of our Republic and vindicated the noble values of our Nation. America has come a long way in the last four decades, and it is my hope that the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act will help us to continue to extend the promise of democratic participation to every American. I have had the chance, twice now, to do the civil rights pilgrimage that the Faith in Politics group has sponsored to Selma, AL, to Montgomery, to several different places, and to hear from the firsthand experiences of individuals who were involved in the civil rights movement and in the freedom trails of the bus rides and in the protests, about the importance that the VRA was to them, was to getting involved, and is central in getting everybody participating in the democracy and a true opportunity to register to vote and to actually vote. It was and is critical.…”