Political Quotes

“today I am pleased to introduce the Democracy Restoration Act, known as the DRA. I want to thank Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy and Senators Durbin, Whitehouse, Booker, Harkin, and Sanders as original cosponsors of this legislation. As the late Senator Kennedy often said, civil rights is the ``unfinished business'' of America. The Democracy Restoration Act would restore voting rights in Federal elections to approximately 5.8 million citizens who have been released from prison and are back living in their communities. After the Civil War, Congress enacted and the States ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, which provides that ``the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'' Unfortunately, many States passed laws during the Jim Crow period after the Civil War to make it more difficult for newly-freed slaves to vote in elections. Such laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, and disenfranchisement measures. Some disenfranchisement measures applied to misdemeanor convictions and in practice could result in lifetime disenfranchisement, even for individuals that successfully reintegrated into their communities as law-abiding citizens.…”