Political Quotes

“Now, Madam President, on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and cloture, the fight to protect our democracy from voter suppression and election subversion continues in the U.S. Senate. Later this evening, I will file cloture on the motion to proceed to the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, setting up a vote to take place on Wednesday. This bill, which my friends, Senators Leahy and Durbin, worked assiduously to put together, will restore the key protections of the Voting Rights Act--the crowning achievement of the civil rights era-- that were wrongly gutted in one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court has made in a long time--in 2013, the Shelby decision--done by a conservative majority on the Court. Specifically, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would update the preclearance protections that prohibited States with records of voter suppression from making changes to election law without Federal approval. Recent history makes absolutely clear that we need these protections on the books. Thanks to the Shelby decision, we now live in an era of increased voter suppression in the United States. After that decision, States like Texas and North Carolina, sadly, sprang into action to make it harder for minority, younger, and lower income people to vote. Many more States followed years later, and we are suffering the consequences of that decision to this day.…”