Political Quotes

“on voting rights, in our American system, we talk a lot about ``perfecting our Union,'' a reference to the preamble of the Constitution, a document which effectively gave only White male landowners the right to vote in our fledgling democracy. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of perfecting to do. As I think about my Democratic caucus--incidentally, it is probably so that less than half of them could actually vote in the elections of 1789 because I believe in many States you had to be White, male, Protestant, a property owner--not so many of those around here. Over the course of 230 years, we passed scores of laws and amended the Constitution to reflect the flaws in our democracy and expand the franchise to all our citizens, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, 26th amendments--just to name a few. Despite all this progress, there is now, in the 21st century, a concerted effort to roll back voting rights in State legislatures across the country, alarmingly making it harder--harder--for Americans to vote and particularly aimed at Americans of color--African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. And it is becoming a feature of one of America's major political parties.…”