Louie Gohmert: “I have an amendment that we were trying to propose some time back when this was about to first come up because I felt…”

“I have an amendment that we were trying to propose some time back when this was about to first come up because I felt like, as we all know, there is racial discrimination and it still goes on. We need to fix it. And I thought my amendment should apply across the board. But the reason I have not continued to push that, and after a number of sleepless nights of reading cases, I believe Mr. Norwood's language is better. It is a misnomer to say his applies across every jurisdiction. It will only apply to jurisdictions where there is racial disparity and discrimination. Why shouldn't we want to eliminate those? The big elephant in the room that people seem to be unwilling to notice is, there is an emerging equal protection argument here that could destroy the whole Voting Rights Act, and that is, you are having States here and jurisdictions that have discrimination who are going to ram this down on areas who have improved so dramatically they are better off than some of those doing the cramming down on them. That is going to raise an equal protection issue that puts the whole act in jeopardy.”