Tim Kaine: “I rise to speak in favor of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 in the expectation that the body…”

“I rise to speak in favor of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 in the expectation that the body will soon have a vote to proceed to debate on the bill, to proceed to debate in a forum before the American public, with an offer to our Republican colleagues to offer amendments, offer improvements, offer adjustments. This is incredibly important. We had a vote on the Freedom to Vote Act last week, a bill that I am proud to be a cosponsor of, along with the Presiding Officer. And I am proud to be a cosponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. What does the John Lewis bill do? It basically does two things. First, it restores a vigorous preclearance requirement that was part of the original Voting Rights Act, section 5, that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 in the Shelby v. Mississippi opinion. The Supreme Court in Shelby said that you could have a preclearance requirement but you couldn't apply that requirement only to the geographic jurisdictions that were covered in the original 1965 act; Congress would have to analyze and come up with a new set of criteria for who should have to get preclearance done. The second thing the John Lewis bill does is it responds to a Supreme Court decision that was decided this summer, Brnovich v.…”