“Why are we still arguing about voter ID requirements?” asked Hans von Spakovsky from the witness table of a March 12 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the protection of voting rights.
Reasonable election security “is not voter suppression,” he said.
Mr. Spakovsky, the manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the committee that 10 to 15 years of data demonstrate that voter ID requirements have “no negative effect on voter participation.”
To underscore his point, Mr. Spakovsky cited U.S. Census data that showed that the national voter turnout in 2020 of 66.8 percent was just nine-tenths of one percent lower than the record of 67.7 percent set in 1992.
This was after scores of photo ID and election security laws were passed by Republican state legislatures in the interval.
Mr. Spakovsky testified that eight of 10 Americans surveyed support common sense photo ID requirements for voting. He also said that most people have some form of photo ID and that every state provides one free upon request.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), stated the nation was experiencing “an ongoing assault on voting rights.”
Mr. Durbin also said the “excuse given for misconduct [by Republican state lawmakers] is voter integrity.”
He criticized the GOP for its penchant for “intense scrutiny” of voter identification and for placing “obstacles in the path of voters trying to exercise their right.”
“Some people are trying to take away the right of others to vote,” he said.
Mr. Spakovsky stated that the nine states flagged by the U.S. Dept. of Justice for voter suppression practices all did better than New York and California in the turnout of all voters and black voters in recent elections as of November 2023.
After showing a brief video commemorating the personal sacrifices of the late Congressman John R. Lewis (D-Ga.) in his effort to secure voting rights for blacks in Alabama in the mid-1960s, Mr. Durbin promoted the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (S.4).
Among other things, the Lewis Act would make it more difficult for Republican state legislatures to tighten the security of elections in their states.
According to Mr. Durbin, since the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, 94 laws restricting voting rights have been enacted by red states.
He called it a “coordinated assault on our rights and principles.”
The Shelby decision affirmed a state’s right to make its election laws without unwarranted federal interference.
The new laws that followed impacted the use of mail-in ballot drop boxes, and voter ID practices, and resulted in the overzealous purging of voter rolls, Mr. Durbin said.
Mr. Durbin contended that “the Voting Rights Act was gutted” by what he called the “misguided Supreme Court decision.”
“It was the right-wing capture of the U.S. Supreme Court that yielded the Shelby County decision. We are stuck with a zombie decision based on false facts,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
It’s No Longer 1965
In addressing the Democrats’ push to pass the John Lewis Act, Mr. Spakovsky stated that this is not 1965 and that existing laws are adequate so there is no need to implement the Lewis Act.He said that implementation would harass states with frivolous lawsuits and “guarantee the dominance of one political party.”
In his remarks, ranking member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) acknowledged: “John Lewis took a beating to make America better.”
Mr. Graham stated the Lewis Act would rewrite established federal law in “an attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The Supreme Court recognized that this is a new environment.”
Mr. Graham characterized an ineligible person voting and someone being denied an opportunity to vote as “equivalent evils.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), a witness before the committee, stated that because people voted in large numbers does not mean opportunities are easy.
Though voter turnout has grown since the Shelby decision, there remains a disparity in the rate of participation growth between whites and blacks, he said.
Mr. Warnock told the hearing, “You cannot remember John Lewis by dismembering what he accomplished.”
He also said the Lewis Act would “restore pre-clearance,” a provision of the Voting Rights Act requiring that states check with the Voting Rights unit of the U.S. Dept. of Justice before implementing even small changes in their election practices.
It puts the burden on the states to prove the change was not racist and was the best solution available.
Photo ID a ‘Personal Responsibility’
In his testimony as a witness before the committee, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the Lewis Act “is about solidifying Democrat power nationally and diminishing state control and election security.”Concerning the requirement of a photo ID to vote, Mr. Hunt said the practice is not “racist, discriminatory, and burdensome,” as the Democrats contend. He pointed to the record-shattering turnout in Georgia in 2022 as evidence.
“Leftists pretend we are living in the 1950s,” he said.
Mr. Hunt, a black man, produced about six pieces of his own photo identification to show how easy it is to obtain such documentation.
“Am I a black Houdini? How did I manage to pull this off?” he asked.
Mr. Hunt described having a photo ID as a “personal responsibility;” and resented what he said was “the Left’s soft bigotry of low expectations” that implies blacks are incapable of obtaining a photo ID card.
“Election security and ballot accessibility can be done hand in hand,” he said.
Sophia Lin Lakin of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project testified that some voter IDs “are difficult to obtain and intentionally so for discriminatory purposes.”
The fate of a fully participatory, non-discriminatory voting system now “hangs in the balance,” she said.
The irony of the Democrats speaking out about protecting voting rights and defending democracy was not lost on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
He said trying to throw former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, thereby disenfranchising millions of voters, exposed the Democrats’ hypocrisy.
He alleged that “not one Democrat politician” spoke out in support of the recent Supreme Court’s 9–0 decision to reinstate Mr. Trump on the Colorado ballot.
Mr. Cruz also reminded the hearing that Democrat concerns over a “return to Jim Crow” ring hollow because “Jim Crow was created by Democrats to elect only Democrats.”
He called the Lewis Act “incredibly partisan” and designed to “divide us.”
When Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked about a person registering to vote having to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship, Ms. Lakin replied that such “documentation is often discriminatory.”
Mr. Lee told the hearing that the Lewis Act “is likely unconstitutional.”
Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the hearing of a statement by John Lewis who said: “Voting is the most powerful tool to non-violently achieve a more perfect union.”
Mr. Hewitt said the Voting Rights Act must be restored to its original intent and force.
He said the act gives people of color “voice, opportunity, and power to make the promises of America real in experience.”
According to Mr. Hewitt the “barrage of state laws” is intended to “chill voter engagement, participation, and turnout.”
He also raised the topic of gerrymandering through which he said the GOP “hides racism under the guise of partisanship.”
Voter Fraud Not a Problem
Several speakers contended that the number of instances of voter fraud is insignificant.Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) described the restrictive Republican voter security laws as solutions “in search of a problem.”
He was echoed by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who said he knew of only “a handful of examples.”
Mr. Hewitt described the amount of voter fraud in America as “infinitesimally small.”
He cited a Brennan Center study that pegged the rate of incidents of voter fraud at 0.003 percent.
In light of the small amount of election fraud, the rise of “result rejection” is worrisome, he said.
The Brennan Center for Justice is a self-described “liberal or progressive” think tank.
Attorney Maureen Riordan of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a non-profit law firm dedicated to promoting election integrity, testified that, if passed, the Lewis Act would “once again give tremendous power over the election procedures in every state and locality to partisan bureaucrats within the Voting Section [of the DOJ].”
She said the Lewis Act is not needed because “we no longer have rampant discrimination.”
Ms. Riordan said the DOJ weaponized the pre-clearance requirement for many years to help the Democrats.
She stated that, in her 18 years of experience working in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice, she personally witnessed “improper collaboration” between left-wing civil rights organizations and section lawyers.
From 1993 to 2000, the detected abuses of power resulted in $2.3 million in sanctions being levied by the federal courts against the Voting Section.
In her testimony, Ms. Riordan asked why, if blatant discrimination is presently raging throughout the states, the DOJ brought only two lawsuits for voting rights violations against them in the 11 years since the Shelby decision.
Distrust of the DOJ
In answer to a question from the committee, Mr. Spakovsky stated: “I do not at all trust the Biden DOJ to fairly administer the John Lewis Act if it is passed.”He also said the act’s impact on state sovereignty would “raise serious constitutional questions.”
Witness Lydia Camarillo, of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, testified that voter suppression laws “target Latino communities.”
She said the John Lewis Act is needed “to stop discriminatory changes before they can be implemented.”
Sen. John Cornin (R-Texas) called the John Lewis Act “an enormous power grab by the federal government. Shelby did not decimate the Voting Rights Act. We should be celebrating the success of the VRA,” he said.
“Making certain votes are secure should not be controversial. We need policies that make it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, counseled: “Don’t implement rules for the sole purpose of benefiting one’s own party. There is a natural inclination toward power and power corrupts.”
Mr. Booker said that, in his view, people are trying to “game the system” and are not motivated by racism. He said the growing racial disparity in voter turnout is because of that “gamesmanship.”
Regarding gerrymandering, Mr. Booker said: “People ought to choose their representatives rather than the representatives choosing their people.”
Committee member Sen. Tom Tillis (R-N.C.) commented that having a valid government-issued photo ID is “liberating” in terms of enhancing a person’s participation in many aspects of society besides voting.
He said voting without photo identification can “change the outcome in elections.”
Mr. Tillis urged his colleagues to “Get past the political divide and secure our elections.”
