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Mr. President, I am also here to voice my support for the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006. It is so fitting that this legislation reauthorizing this landmark civil rights act would be named for three women who are so well known as heroines of the struggle for civil rights in our own country. Thousands of Americans risked their lives and some unfortunately lost them during the civil rights movement to challenge an electoral system that prevented millions of our fellow citizens from exercising their constitutional right to vote. After a long struggle by activists and everyday citizens, President Johnson introduced and eventually signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.

I vividly remember the day 41 years ago when I sat in front of our little black and white television set and watched President Johnson announce the signing into law of the Voting Rights Act.

He opened his speech to the nation that night with these memorable words: "I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy." That was the culmination of a long struggle which continues even now, because we still must work vigilantly to make certain that those who try to vote are allowed to do so and that we keep watch to guarantee that every vote is counted.

President Johnson was right all those years ago. When you deny a person his or her right to vote, you strip that individual of dignity and you weaken our democracy.

The endurance of our democracy requires constant vigilance -- a lesson that has been reinforced by the last two presidential elections, both of which were affected by widespread allegations of voter disenfranchisement.

Mr. President, I believe we have a moral as well as a political and historical obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process. That was our nation's obligation in 1965. It remains our obligation today.

As we turn on our news and see the sights of conflict, as we hear the stories of sectarian violence, as we struggle to help nations understand and adopt democracy in their own lands, we more than ever must ensure that America is the place where the right to vote is fully and equally available to every citizen.

Now, we still have work to do to renew protections for the right to vote, to enforce safeguards that guarantee the right to vote, and strengthen our election laws so that our right to vote is not impeded by accident or abuse.

While parts of the Voting Rights Act are permanent, there are three important sections set to expire next year unless they are renewed. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires that the federal government or a federal court approve, or in the language of the act, preclear, all changes to voting procedures by jurisdictions that have a history of discrimination.

Now, the importance of this provision cannot be overstated. Section 5 is the bulwark. It stands to ensure that all minorities have equal access to the ballot box. Not only has Section 5 been used to strike down potentially discriminatory changes to election laws, but it has also deterred them.

Equally important is the reauthorization of Sections 6 through 9 which authorize the federal government to send examiners and observers to jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination and voter intimidation and to ensure that by the presence of the federal government, which represents all of us, that no one will engage in such despicable behavior.

Finally, Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires bilingual assistance for areas with a concentration of citizens with limited English proficiency, including bilingual ballots, if necessary. Voters with limited English proficiency would in many instances be unable to participate in our political process and to fully exercise their rights of citizenship if this assistance were not available to help them understand what's on a ballot. Sometimes even though I speak English, I think I need help understanding what's on some of our ballots when we have all kinds of bond issues and other kinds of activity. So imagine if you are, as some of the people whom I have met, an immigrant, a legal immigrant from Latin America who is so proud to be a citizen and so worried she'll make a mistake when she first goes to vote. An elderly gentleman who came to this country fleeing oppression in the former Soviet Union who speaks only Russian but has become a citizen, is learning English and wants to be able to understand what is he voting for.

At a time when we are embroiled in a debate about how best to assimilate immigrants and to send out the message that we want people in our country to learn English, to participate as citizens, we don't want to set up any artificial barriers to them feeling totally involved in and supportive of and welcomed by our great democracy.

These expiring sections of the Voting Rights Act, Sections 5, 203, 6 through 9, have all been reauthorized --first in the House, then in the Judiciary Committee yesterday here in the Senate. And I'm very pleased that that has happened because I think we still need them.

Of course, we've made so much progress. I'm very proud of the progress our nation has made. When you go back and look over more than 200 years of history, what have we accomplished, it's just a miraculous, wonderful happening that could only occur in this great country of ours where we have steadily and surely knocked down the barriers to participation. But are we perfect? Of course not. There is no such thing as perfection on this earth. And we have survived as a nation and as the oldest democracy in part because we've had checks and balances and we've been under the rule of law, not of men. And so this reauthorization is critical to making sure we still have the framework to make it possible for every person to feel that he or she can vote and that vote will matter.

Now, of course, the Voting Rights Act only works if it is actually enforced. You can have all the laws in the world. We've seen that in so many authoritarian regimes, totalitarian ones where they’ve got great founding laws. Laws like it’s, you know, next to paradise but it doesn't matter because nobody enforces them. Well, unfortunately, I'm worried that we may be at that point in our own country when it comes to voting rights. The Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice has been purged by many of the people who were career lawyers, who enforced the law regardless of whether it was against democrats or republicans or in any part of the country. Now it is filled with political appointees who often choose ideology over evidence, and I think that has resulted in a failure to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

There are lots of examples. You know, you can look at the news coverage this past December. Six career lawyers and two analysts in the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, it was reported were basically overruled when they made recommendations about the Texas redistricting plan. The Civil Rights Division officials were overruled when they recommended against Georgia's voter photo ID requirement which disadvantaged African-Americans, the elderly and other voters. Finally that law was enjoined by a federal court.

These are isolated incidences in some people's minds but I see unfortunately a pattern here. We need to make sure our laws have teeth. Otherwise they’re just for show and they don't make any difference at all.

Unfortunately, almost two-thirds of lawyers in the voting section of the Civil Rights Division have left in the last few years. And that sends a very disconcerting message that maybe, you know, the Voting Rights Act is going to be honored by word but not by deed.

So I hope that when we reauthorize it as I'm confident we will do here in the Senate, we will send a message that we expect it to be enforced and that it means something. Otherwise we're not going to be fulfilling the promise of a Constitution that sets voting and democracy at its core.

So I hope that we will not only reauthorize the Voting Rights Act - that we will enforce the Voting Rights Act, and that thirdly we will change some of our other laws to protect against some of the abuses that are now taking place around the country when it comes to voting. We have to strengthen our electoral system so that basic democratic values are protected as voting technology evolves and as it threatens to undermine the right to vote.

I think we need to put a few simple principles into law. We should do it sooner instead of later so that we count every vote and we make sure every vote is counted. That's why I drafted and introduced along with some of my colleagues in both houses the Count Every Vote Act because I believe that all Americans ought to have a reasonable opportunity to register and cast their vote if they are citizens. That should be just part of being a citizen.

In fact, I just met with a group of young high school students from New York and we were talking about how we could get more young people involved in voting. One of them said, well, when we turn 18 why aren't we automatically registered? I said that's a great idea. You should be automatically registered. We need to make this part of the growing up in America. You turn 18, you get registered to vote and you should start a lifetime habit of voting.

We also need to make sure that every American citizen will be able to count on the fact that their name will not be illegally purged from the voter rolls. We've seen that happen. It is still happening. It really bothers me because what happens is they, you know, somebody in the political position of a state says, well, let's purge the voter rolls because we want to get rid of people who have moved or who may not be eligible to vote. Well, I don't disagree with that. People who don't live in a jurisdiction or are not eligible shouldn't be permitted to vote. But instead of purging on that very limited basis often times they purge hundreds and thousands of people unfairly, unlawfully. And then someone shows up to vote and they are told, well, we're sorry, you are not registered to vote. The person doesn't know what has happened but then they are prohibited from voting.

Every American voter who shows up at the polls should be confident they don't have to wait hours to cast ballots. I did a town hall meeting in Cleveland with my friend Congresswoman Jones and we had testimony from people, including students from Kenyon College who had to wait between 10 and 12 hours to be able to vote. They were eligible. They were registered. They were anxious to vote. Because of the way the number of voting machines was allocated and the sort of discouragement that was meant to be sent that you would have to wait so long, it was a really unfair treatment of these young people and really not in keeping with our desire to increase the number of people who vote in our country.

We also need to make sure that the system of voting has not been compromised by politics or partisanship. I just think it's flat wrong for somebody who runs an election to also be running in the election and thereby be supervising their own election or for somebody to be running for election to some position, get the support of the position who is running the election as his campaign manager or spokesman. That's a conflict of interest. that ought to be prohibited. People need to feel, and they have every right to feel confidence in the integrity of our electoral system.

And finally every American voter should know that there are adequate safeguards against abuses or mistakes caused by the new computerized voting machines. There have been so many problems. They've broken down. They have double counted. They have failed to count. Tests have been run showing how easy they are to hack into. You know, we don't need that. We need a system that people can count on. I mean, if we can go to an A.T.M. and withdraw money and if we can all have other kinds of advantages from the access to computers and the Internet and all the rest of it, for goodness sakes we ought to be able to use electronic voting without raising questions about whether it's been truthful and whether it's been accurate and whether it's even being operated correctly.

So, Mr. President, this effort to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act is part of a larger struggle about basic rights, basic values and basic opportunities. It is at root a struggle to ensure that we live up to the promise of democracy in this nation. So we do need to reinstate the decades old voting rights protections and we need to ensure those voting rights protections, and we need to strengthen those voting rights protections. We need to do that because that's who we are as Americans. That is what we expect of ourselves. And I hope that after we reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, which I'm confident we're going to do, that then we turn our attention to making sure we enforce it. And then we ask ourselves, are we doing everything we can to encourage people to vote and make it as easy for them to vote and make sure every vote counts.

Our ideals are important to us as Americans. Our principles about who we are, what we believe in are really core values as to what it means to be an American. And I only can hope and trust that when it comes to the most important function in a democracy, namely, running elections, and giving people the right to make decisions about who governs us, that we will be second to none. We cannot say that now because other countries, frankly, are doing a better job than we are but today is a good first step to get us back on the track of making sure that the world's oldest democracy demonstrates clearly we know how to run elections that people have confidence and trust in and that we want every single citizen to feel welcome to participate and to make the decisions that will determine the future of our country.

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