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Public Policy

The goal of the Disability Policy Collaboration is to impact national public policy for people with developmental disabilities, including those with cerebral palsy and intellectual disability, and their friends, families and loved ones.

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Voter Rights

Election Reform Legislation

ISSUE UPDATE
Memo from the NAACP

On Wednesday, December 12, 2001, the US House of Representatives debated and voted on H.R. 3295, the Help America Vote Act of 2001. This legislation is intended to address some of the problems that emerged during the 2000 Presidential election.

While the NAACP, along with other civil and voting rights, labor, consumer, religious and disability advocacy organizations appreciates the efforts of the authors of the legislation (Congressmen Bob Ney, R-OH, and Steny Hoyer, D-MD,) to move this issue through the process, we nevertheless have some serious concerns about the contents of the bill. Specifically, we are concerned that H.R. 3295 does not go far enough in protecting the rights of all Americans to vote and be sure that their vote is counted. In fact, in some cases the legislation appears to actually repeal existing voting rights protections.

To address our concerns about the legislation, some of our friends in the House of Representatives, most notably Representatives Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Christopher Shays (R-CT), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) worked with us to draft a civil rights amendment to the legislation that they intended to offer during floor consideration of H.R. 3295. The Menendez, et.al., civil rights amendment would have required that all polling places be fully accessible to individuals with disabilities by January 1, 2006; that every voter, regardless of their ethnic background, language preferences or the income level of their community have access to voting equipment that works and that will allow them to cast the vote they intended; established a standard for provisional voting to ensure that voters in every state whose registration may be in question can cast a ballot that will be held pending verification of their status; ensured that voters are less likely to be erroneously purged from the records, and; put adequate enforcement provisions in place to make sure that the will of the Congress is done.

Unfortunately, before any bill can come before the full House of Representatives, the House Rules Committee, which is controlled by the House leadership, issues a rule governing debate of the legislation, including how much time can be spent considering a bill and which (if any) amendments may be offered. Prior to consideration of each bill, the House debates and votes on the proposed rule. In the case of H.R. 3295, the Rules Committee issued a rule saying that neither the Menendez, et.al., civil rights amendment nor any others could be offered to H.R. 3295 during floor consideration. Thus, the only opportunity that we had to try to correct the problems in H.R. 3295 was to ask the Members of the House to send the bill back to the Committee on House Administration with instruction to correct the flaws. This is called a motion to recommit the bill with instructions; debate on the motion to recommit is very limited (to 5 minutes on each side), and the vote taken just prior to final passage of the legislation (assuming the motion to recommit fails.)

Given these dynamics, the NAACP asked Members to do three things: (1) Vote against the rule, (2) Vote for the Motion to Recommit, and (3) if the flaws in the bill were not corrected, vote against final passage.

See the list of each Member and how he or she voted in each instance.

The first vote shown here is on the Rule. The NAACP urged members to oppose and vote against the rule which prevented amendments which would have corrected the bill’s problems. Unfortunately, the rule passed by a margin of 223 to 193, with 17 Members not voting.

The second vote shown here was on the Motion to Recommit the legislation to the House Administration Committee with instructions. The NAACP urged members to support the motion to recommit; unfortunately, it failed by a margin of 197 to 226, with 10 members not voting.

The third and final vote shown here is on final passage of H.R. 3295. Because we were unable to correct the serious problems with the legislation, we asked members to oppose final passage of the legislation. Unfortunately, the bill passed by a margin of 362 to 63, with 9 members not voting.

Now that the bill has passed the House, the Senate will soon consider its own version of election reform legislation. Once the Senate has completed its work, the two bills will be deliberated by a “conference committee,” which is made up of a few members from the House and the Senate, and is which charged with hammering out the differences between the two versions of the bill. Once a final accord is reached, the House and Senate will again vote on it and it will then be sent to the President for his signature.

Source: NAACP, Washington Bureau