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1
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, In a democracy, the right to vote is a moral
3imperative, the most fundamental legal right and is protective
4of all other rights; and
 
5    WHEREAS, When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965
6Voting Rights Act he said, "The right to vote is the basic
7right, without which all others are meaningless"; and
 
8    WHEREAS, Each state, except for the State of Arizona, has
9explicitly enshrined the right to vote with at least some level
10of protection in its state constitution; and
 
11    WHEREAS, Nowhere in the United States Constitution is there
12an explicit declaration of the right to vote, which weakens
13protection in federal courts and undercuts state voting rights
14protections due to state courts often "lock stepping" rights to
15the level of support provided federally; and
 
16    WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has called the
17right to vote a fundamental right, this fundamental right
18should be explicitly guaranteed to all Americans in the U.S.
19Constitution; and
 
20    WHEREAS, As President Barack Obama, as a professor of

 

 

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1constitutional law at the University of Chicago, began each of
2his constitutional law classes sharing with his students the
3surprising fact that an explicit "federal individual right to
4vote" is not in the U.S. Constitution; and
 
5    WHEREAS, The only reference to an individual right to vote
6in the original U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is the
7requirement that any citizen qualified to vote for a member of
8a state's most "numerous house of the state legislature" is
9eligible to vote for Members of the House of Representatives;
10and
 
11    WHEREAS, The Constitution has been amended 17 times since
12the passage of the Bill of Rights and 7 of those amendments
13pertain to voting - 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th and 26th -
14 but none of them add the explicit, fundamental, affirmative,
15individual, citizenship, or federal right to vote to the
16Constitution; and
 
17    WHEREAS, Three amendments outlaw discrimination in voting,
18whether on the basis of race (15th) with the 1965 Voting Rights
19Act serving as the implementing legislation for this amendment
2095 years later, sex (19th), or age (26th); and
 
21    WHEREAS, A constitutional right to vote would fulfill the
22promise of the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, Of the 119 nations that elect their public
2officials using some form of democratic elections, 108 have the
3right to vote in their constitution, but the United States is
4one of the democratic 11 nations - including Australia, the
5Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, India, Indonesia,
6Nauru, Samoa, and the United Kingdom - that does not explicitly
7contain a citizen's right to vote in its constitution; and
 
8    WHEREAS, With the exception of certain federal laws such as
9the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Help America
10Vote Act of 2002, and the Military and Overseas Voter
11Empowerment Act of 2009, the U.S. has virtually no national
12uniform standards for voting systems controlled by the states;
13and
 
14    WHEREAS, Since voting is a state right with virtually no
15national uniform standards, we have multiple and varied
16election systems in the 50 states (plus the District of
17Columbia), 3,143 counties (or county equivalents), and about
1813,000 local voting jurisdictions that administer about
19186,000 precincts, all organized and controlled and managed by
20local election officials with 86% of Section 5 of the Voting
21Rights Act Preclearance objections involving local, not
22national or state, voting issues; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has unfortunately
2undermined the right to vote in recent years, notably in its
32013 decision of Shelby County v. Holder which made the
4preclearance requirement ineffective and, as Freedom Rider,
5Selma marcher, and US Congressman, John Lewis, so aptly stated,
6"struck a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act"; and
 
7    WHEREAS, Since 2014 at least 83 restrictive voting rights
8bills were introduced in 29 states, and the Brennan Center for
9Justice reports that 21 states have enacted restrictive voting
10laws since 2011, including North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and
11Wisconsin, and that in Texas alone this will affect more than
12600,000 adult-age citizens who do not have state-issued photo
13identification; and
 
14    WHEREAS, Voter turnout in November 2014 represented a
15smaller percentage of eligible voters than in a congressional
16election since 1942, voter turnout in many primary elections in
172014 was at an all-time low in more than half of states holding
18primaries, and voter turnout in some major cities is now in
19single digits; and
 
20    WHEREAS, A "right to vote" constitutional amendment
21applies to and should be supported by all Americans because it
22is (a) nonpartisan - not Democratic, Republican, or
23independent; (b) non-ideological - not liberal or

 

 

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1conservative; (c) non-programmatic - it does not require you to
2support or oppose any particular legislative program; and (d)
3non-special interest - its application is not limited to
4minorities, women, labor, business, seniors, lesbians and
5gays, or any other special interest groups; therefore, be it
 
6    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
7NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE
8SENATE CONCURRING HEREIN, that we support amending the United
9States Constitution to explicitly guarantee an individual's
10right to vote; and be it further
 
11    RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this resolution be
12delivered the members of the Illinois congressional
13delegation.