HJ0076 99TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

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HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, In a democracy, the right to vote is a moral imperative, the most fundamental legal right and is protective of all other rights; and

WHEREAS, When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act he said, "The right to vote is the basic right, without which all others are meaningless"; and

WHEREAS, Each state, except for the State of Arizona, has explicitly enshrined the right to vote with at least some level of protection in its state constitution; and

WHEREAS, Nowhere in the United States Constitution is there an explicit declaration of the right to vote, which weakens protection in federal courts and undercuts state voting rights protections due to state courts often "lock stepping" rights to the level of support provided federally; and

WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has called the right to vote a fundamental right, this fundamental right should be explicitly guaranteed to all Americans in the U.S. Constitution; and

WHEREAS, As President Barack Obama, as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, began each of his constitutional law classes sharing with his students the surprising fact that an explicit "federal individual right to vote" is not in the U.S. Constitution; and

WHEREAS, The only reference to an individual right to vote in the original U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is the requirement that any citizen qualified to vote for a member of a state's most "numerous house of the state legislature" is eligible to vote for Members of the House of Representatives; and

WHEREAS, The Constitution has been amended 17 times since the passage of the Bill of Rights and 7 of those amendments pertain to voting - 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th and 26th - but none of them add the explicit, fundamental, affirmative, individual, citizenship, or federal right to vote to the Constitution; and

WHEREAS, Three amendments outlaw discrimination in voting, whether on the basis of race (15th) with the 1965 Voting Rights Act serving as the implementing legislation for this amendment 95 years later, sex (19th), or age (26th); and

WHEREAS, A constitutional right to vote would fulfill the promise of the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments; and

WHEREAS, Of the 119 nations that elect their public officials using some form of democratic elections, 108 have the right to vote in their constitution, but the United States is one of the democratic 11 nations - including Australia, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, India, Indonesia, Nauru, Samoa, and the United Kingdom - that does not explicitly contain a citizen's right to vote in its constitution; and

WHEREAS, With the exception of certain federal laws such as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Help America Vote Act of 2002, and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act of 2009, the U.S. has virtually no national uniform standards for voting systems controlled by the states; and

WHEREAS, Since voting is a state right with virtually no national uniform standards, we have multiple and varied election systems in the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia), 3,143 counties (or county equivalents), and about 13,000 local voting jurisdictions that administer about 186,000 precincts, all organized and controlled and managed by local election officials with 86% of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act Preclearance objections involving local, not national or state, voting issues; and

WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has unfortunately undermined the right to vote in recent years, notably in its 2013 decision of Shelby County v. Holder which made the preclearance requirement ineffective and, as Freedom Rider, Selma marcher, and US Congressman, John Lewis, so aptly stated, "struck a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act"; and

WHEREAS, Since 2014 at least 83 restrictive voting rights bills were introduced in 29 states, and the Brennan Center for Justice reports that 21 states have enacted restrictive voting laws since 2011, including North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin, and that in Texas alone this will affect more than 600,000 adult-age citizens who do not have state-issued photo identification; and

WHEREAS, Voter turnout in November 2014 represented a smaller percentage of eligible voters than in a congressional election since 1942, voter turnout in many primary elections in 2014 was at an all-time low in more than half of states holding primaries, and voter turnout in some major cities is now in single digits; and

WHEREAS, A "right to vote" constitutional amendment applies to and should be supported by all Americans because it is (a) nonpartisan - not Democratic, Republican, or independent; (b) non-ideological - not liberal or conservative; (c) non-programmatic - it does not require you to support or oppose any particular legislative program; and (d) non-special interest - its application is not limited to minorities, women, labor, business, seniors, lesbians and gays, or any other special interest groups; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE SENATE CONCURRING HEREIN, that we support amending the United States Constitution to explicitly guarantee an individual's right to vote; and be it further

RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this resolution be delivered the members of the Illinois congressional delegation.