G. K. Butterfield. “Voting in America"

Background: In 2021, Representative G. K. Butterfield (D-NC) chaired hearings of the House Subcommittee on Elections. Like Representative John Lewis, Butterfield dedicated his career to civil rights and, especially, voting rights. As chair of the House Subcommittee on Elections, Butterfield presided over hearings to bring attention to the erosion of voting rights following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which determined that the methods used to determine whether jurisdictions needed to undergo preclearance review as part of the Voting Rights Act were invalid. The hearings occurred just months after President Donald J. Trump’s unsubstantiated charges of irregularities marred the 2020 presidential election, leading to unprecedented violence and attempts to overturn the results of the election. In contrast to those baseless claims that the election was stolen, the subcommittee’s hearings detailed many ways that Americans—especially African American, Latinx, and other people of color—were denied the vote. Not long after these hearings, Butterfield announced his plans to retire from the House.

As we sit here today, it cannot go unacknowledged that tomorrow is the eighth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder, a case that we are all familiar with, a decision that reshaped the landscape of voting rights and protecting the right to vote in this country. This decision opened the door to a wave of suppressive voting measures that are no longer subject to a review by the Department of Justice for its discriminatory impact.

Since that decision, the Shelby decision, access to the ballot has been under constant attack, sometimes overtly through direct attacks on opportunities to vote, as we discussed at previous hearings, discriminatory voter ID laws, changes to polling locations that can disenfranchise minority voters and lead to long wait lines, and lack of access to language materials.

Sometimes these attacks are less overt, like moving district lines or changing election procedures under the guise of election integrity.

The evidence and data this Subcommittee has heard so far and we have collected through these hearings, it seems to me to be undeniable. The changes to election laws and procedures we have discussed can and are enacted and administered in a discriminatory manner.

As I said when we began this series of hearings, one of our most sacred rights in this country is the absolute right to vote. However, as the evidence has shown, access to the ballot in this country is not, and it has not been, free, nor fair for all eligible voters. I am not just talking about voters on one side of the political persuasion, but all eligible voters.

Eight years after the Supreme Court decided Shelby, our work continues. As our dear friend and my dear friend and former colleague, the late Congressman John Lewis, often said, the vote is precious. John would tell us in our caucus meetings, it is almost sacred. And so we can, and we must, do better.

The testimony provided today will be informative, as we seek to understand what needs to be done to safeguard our elections and guarantee equal access to the ballot box.

Source: Opening comments of Rep. GK Butterfield at “Voting in America: A National Perspective on the Right to Vote, Methods of Election, Jurisdictional Boundaries, and Redistricting,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Elections of the Committee on House Administration, House of Representatives, June 24, 2021, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-117hhrg45581/html/CHRG-117hhrg45581.htm