Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, voting rights are sacrosanct and they are personal to many of us.

Over 150 years ago, Black men were allowed to vote for the first time in this country. Thousands were elected to office, particularly across the South, including into this body, including one of my predecessors, John Mercer Langston, the first Black man elected to Congress from Virginia. I stand here as the first Black woman elected to Congress from Virginia. I am the great-granddaughter of a man, who after reconstruction when voter suppression laws passed across the South, had to take a literacy test and find three White men to vouch for his character to be able to vote. He was an American citizen.

I stood in the well and took my oath of office on March 7, 2023, on my father's Bible. Inside that Bible, he kept the poll tax receipt from when he registered to vote, and his father paid a poll tax. I kept that. He kept it in the Bible to remind himself of the barriers put in place to him, an American citizen, to vote.

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, this bill is essentially a poll tax because I am not aware of a single proof of citizenship document that does not cost an individual money to get, unless we are requiring every State to provide one for free, and then it is an unfunded mandate. This is the 2024 version of the Jim Crow poll tax, and we should vote against it.

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