'What Exactly Is Racist About Requiring' Voter ID?: Lee Questions Clarke On Voting Law In Hearing

to adopt more stringent air quality standards than the federal standards in place without receiving pre-clearance from the united states government uh senator i this is not an area that i work in uh i i suppose but this is not an area that i work in what about areas that are protected by the bill of rights um let's suppose that as a state wants to pass laws dealing with covet 19 that might have the impact of restricting religious freedom by for example restricting the number of people who may congregate in a church or otherwise should laws like that have to first receive pre-clearance before they can be enacted by a state um well senator i'm i'm here to talk about the right to vote which falls to the 14th and 15th amendments and congress has brought powers to uh in in force and and i i assume you'd also agree that through the 14th amendment congress also has broad powers to protect other fundamental individual rights including religious freedom what about what about the second amendment what about gun laws should a state be required to receive pre-clearance from federal officials before adopting gun restrictions um this is not an area that i work in in the civil rights division but i do know that the right to vote is unique it's special and it's something that the supreme court has routinely said that congress has brought enforcement powers into the 14th and 15th amendments to protect sure and those those broad powers also extend uh to other rights that people have now i i think that it's important for us to remember that our nation is built on this principle of respect for the sovereign entities that our states are and for the ability of each sovereign state for the people through their elected representatives to be able to adopt laws that they deem fit because of course the sovereigns in our republic are in fact the people the people have yielded some of their sovereignty up to the states in other areas they've yielded it to the federal sovereign the supreme court of the united states has made this very clear in a number of cases over the years in including the supreme court ruling in the shelby county case in which the supreme court of the united states said quote the federal government does not have a general right to review and veto state enactments before they go into effect in fact the founding fathers considered and expressly decidedly rejected giving the federal government the power to provide what they refer to as a negative or a veto over any and all state laws so we don't advocate for pre-clearance even in areas surrounding our constitutional rights and the constitutional rights belonging to individuals if the laws passed by a state happen to violate the constitution we do of course have a procedure in place for challenging those they go to the federal judiciary the parties can litigate those after of course the constitutional arguments are are made to the legislative body considering them if they fail there they can raise them with the judiciary after they become law and so we've got to be very careful that we don't neglect this principle of federalism in our law making processes and we can't do this here we can't sacrifice this principle uh even for rights that we consider important because the sovereignty of the people is also important but there again if the states do something unconstitutional their enactments can be deemed unconstitutional and their the enforcement of those laws and their implementation can be enjoined unfortunately we've had a number of politicians including some progressives who aren't satisfied with merely dictating voting procedures to the states in fact then senator kamala harris in 2019 proposed using pre-clearance to use ser state control over regulations involving health safety and welfare situations arising in the context of abortion ms clark when i when i hear from you your remarks and your testimony um and one of the things that i hear from you is that the average american's concern about the integrity of our elections is somehow based in racism fortunately the facts don't don't support that premise now progressives have tried to label any integrity election protection procedure such as the laws that have been passed for example in georgia of late as somehow amounting to racist voter suppression and yet these provisions have strong support from voters across the political spectrum including among minority voters so can you tell me miss clark what exactly is racist about requiring a person to provide voter id when participating in the the precious sacred constitutionally protected process of voting um thank you senator so the inquiry is whether or not a particular law is discriminatory and we won't know that until we actually look at the facts we look at the particular law at issue and we look at where is it being applied and are there racial disparities in terms of who has access to example to the limited forms of id that might be called for by a law so i think the the inquiry is about discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose and and i i would note that the senator has gone conservatively over his time i didn't want to interrupt him but uh as to senator klobuchar i do that because we're having both

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 1,509,739

Keywords: Sen. Mike Lee, Kristen Clarke, voter ID

Id: iyqJi6I1L0w

Length: 6min 21sec (381 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021