119-sres390

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 390 Introduced in Senate

    (IS) ]

<DOC>

119th CONGRESS
 1st Session
S. RES. 390

 Designating September 2025 as ``National Voting Rights Month''.

_______________________________________________________________________

 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

 September 16, 2025

Mr. Wyden (for himself, Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Padilla, Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. 
 Kaine, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. King, Mr. Warner, 
 Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Bennet, Ms. Smith, Mr. Coons, Ms. 
 Duckworth, Mr. Welch, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Lujan, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. 
 Markey, Ms. Alsobrooks, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Booker, Mrs. Shaheen, Mr. 
Merkley, Mr. Sanders, and Ms. Blunt Rochester) submitted the following 
 resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

 RESOLUTION

 Designating September 2025 as ``National Voting Rights Month''.

Whereas voting is 1 of the single most important rights that can be exercised in 
 a democracy;
Whereas, over the course of history, various voter suppression laws in the 
 United States have hindered, and even prohibited, certain individuals 
 and groups from exercising the right to vote;
Whereas, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Native Americans and people 
 who were born to United States citizens abroad, people who spoke a 
 language other than English, and people who were formerly subjected to 
 slavery were denied full citizenship and prevented from voting by 
 English literacy tests;
Whereas, since the 1870s, minority groups such as Black Americans in the South 
 have suffered from the oppressive effects of Jim Crow laws that were 
 designed to prevent political, economic, and social mobility;
Whereas Black Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other 
 underrepresented voters were subject to violence, poll taxes, literacy 
 tests, all-White primaries, property ownership tests, and grandfather 
 clauses that were designed to suppress the right of those 
 underrepresented individuals to vote;
Whereas, as of 2024, 4,000,000 people in the United States were disenfranchised 
 from voting because of a felony conviction, including 1 in 16 Black 
 adults, due to the shameful entanglement of racial injustice in the 
 criminal legal system and voting access in the United States;
Whereas members of the aforementioned groups and others are currently, in some 
 cases, subject to intimidation, voter roll purges, and financial 
 barriers that act effectively as modern-day poll taxes;
Whereas, in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 
 et seq.) to protect the right of Black Americans and other traditionally 
 disenfranchised groups to vote, among other reasons;
Whereas, in 2013, in the landmark case of Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529

    (2013) , the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated 

section 4 of 
 the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10303), dismantling the 
 preclearance formula provision in that Act that protected voters in 
 States and localities that historically have suppressed the right of 
 minorities to vote;
Whereas, since the invalidation of the preclearance formula provision of the 
 Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.), gerrymandered 
 districts in many States have gone unchallenged and have become less 
 likely to be invalidated by the courts;
Whereas gerrymandered districts in many States have been found to have a 
 discriminatory impact on traditionally disenfranchised minorities 
 through tactics that include ``cracking'', diluting the voting power of 
 minorities across many districts, and ``packing'', concentrating the 
 power of minority voters into 1 district to reduce their voting power in 
 other districts;
Whereas the courts have found the congressional and, in some cases, State 
 legislative district maps in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, 
 Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Alabama, and Louisiana to be 
 gerrymandered districts that were created to favor some groups over 
 others;
Whereas, despite courts finding some State legislative district maps to be 
 gerrymandered, Republican-controlled State legislatures in 2025 are 
 actively working to further gerrymandering before future elections are 
 held;
Whereas these restrictive voting laws encompass cutbacks in early voting, voter 
 roll purges, placement of faulty equipment in minority communities, 
 requirement of photo identification, and the elimination of same-day 
 registration;
Whereas these policies could outright disenfranchise or make voting much more 
 difficult for more than 80,000,000 minority, elderly, poor, and disabled 
 voters, among other groups;
Whereas, in 2016, discriminatory laws in North Carolina, Wisconsin, North 
 Dakota, and Texas were ruled to violate the rights of voters and were 
 overturned by the courts;
Whereas the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Shelby County 
 v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529

    (2013) , calls on Congress to update the formula 
 in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.);
Whereas addressing the challenges of administering future elections requires 
 increasing the accessibility of vote-by-mail and other limited-contact 
 options to ensure access to the ballot and the protection of the health 
 and safety of voters, and access to the ballot amid a global pandemic 
 like the Coronavirus Disease 2019 public health emergency;
Whereas Congress must work to combat any attempts to dismantle or underfund the 
 United States Postal Service or obstruct the passage of the mail as 
 blatant tactics of voter suppression and election interference;
Whereas following the 2020 elections there has been a relentless attack on the 
 right to vote with more than 400 bills having been introduced to roll 
 back the right to vote, including such bills being introduced in almost 
 every State and at least 44 of such bills having been signed into law in 
 18 States;
Whereas the Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to restrict voter 
 registration and access to the ballot, including vote-by-mail, for 
 eligible citizens of the United States;
Whereas there is much more work to be done to ensure all citizens of the United 
 States have the right to vote through free, fair, and accessible 
 elections, and Congress must exercise its constitutional authority to 
 protect the right to vote;
Whereas National Voter Registration Day in 2025 is Tuesday, September 16; and
Whereas September 2025 would be an appropriate month--

    (1) to designate as ``National Voting Rights Month''; and

    (2) to ensure that, through the registration of voters and awareness of 
elections, the democracy of the United States includes all citizens of the 
United States: Now, therefore, be it

 Resolved, That the Senate--

    (1) designates September 2025 as ``National Voting Rights 
 Month'';

    (2) encourages all people in the United States to uphold 
 the right of every citizen to exercise the sacred and 
 fundamental right to vote;

    (3) encourages Congress to pass--
        (A) the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act 
 of 2025 (S. 2523, H. R. 14, 119th Congress), to 
 strengthen protections for voters by restoring and 
 modernizing key protections in the Voting Rights Act of 
 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.) to prevent 
 discriminatory gerrymandering and to ensure minority 
 voting rights are safeguarded; and
        (B) other voting rights legislation that seeks to 
 advance voting rights and protect elections in the 
 United States;

    (4) recommends that public schools and universities in the 
 United States develop an academic curriculum that educates 
 students about--
        (A) the importance of voting, how to register to 
 vote, where to vote, and the different forms of voting;
        (B) the history of voter suppression in the United 
 States before and after passage of the Voting Rights 
 Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.); and
            (C) current measures that have been taken to 
 restrict the vote;

    (5) expresses appreciation for the United States Postal 
 Service having issued a special Representative John R. Lewis 
 stamp--
        (A) to honor the life and legacy of Representative 
 John R. Lewis in supporting voting rights; and
        (B) to remind people in the United States that 
 ordinary citizens risked their lives, marched, and 
 participated in the great democracy of the United 
 States so that all citizens would have the fundamental 
 right to vote; and

    (6) invites Congress to allocate the requisite funds for 
 public service announcements on television, radio, newspapers, 
 magazines, social media, billboards, buses, and other forms of 
 media--
        (A) to remind people in the United States when 
 elections are being held;
        (B) to share important registration deadlines; and
            (C) to urge people to get out and vote.
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