Whereas voting is one of the single most important rights that can be exercised in our 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 this right; Whereas during the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Native Americans and Americans who were born abroad, many individuals who did not speak or write English, and many 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 African Americans in the South suffered from the oppressive effects of Jim Crow laws designed to prevent political, economic, and social mobility; Whereas African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other underrepresented groups were subject to violence, poll taxes, literacy tests, all-White primaries, property ownership tests, and grandfather clauses; Whereas members of the aforementioned groups and others are currently, in some cases, subject to intimidation, voter roll purges, bans on former prisoners from voting, and financial barriers that act effectively as modern day poll taxes; Whereas in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect the rights of African Americans and other traditionally disenfranchised groups to vote, among other reasons; Whereas in 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, dismantling the preclearance provision in the law that protected voters in States and local governments that historically have suppressed the rights of minorities to vote; Whereas since the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have been vacated, among other effects, many States’ gerrymandered districts have gone unchallenged or have become less likely to be invalidated by the courts