Republican Lawmakers Pushing To Repeal 15th, 19th Amendments, Pending Success In Midterms
With Tuesdayâs midterm elections upon us, many in the media are speculating that the Republican Party is bound to widen their majority in the House, while possibly also picking up a majority in the Senate. But what will the GOP do in office if they manage to win big tomorrow? One Republican lawmaker says the GOP will take the Supreme Courtâs repeals against the Voting Rights act a few steps further, through a coordinated effort to repeal both the 15th and 19th amendments. Congressman Paul Horner (R) of Arizonaâs 11th Congressional District is running unopposed on Tuesday, so with no campaigning to worry about, heâs been spending his free time authoring a new bill which he hopes to introduce on the floor of the House in February of 2015. The bill, co-authored by whom he describes as âmovers and shakers in the GOP,â would repeal the 15th and 19th amendments, which grant voting rights to African American males and women respectively. The bill, tentatively titled âThe Voting Freedom Act,â would repeal the two constitutional amendments, effective as of the billâs passage, while also allocating more funding to âindependent third-party polling station observer groups,â to help combat voter fraud. Horner wrote the bill back in 2009, but says it never went anywhere. âThis is something Iâve been working on for a long while now. Itâs only just now coming to fruition,â says Horner. âWith the Democrats holding onto the Senate, this never wouldâve gone anywhere. But if we win big on Tuesday, America wins big too.â âThese amendments are archaic. They donât serve a purpose in modern society,â Horner later added. âWe know women can vote. We know blacks can. These twoÂ amendments arenât helping anybody. All theyâre really doing is complicating the system with more bureaucratic nonsense and superfluous legalities that slow down our entire way of governance in this country. Weâll be better off without [them].â Horner says the Republican Party is strongly behind the bill, too. âIâve already had a dozen Republicans, key people, agree to sponsor this bill. Iâve had assurances from party leadership that we can get this legislation muscled through committee and voted on pretty fast. Almost everyone on the Hill has seen it already. Republicans I mean, theyâveÂ seen it. And if we win big on Tuesday, thatâs all we need to get the ball rolling.â But not everyone on Capitol Hill is as sure about the bill as Horner or his Republican colleagues. The American Civil Liberties Union claims that several democrats learned of the plan back in August, and approached the ACLUâs legal team for advice in trying to kill off the bill before itâs even been presented before Congress. âWe need to kill this bill, and we need to act fast, because pretty soon the votes arenât going to be there to stop it,â says African American Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN). âThe ramifications here are astronomical. Theyâre talking about taking away the rights of Americans here.Â Black voters, and women voters. And theyâre trying to pass this off as nothing more than efficiency, but really, those are two key demographics for Democrats. Thatâs what this is really about.â But Horner assures that it has nothing to do with those demographics. âLook, Iâm the first to admit that Iâm not happy with how those people vote in elections, but this isnât about them,â Horner explains. âThis is all about the Constitution being a living document. It needs to be streamlined now and again, thatâs all. Itâs not like weâd repeal those amendments and then `poof,â blacks and women canât vote anymore. It doesnât work like that.â \n