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September 15, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextSENATE RESOLUTION 854—DESIGNATING SEPTEMBER 2026 AS “NATIONAL VOTING
RIGHTS MONTH”
Mr. WYDEN (for himself, Ms. Alsobrooks, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Blumenthal, Ms. Blunt Rochester, Mr. Booker, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Coons, Ms. Duckworth, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Heinrich, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Kaine, Mr. King, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Lujan, Mr. Markey, Mr. Merkley, Mr. Padilla, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Schatz, Mr. Schiff, Mrs. Shaheen, Ms. Smith, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Warner, Ms. Warren, Mr. Welch, and Mr. Whitehouse) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary:
S. Res. 854
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 some States have implemented new voting
restrictions that make it more difficult to vote, including
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 calls on Congress to update
the formula in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301
et seq.);
Whereas, on April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United
States, in Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U.S. (2026),
significantly narrowed section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of
1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301), holding that Louisiana engaged in an
unconstitutional racial gerrymander when it created a second
majority-Black congressional district to comply with section
2 and requiring future challengers to show that a State
intentionally discriminated against minority voters, a far
higher bar than courts had previously required;
Whereas Justice Kagan warned in her dissent in Louisiana v.
Callais that the decision renders section 2 “all but a dead
letter” as a tool for protecting minority voters from vote
dilution;
Whereas, beginning in 2025 and continuing into 2026,
legislatures and commissions in States including Texas,
Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama,
and Louisiana have enacted new congressional maps mid-decade,
outside the normal post-census redistricting cycle;
Whereas these maps have specifically targeted districts
held by Black and other minority Members of Congress;
Whereas these efforts, emboldened by the decisions of the
Supreme Court of the United States in Shelby County v. Holder
and Louisiana v. Callais, face fewer legal checks against
racial vote dilution than at any point since the passage of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52 U.S.C. 10301 et seq.),
underscoring the urgent need for Congress to restore and
strengthen its protections;
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 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 the Department of Justice has launched
unprecedented lawsuits against at least 30 States and the
District of Columbia to force them to turn over their voter
registration lists and Federal courts have repeatedly
dismissed these Department of Justice lawsuits as meritless;
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 2026 is Tuesday,
September 15; and
Whereas September 2026 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 2026 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) encourages Congress to oppose the Safeguard American
Voter Eligibility Act (S. 3752, H.R. 7296, 119th Congress),
which could block millions of citizens of the United States
from casting their vote;
(5) 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;
(6) expresses appreciation for the United States Postal
Service having issued a special Representative John R. Lewis
stamp on September 19, 2023—
(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
(7) 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.