This Senate. of course. has a checkered past on voting rights. For many years. the Senate is where civil rights bills came to die. stalled by filibusters and tangled in parliamentary technique. Eventually. of course. the tide turned. and Congress ushered in a series of laws that remain among the most important ever enacted: the 24th amendment banning poll taxes. the Civil Rights Act. and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. which banned literacy tests. authorized the Attorney General to appoint Federal voting examiners to ensure fair administration of elections. and required the Federal Government to "preclear" certain changes in the voting laws of local jurisdictions. That law has been improved and reauthorized a number of timesas recently as last yearand is a cornerstone of our democracy. Nevertheless. as we all know. efforts to suppress the vote persist and continue to erode the promise of democracy for many Americans. For example. in the last election cycle. we saw organized efforts to deceive voters by sending out fliers with false information about the location of polling places or with phony endorsements. we saw threats that immigrants could be imprisoned if they voted. The Judiciary Committee. under the wise leadership of Chairman LEAHY. has responded with the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act. which would criminalize various forms of voter intimidation and election misinformation. In recent years. we have also seen the rise of another voter suppression tactic. which has come to be known as "vote caging." Caging is a voter suppression tactic whereby a political campaign sends mail marked "do not forward/return to sender" to a targeted group of voters--often targeted into minority neighborhoods.
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