WASHINGTON • Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., said Friday that “the voices of voter suppression” were behind a constitutional amendment referendum to require a photo ID in Missouri, and that as many as 225,000 people could be disenfranchised if it is approved.

Clay was scheduled to monitor a panel on voting rights at an annual Congressional Black Caucus legislative conference here. In prepared remarks for that forum, Clay accused House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., of bottling up a Clay-sponsored full reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. It’s stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

“Not because it is objectionable,” Clay said, in remarks obtained by the Post-Dispatch, “but because they know that if they let it come out to the floor for a vote, it would pass with a clear, bipartisan majority.”

He said that a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County vs. Holder, stripped away part of the 1965 act and, that because of that, “in just a few weeks, we are going to conduct the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act.”