The Fight To Protect The Sacred Right To Vote Continues
This week, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a vital measure to protect the sacred right to vote. Every one of Sewell’s House Democratic colleagues joined as cosponsors.
Former President Donald Trump unleashed a slew of new state voter suppression laws with his Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Starting in 2021, numerous Republican-controlled state legislatures enacted laws to make it harder for citizens to vote. The restrictions target voters of color, Native Americans, disabled voters, urban voters, the elderly, and college students – voting groups that GOP legislators believe favor the Democrats.
These laws were dishonestly presented as a means to solve a problem that, in reality, never existed.
The Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965 and required states and communities with track records of voter discrimination to obtain Justice Department pre-clearance for any laws that would change their voting rules.
In the past, the Act was renewed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. But following the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Act, congressional Republicans have refused to support fixing it.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would protect the rights of all voters by restoring and modernizing the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In July, a complementary measure, the Freedom to Vote Act (FTVA), was reintroduced in the Senate and House. Lead sponsors of this measure include Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA), and Reps. John Sarbanes (D-MD), Joe Morelle (D-NY), and Sewell. All House and Senate Democrats, and the three Independent Senators, have cosponsored the legislation.
The FTVA, first introduced in 2019, includes provisions to override voter suppression laws and to establish national standards for voting in federal elections. Many of the provisions come from the Voter Empowerment Act, a bill that was introduced in a number of Congresses by the late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), one of our nation’s greatest civil rights champions.
The FTVA’s comprehensive democracy reform package includes other essential provisions, including a new small donor matching system for House races, the DISCLOSE Act to end dark money in federal elections, measures to strengthen the enforcement of federal campaign finance laws, and new protections against extreme partisan gerrymandering of House districts.
Together, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act will powerfully protect the sacred right to vote for all eligible Americans and protect the integrity of our elections.
In the last Congress, the two measures were combined into a single historic package that passed the House and came within two votes of being enacted by the Senate. Ultimately, Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) rejected a modest reform of the filibuster rules and joined with Senate Republicans in a filibuster that killed the legislation.
We came very close to enacting these vital democracy reforms last year. But the long history of civil rights battles teaches us that this fight must continue until it is won.
It took decades of unrelenting citizen action to finally get the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enacted. Civil rights activists literally put their lives on the line, including John Lewis, and some lost their lives, but the fight for the right to vote never wavered.
We know that this voting rights battle will take time. No action is expected in this Congress with conservative Republicans in charge of the House. But the difficult building-block work must and will continue.
Rep. Lewis once said, “Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”
The work we do today, tomorrow, and in future days will set the stage to be ready to strike when the next opportunity arises to enact historic voting rights legislation. That opportunity will come.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
