Attorney General Merrick Garland in an op-ed at the Washington Post on the anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act writes, Merrick Garland: It is time for Congress to act again to protect the right to vote:
Fifty-six years ago [today], the Voting Rights Act became law. At the signing ceremony, President Lyndon B. Johnson rightly called it “one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom.”
Prior attempts to protect voting rights informed his assessment. The 15th Amendment promised that no American citizen would be denied the right to vote on account of race. Yet for nearly a century following the amendment’s ratification, the right to vote remained illusory for far too many.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 marked Congress’s first major civil rights legislation since
Reconstruction. That law authorized the attorney general to sue to enjoin racially discriminatory denials of the right to vote. Although the Justice Department immediately put the law to use, it quickly learned that bringing case-by-case challenges was no match for systematic voter suppression.
Things would not have changed without the civil rights movement’s persistent call to action. By the time a 25-year-old John Lewis was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the Justice Department had been embroiled in voting rights litigation against the surrounding county for four years. Although the county had approximately 15,000 Black citizens of voting age, the number of Black registered voters had only risen from 156 to 383 during those years.
By 1965, it was clear that protecting the right to vote required stronger tools. The Voting Rights Act provided them. Central to the law was its “preclearance” provision, which prevented jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices from adopting new voting rules until they could show the Justice Department or a federal court that the change would have neither a racially discriminatory purpose nor a racially discriminatory result.
By any measure, the preclearance regime was enormously effective. While it was in place, the Justice Department blocked thousands of discriminatory voting changes that would have curtailed the voting rights of millions of citizens in jurisdictions large and small.
[W]hile the Voting Rights Act gave the Justice Department robust authority, it also imposed checks on that power. Jurisdictions had the option to go to federal court to show that their voting changes were lawful. This ensured fairness and accountability, but without the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness that existed prior to 1965. It was a balance that worked and received broad support: Congressional reauthorizations of the act were signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, President Gerald Ford in 1975, President Ronald Reagan in 1982 and President George W. Bush in 2006.
That invaluable framework was upended in 2013, when the Roberts Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder effectively eliminated the act’s preclearance protections. Without that authority, the Justice Department has been unable to stop discriminatory practices before they occur. Instead, the Justice Department has been left with costly, time-consuming tools that have many of the shortcomings that plagued federal law prior to 1965.
Notwithstanding these setbacks, the Justice Department is using all its current legal authorities to combat a new wave of restrictive voting laws. But if the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance provision were still operative, many of those laws would likely not have taken effect in the first place.
In a column published after his death, Lewis recalled an important lesson taught by Martin Luther King Jr.: “Each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.”
On this anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, we must say again that it is not right to erect barriers that make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote. And it is time for Congress to act again to protect that fundamental right.
It is also time for the Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice to sue the state of Arizona for its GQP sham “fraudit.” Just sayin’ General. The Justice Department is not actually using all its current legal authorities.
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The John Roberts Supreme Court contended in the Shelby County v. Holder decision that key provisions of the Voting Rights Act were no longer necessary – that we are a post-racial society where voter discrimination, intimidation and suppression no longer exist.
In just days after the decision, Texas and North Carolina enacted new voter suppression laws, proving that Chief Justice John Roberts is a lying sack of shit. Roberts spent his entire legal career working on overturning the Voting Rights Act, the most consequential and successful legislation Congress has passed since the end of the Civil War.
Politicususa reports, “New Report Obliterates Republican Lies On Voting Discrimination”, https://www.politicususa.com/2021/08/06/new-report-obliterates-republican-lies-on-voting-discrimination.html
A new report from the House Rules Committee has found that discrimination against voters has increased since the Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision.
The House Rules Committee found that Shelby opened the door to a new wave of voter suppression:
The evidence demonstrates that the nation has not changed as dramatically as the Court’s majority may have thought. In the eight years since Shelby County was decided, states have taken significant steps toward suppressing the vote. Across the country, states have purged millions of voters from the voting rolls; enacted a rash of strict voter ID laws; attempted to implement documentary proof of citizenship laws; failed to provide necessary language access and assistance to limited-English proficiency voters; closed, consolidated, or relocated hundreds if not thousands of polling locations, causing voters to wait in long, burdensome lines to vote; attempted to cut back on opportunities to vote outside of Election Day; and employed changes to methods of elections, jurisdictional boundaries, and redistricting as methods to dilute and disenfranchise minority voters.
Litigation under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution has proven to be a powerful but inadequate tool to combat the wave of voter suppression tactics unleashed in the years since Shelby County.
The 2018 and 2020 elections saw record voter turnout. While this is indeed an outcome to be celebrated, it is not, as some argue, an indication that voter suppression and discrimination no longer exists. The evidence gathered by the Subcommittee demonstrates that voters turned out in record numbers despite suppressive voting laws and a once-in-a-century pandemic.
And yet, the reaction of Republican-led legislatures around the country to historic voter turnout has been to unleash a new wave of restrictive voting laws in the months following the 2020 election. States with a history of discriminatory voting practices and racially polarized voting continue to enact voting laws without analyzing whether these provisions discriminate against minority voters.
The House Rules Committee wrote that the time to act is now.
“We are now at an inflection point in protecting our democracy. The time has come for Congress to utilize its constitutional authority to protect the fundamental right to vote for all Americans. As Mr. Henderson stated before the Subcommittee, “[f]or democracy to work for all of us, it must include all of us.” It is unacceptable that in 2021, 56 years after the VRA’s passage,” Ms. Nelson stated, that “the right to vote remains so very under-protected. . . .This model is not sustainable nor is it acceptable.”
There is no reason for Congress not to act. Since 2013, when the Supreme Court lied about a decline in discrimination against voters, the attack against democracy by Republicans has been unrelenting.
Trump’s big lie brought it to the forefront, but Democrats can longer sit back and allow Republicans to chip away at democracy.
Democrats must act to protect the right to vote, or our democracy will perish.
The Queen of the Senate is encouraging her GQP soulmates to protect the right to vote. This is really going to make a difference, don’t you think?
Kyrsten Sinema
@kyrstensinema
56 years ago today, the #VotingRightsAct was signed into law. This year, we’re cosponsoring the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the VRA. I strongly encourage my colleagues to put aside partisan politics and protect the right to vote.
1:00 PM · Aug 6, 2021·TweetDeck
The replies to her tweets are always good, but this is perfect…
Sup @suhdude_sup
Replying to
@kyrstensinema
You’re a troll at this point