Voting Rights Summer: Update On The Anniversary of The Landmark Voting Rights Act

56 years ago, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, to make sure that every American could have an equal say in our elections.

Today, the VRA has been gutted by the Supreme Court, and the GOP is systematically attacking our freedom to vote, state by state.

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— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) August 6, 2021

Apparently there has been some progress on the negotiations for revised voting rights legislation. The New York Times reports, Schumer is said to tell senators to expect votes on voting rights legislation within days.

Senate Democrats will make another, likely futile [60 votes for cloture], attempt to take up voting rights legislation in the coming days before the chamber leaves Washington for a summer recess, a sign that party leaders remain determined to try to break a logjam on the issue as Republican-led states lock in new ballot restrictions.

If the vote is again 50-50, will this be enough to finally move prima donna divas Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema off their indefensible support of the Jim Crow relic Senate filibuster rule in the face of GQP tyranny? Hold an immediate vote to exempt legislation for the fundamental constitutional right of voting rights from the Senate filibuster rule, and then reconsider the cloture vote under the new simple majority rule. It is past time forJoe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to stop being obstructionists and appeasing GQP tyranny, and to defend American democracy, damnit! Enough already.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has privately told senators to expect additional votes on the matter on the Senate’s way out of town, according to Democrats familiar with the private discussions, who described them on the condition of anonymity. The development is welcome news for voting rights activists, who have been worried that Democrats’ monthslong push to enact a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill would eclipse voting rights and sap any appetite for an aggressive bid to try to steamroll Republicans and act on it unilaterally.

But the party’s endgame remains far from clear. Republicans have blocked Democrats’ marquee voting rights legislation once with a filibuster, and have the votes to do so again. As such, Democrats’ only conceivable path forward would require changing the Senate’s filibuster rule. Doing so would require the support of all of their members, including some swing-vote Democrats, like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who are adamantly opposed.

Democrats are up against an increasingly daunting deadline to act. Lawyers have warned party leaders that any election changes would likely have to take effect in the next month to impact the 2022 balloting. If not, Democrats will be competing in several swing states based on Republican-written rules that they fear will make it harder to turn out voters of color, a key constituency.

Also, Roll Call reports, Census pushes up release of redistricting data to next week:

The Census Bureau said Thursday it will release 2020 census data used to redraw voting districts on Aug. 12, following months of delays due to the coronavirus pandemic and decisions made by the former Trump administration.

The announcement represents a four-day shift in the agency’s schedule — ahead of the agency’s self-imposed Aug. 16 deadline. The agency released the first round of census results from last year’s count — apportionment data — in April. Next week’s data release will kick off a months-long flurry of mapmaking and litigation before the 2022 midterm elections.

Time is of the essence. Manchin and Sinema have already wasted enough valuable time. The Senate must act now.

“There is a deep sense of urgency among many of us in the caucus,” said Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia. “We are witnessing an unabashed assault on voting rights — not just suppression, but an effort to overthrow the results at the local level. And it would be irresponsible for us not to do everything we can to address that.”

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1422966738723950592

Mr. Warnock, who is running for election next fall, is preparing to compete in a state where Republicans moved decisively this spring to make mail-in voting more difficult, constrain early voting and shift power over elections toward the G.O.P.-led legislature. In an interview, Mr. Warnock said he was all for passing an infrastructure bill, but called it a “mistake” to do so without addressing “the infrastructure of our democracy.”

He and other progressives still hope that they can prevail on moderate holdouts like Mr. Manchin to alter the Senate rules. And they view additional votes on the Senate floor as a key to making their case that Republicans are not willing to find common ground.

As of Thursday, senior Democrats were still trying to hash out what exactly they would vote on in the coming days. Mr. Schumer met on Wednesday with a group of senators working on a scaled-back version of the For the People Act, the sprawling elections overhaul bill that Senate Republicans blocked in June. They believed they could reach agreement among themselves within days.

Party leaders expect their new bill will win support from all 50 Democrats and independents in the Senate, in part by lopping off ethics provisions included in the original bill, scaling back its mandates for automatic voter registration, excising a public campaign financing system for senators [of course] and backing off an attempt to change the composition of the Federal Election Commission in favor of other changes.

Democrats are still assembling a second voting rights bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which could come up for a vote both in the House and the Senate in the fall. It would restore key enforcement powers under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Do it now. Restoring DOJ preclearance now is the only way to contain extreme gerrymandering that is about to occur.

The Washington Post adds, Senate Democrats eye new vote on voting rights before summer break as party faces pressure to act:

[K]ey senators have continued to work behind the scenes after Republicans blocked Democrats’ marquee elections-and-ethics bill, the For the People Act, in late June in hopes of writing a narrower bill that could consolidate Democratic support and apply new pressure on Republicans to compromise.

That effort has yet to produce a final product, but multiple Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the talks said they expect an agreement within days. That, they said, could set up a new vote in the Senate before the summer recess likely begins next week.

The negotiations continued Wednesday in an evening meeting that involved Schumer and several other senators. Two Democrats familiar with the negotiations said Schumer has signaled that additional votes on voting rights are likely before the Senate breaks for the summer.

Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman declined to comment on the talks but pointed to a July 22 interview in which Schumer told radio host Joe Madison that he would “bring up voting rights and democracy for future votes on the floor, and we’re going to keep at it until we get it done.”

The Senate is expected to pass the infrastructure bill as soon as this weekend, then immediately turn to budget legislation that would tee up Biden’s multitrillion-dollar economic package. Voting rights legislation could be added to the agenda after that, though debate is likely to be minimal before senators vote and leave until September.

“We’re continuing to make progress,” said Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.), who is among the Democrats negotiating the package and declined to comment on the details of the talks. “We are all working together to get voting rights done.”

Yet there is no indication that Republicans will be any more willing to join Democrats in advancing the revised legislation — meaning that any vote will constitute a further exercise in persuading Democratic holdouts to eliminate or modify the filibuster, the supermajority rule that allows a united minority to block legislation.

[B]earing down on the Democrats are the preparations for the 2022 midterm elections — including the drawing of new House district lines based on the results of the 2020 Census. That has sparked warnings from advocates of stronger federal voting rights laws, who say Congress needs to act this month to guarantee that any new protections can be implemented for 2022.

Democrats, for instance, are determined to curb partisan state redistricting, which could allow Republicans to net enough seats to reclaim the House majority, but several key states are readying to draw lines at a breakneck pace once the Census Bureau issues detailed population data on Aug. 12.

“We’re acutely conscious of the fact that there has to be plenty of time . . . for election clerks and for secretaries of state to lay down the foundation for implementing these reforms,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said. “We’re very aware that action has to be extremely urgent when we return.”

I’m sorry? “Extremely urgent” means right now, Senator. September is too late.

Despite the lack of final agreement, Democrats and allied advocacy groups are eager to show progress and return Capitol Hill’s attention to voting rights.

Toward that end, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced legislation Thursday that would federally ban attempts to threaten or intimidate election officials and to strengthen security requirements for ballots and other election records.

Press release: Klobuchar, Colleagues Introduce Legislation to Prevent Election Subversion, Protect Election Administrators.

The bill, likely to be included in the revised package being finalized, would appear to outlaw some of the actions that President Donald Trump took in the wake of the 2020 presidential elections. Those include personal calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an investigator in Raffensperger’s office in which Trump told the officials to find fraud that could swing the state’s electoral votes. The ballot security requirements, meanwhile, could make it more difficult to conduct partisan audits, such as the effort underway in Arizona.

Klobuchar, who has played a leading role in the voting rights push as chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, said in a statement that the new bill is aimed at a “barrage of threats and abusive behaviors by those seeking to overturn election results.”

“We need to respond to these threats head on to protect those who are on the front lines defending our democracy,” she said.

Meanwhile, a well-financed liberal advocacy group — End Citizens United — is launching a million-dollar advertising campaign calling on Democrats to pass voting rights legislation immediately — and to revise the Senate’s filibuster rule to do it.

The End Citizens United ad is set to run for two weeks starting Tuesday on national programs, as well as targeted buys in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — swing states that Biden won with significant Black populations.

The ad calls for the passage of both voting rights bills, and it is unique among recent televised advocacy efforts in targeting Biden — not individual senators — in calling for the end of the filibuster.

The centerpiece of the ad involves 1963 comments from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., juxtaposed with images from the civil rights movement, condemning “senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting” for blocking the passage of civil rights legislation.

“President Biden, please tell the Senate: Reform the filibuster,” the ad concludes. “Everything is at stake.”

Tiffany Muller, End Citizens United’s executive director, said “time is running out” for action and criticized the suggestion from some Democrats that voter mobilization can effectively counter the state restrictions.

“We can’t out-organize this,” she said. “We know that we need these federal protections in place. And so we feel like it’s time to up the pressure even more. . . . What we need is everyone, including the president, putting the same political muscle into getting this bill passed as what we’ve seen with infrastructure — holding events across the country, using Cabinet secretaries, having daily meetings with folks on the Hill about the legislation and the path to passage.

According to Democrats familiar with the talks, several key issues remain unresolved with the revised bill, including the mandatory voter ID requirements and public financing of congressional elections. The negotiators, Democrats said, are also undecided on whether to issue legislative text ahead of the break or instead issue an outline of what the legislation would include.

But one of the Democrats involved said there is an emerging consensus that another vote is needed to “set the stage” for further action in the fall — and push those resisting filibuster revisions to change their views.

“We’ve got a bill that 50 Democrats can agree on,” the person said. “It’s moved significantly in the direction of some of the provisions Republicans wanted. So go out and see if you can get Republicans to join us, and that will set the stage for when we come back.”

What the hell is wrong with you people? Time is up. Action is required now.