From The Brennan Center:
- How to Restore and Strengthen the Voting Rights Act.
The VRA is an extraordinarily high priority for the Brennan Center. We’re very proud of the work we did alongside our partners to preserve the VRA pre-Shelby and we are very proud to be with a group of dedicated civil rights organizations working to restore the VRA.
When Shelby came down, we and our partners jumped into gear to try and come up with a new proposal that was responsive to the Court and its criticisms. That effort still continues. We’re still pushing for the legislation, trying to do research that demonstrates its importance, still working with our partners on it, still talking to staffers and members on the Hill about it either in small groups or via testimony, and still doing a lot of public education on the importance of the VRA. We’re making the case whenever we can to whoever will listen (and even some who may not) that we need a strong and robust Voting Rights Act.
And, importantly, these efforts fit together with another Brennan Center legislative priority — the For the People Act.
The For the People Act (H.R. 1 in the House and S. 1 in the Senate) deals with a lot of nuts-and-bolts election administration issues, while the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act deals with the particular pathology of racial discrimination in voting. The For the People Act is likely to help communities of color, which are typically the hardest hit by the burdens that get imposed as a result of election administration or voter suppression problems. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act directly targets the issue of racism and discrimination in our electoral process.
It is important for our country’s culture, progress, advancement, unity, and healing to recognize that we still have racial discrimination in voting and that we are going to say in one very clear and resounding voice as a country: We don’t want it. It’s not something we’re going to tolerate. It’s not something we think is OK.
From the Heritage Foundation:
- Against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
In the latest attempt to amend the Voting Rights Act, Senator Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) recently introduced the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It sounds great until you realize it will be used to achieve partisan political gains rather than prevent racial discrimination.
The real aim is to reverse the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder and to give the political allies of Democrats—the radicals who inhabit the career ranks of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department (where I used to work), and advocacy groups such as the ACLU—control over state election rules.
It is a dangerous bill that violates basic principles of federalism. It also illustrates what could happen if Democrats gain control of Congress and the White House, to the detriment of secure, fair elections administered by the states.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) is probably one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. It helped eliminate the widespread discriminatory practices that were preventing African Americans from registering and voting in the 1960s. There are no longer any such barriers or practices that block black Americans (or anyone else) from registering and voting, despite the mythical claims of “voter suppression” promulgated by the Left. In the 2012 presidential election, for example, blacks voted at a higher rate than whites nationally (66.2 percent vs. 64.1 percent), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The main provision of the VRA is Section 2, which prohibits any voting “standard, practice or procedure . . . which results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color” or membership in certain language-minority groups. It is permanent, applies nationwide, and can be enforced by the Justice Department as well as private parties. It was also completely unaffected by the Shelby County decision and remains in full force today.
Shelby County was—and the Leahy bill is—about another provision in the VRA: Section 5. Section 5 was originally an emergency five-year provision that required “covered” jurisdictions to get preapproval of any changes in their voting laws and practices (even simple changes such as the location of a polling place) from the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court in Washington, D.C., a process known as “preclearance.” Section 5 was renewed for an additional five years in 1970; for an additional seven years in 1975; for an additional 25 years in 1982; and finally for an additional 25 years in 2006. At the time of the Shelby County decision in 2013, Section 5 covered nine states and parts of six others.
