Last year our nation lost civil rights activists John Lewis, CT Vivian, Bruce Boynton, Joseph Lowery, and most recently Bob Moses. These are just a few of the legion of courageous personalities who advocated the right and the risk decades ago and whose ranks are now getting smaller every year. While we honor these personalities for their high-profile leadership, they are among the thousands of men and women who marched and sometimes died in search of civil rights and legal equality, including the right to vote.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. , which led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act later that year. Boynton was a civil rights attorney who inspired the Freedom Rides, and Moses registered black voters in Mississippi at great personal risk during the 1964 Freedom Summer, the Rights Act 1964 and the Voting Rights Act 1965 – the two most momentous measures to redress racial discrimination since the reconstruction.
It is not enough to acknowledge these sacrifices and achievements without also acknowledging that Congress has an obligation to pass a new suffrage law. Among other things, the move would restore a viable enforcement measure that has not existed since 2013 when the US Supreme Court overturned the enforcement rule in a 5-4 decision in Shelby County vs. Holder.
The enforcement provision required that jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination obtain prior approval or approval from the federal government when voting before making any changes to the voting rules. The Supreme Court invalidated the preclearance formula because it was out of date and the nation had made significant strides against electoral discrimination. In the court’s opinion on the Shelby County, Alabama case, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the act “recreated a formula based on 40-year-old facts that has no logical relation to the present day.”
Notably, the court did not completely abolish the preliminary investigation and urged Congress to update the law to reflect the current conditions. Congress has inexcusably dropped the ball on a solution for the past eight years, and without a formula to determine which jurisdictions are covered, the measure is unenforceable in its current form.
In 1965, the landmark Voting Rights Act embodied the promise of Amendment 15, 1869 – that “neither the United States nor any other state may deny or restrict the right to vote for citizens of the United States on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of bondage. ”Another part of this amendment gave Congress“ empowerment to enforce this article by appropriate law ”.
As we all know, in many parts of this country there was no right to vote for almost 100 years. And following the Shelby County vs. Holder court ruling and the controversial presidential election in November 2020, numerous states passed or proposed new election restrictions that some civil rights activists say will take back protection and put discriminatory barriers in place for colored voters.
Not all changes are inappropriate or discriminatory, as this newspaper recently noted in an editorial on proposed voting changes in Texas that stalled when a Democratic strike in the Austin House of Representatives prevented a legislative quorum required by the GOP majority was to adopt the measure.
Suffrage is so fundamental to our democracy that suffrage legislation should have overwhelming bipartisan support and provide robust federal protection. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act provides such protection. The law would provide an updated enforcement formula, a provision to review problematic practices, and establish standards for pre-clearance and procedures for states or jurisdictions to demonstrate that they should not be pre-checked.
The supervision worked. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that the preliminary investigation blocked 86 discriminatory amendments between 1998 and 2013, including 13 in the eighteen months prior to the Shelby County’s ruling, and prevented policymakers from taking action that was unsuccessful.
This newspaper believes that voting should be easy, fair and fraud-free, and that changes must not undermine the historic path to protecting the right to vote for all citizens regardless of race or gender. The irony is that the politics of this moment has turned the right to vote on its head.
It wasn’t until 2006 that a Republican-controlled Congress renewed the Voting Rights Act a year before it expired, extending it for 25 years. And at the signing, President George W. Bush reminded us that “the right of ordinary men and women to determine their own political futures is at the heart of the American experiment.”
Our nation must regain the belief that the right to vote deserves protection. According to the Bill of Rights Institute, about a third of the constitutional amendments made after the Bill of Rights is ratified concern the right to vote. The 15th Amendment granted former slaves and people of color the right to vote. The 19th amendment gave the vote to women. The 23rd, 24th, and 26th amendments gave the District of Columbia a proxy, ended poll taxes, and allowed 18-year-olds to vote, the institute notes.
The nation has paid a heavy price for the 100 years since the unrequited pledge of the 15th Amendment to the Suffrage Act of 1965, and it pays another price for the inaction of Congress since the Shelby decision.
Late last week, Senate Democrats said they were pursuing another bill to codify down to the finest detail a variety of potentially controversial new rules and procedures, such as: In our opinion, passing a federal voting measure that restores workable enforcement measures should be your main consideration.
Voting is the way citizens express their opinions and preferences and precise accountability to public officials. Our voices should be heard equally and fairly, without participation being suppressed on the scale.
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