Democrats urge action on voting rights as tribute to Lewis

WASHINGTON — Mourning the death of civil rights hero John Lewis, Democrats are urging the Senate to take up a bill of enduring importance to Lewis throughout his life: protecting and expanding the right to vote.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and other Democrats say the Senate should take up a House-passed bill to restore key sections of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act and rename it for Lewis, a longtime congressman who died Friday at age 80 of pancreatic cancer.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called Lewis a “great man” who helped bend the nation’s history toward justice, but Republicans appear unlikely to bring up the voting rights bill for a Senate vote. The impasse highlights how the bipartisan consensus around civil rightsera voting protections — and particularly the use of federal power to enforce them — has evaporated since a 2013 Supreme Court decision struck down portions of the 1965 law.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said Monday that “the appropriate way to honor John Lewis is for the Senate to take up the Voting Rights Act and name it for John /HZLV ļ

Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and close Lewis friend, said McConnell and President Donald Trump “can demonstrate their real respect for the life and legacy of John Lewis by passing that bill in the Senate, and the president signing it.’’

“Let’s have our election this year in honor of John Robert Lewis,’’ Clyburn said Sunday on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.’’

Lewis, a Democrat who served 17 terms in the House, was for decades a force behind civil rights and voting rights laws. Most recently, he spoke out against police violence after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis. Floyd’s death and other police killings have sparked a national reckoning over racism and protests in cities from coast to coast.

In an interview Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,’’ Pelosi said Congress traditionally has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by overwhelming, bipartisan votes — “and John Lewis was very much a part of that.’’

“We all walked down the steps of the Capitol together’’ after one such vote, Pelosi recalled, adding that it was “really hard to comprehend” why Republicans resist taking up the Voting Rights Act. “Maybe now they see a path,’’ she said.

“I certainly hope so.’’

But it has become a contentious issue, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court decision declaring a key section of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. The ruling in Shelby County v. Holder tossed out a “pre-clearance” provision that required officials in more than a dozen, mostly Southern states to receive federal approval before making changes to the voting process.

AP-Mike Stewart People gather at a make-shift memorial near the home of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. in Atlanta on Sunday. Lewis, who died Friday at age 80, was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists who organized the 1963 March on Washington, and spoke shortly before the group’s leader, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to a vast sea of people.