Protections needed
McConnell, Senate Republicans should back bill that would restore the Voting Rights Act.
In 1965, a young Mitch McConnell, then a law student in Kentucky, was at the U.S. Capitol when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.
“President Johnson towered over everyone else and had such a commanding presence, he seemed to fill the Rotunda,” McConnell wrote about the Texas political legend in his 2016 memoir. “I was overwhelmed to witness such a moment in history, knowing that majorities in both parties voted for the bill.”
The future Republican leader of the U.S. Senate was right to be awed. The act was the culmination of the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s, protecting the privilege and freedom of all citizens to have their voices heard through the ballot box. Oh, how times have changed. Cut to 2019 and McConnell has so far refused to put a bill that would restore the Voting Rights Act up for a vote in the Senate. In the House, a Democratic effort passed recently with almost zero GOP support.
Protecting voting rights shouldn’t be a partisan issue — they are vital for the legitimacy of our democracy in an increasingly diverse nation. We urge Republicans — a party founded by Abraham Lincoln and whose votes were critical to Johnson’s success in 1965 — to reconsider.
GOP intransigence is a recent phenomenon. Congress has updated and reauthorized the act over the years — in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992 and 2006 — with bipartisan support. During the last authorization, signed by President George W. Bush, the legislation passed overwhelmingly in the House and unanimously in the Senate.
The current bill, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, is a response to the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision by the Supreme Court, which removed federal oversight of nine states, including Texas, with a history of racial discrimination. The court ruled that the formula that determined which states needed preapproval to change or pass new voting laws was flawed, failing to consider how the country had changed since 1965.
Yes, poll taxes and literacy tests are things of the past, but based on how quickly states formerly under preclearance moved to disenfranchise voters — many of them minorities — it’s clear the country still needs federal voting rights protections.
Within hours of the Shelby County decision, Texas implemented a strict voter ID law that had failed preclearance. Other states soon followed suit, including North Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama. The Texas law and an omnibus election law in North Carolina were eventually struck down by the courts, but voter purges, restrictions on early voting, polling place closures in heavily minority neighborhoods and limits on voting by college students have become commonplace, underlining the need for renewed federal oversight.
In Texas alone this year: the Secretary of State’s Office botched a voter purge targeting alleged noncitizen voters when it was revealed that the list was riddled with errors; a new law effectively killed mobile voting, which was used in college campuses, senior centers and rural locations; and the Legislature considered Senate Bill 9, a which would have made it harder to help disabled and elderly voters get to the polls, as well as made some voter registration errors a felony offense.
All these restrictions are being sold under the guise of election integrity. But while voter fraud is virtually nonexistent, Republican lawmakers have dragged their feet on funding for new voting technology that would offer more secure and accurate vote tallies. McConnell himself held out for months before he allowed votes on various election security proposals to help states in the face of real threats of foreign election interference.
The new bill would restore the Department of Justice oversight of election changes and — equally important, given the fast-arriving 2020 census — redistricting decisions in states with a history of recent voting rights violations. It’s a badly needed layer of protection with an updated formula that should resolve concerns that led to the 2013 ruling.
In his memoir, the Senate majority leader called the signing of the Voting Rights Act a historic moment brought about by “courageous, admirable leaders.”
More than 50 year later, McConnell can act to protect all voters and help ensure that those qualities he once admired don’t belong only in the past.