Ruling on voting rights increases pressure on Dems

WASHINGTON >> Congressional Democrats are facing renewed pressure to pass legislation that would protect voting rights after a Supreme Court ruling made it harder to challenge Republican efforts to limit ballot access in many states.

The 6-3 ruling Thursday on a case out of Arizona was the second time in a decade that conservatives on the Supreme Court have weakened components of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark civil rights-era law. But this opinion was released in a much different political climate, in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s lie that last year’s election was stolen.

Trump’s claims spurred Republicans in states such as Georgia and Florida to pass tougher rules on voting under the cloak of election integrity.

Democrats on Capitol Hill already have tried to respond with a sweeping voting and elections bill that Senate Republicans united to block last week. A separate bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore sections of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court previously weakened, has been similarly dismissed by most Republicans.

Those setbacks, combined with the Supreme Court’s decision, have fueled a sense of urgency among Democrats to act while they still have narrow majorities in the House and Senate. But passing voting legislation at this point would almost certainly require changes to the filibuster, allowing Democrats to act without GOP support.

“Absolutely this increases the pressure to take a very hard look at whether the Senate is an institution that will allow itself to be rendered powerless and dysfunctional,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat who sponsored a voting bill that passed the House in March.

Change won’t be easy. A group of moderate Democratic senators, including Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have ruled out revisions to the filibuster. In an evenly divided Senate, their rejection denies the votes needed to move forward with a procedural change.

Thursday’s ruling was on a case in Sinema’s home state. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the court reversed an appellate ruling in deciding that Arizona’s regulations — on who can return early ballots for another person and on refusing to count ballots cast in the wrong precinct — are not racially discriminatory.