Opinion
USA: Voting Rights Act is 50 Years Old, voter rights and democracy still under threat
In a New York Times op-ed on Thursday, Ari Berman, a political correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of the new book, “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” describes how the Voting Rights Act has faced opposition since its inception, but says the crisis of voter disenfranchisement has escalated dramatically over the last 15 years:
The backlash entered a new phase after the 2000 election, when a botched voter purge in Florida, while Jeb Bush was governor, disproportionately prevented African Americans from voting and helped George W. Bush win the White House. The Bush administration reoriented the Justice Department, prioritizing prosecutions of voter fraud over investigations into voter disenfranchisement.
The push to make it harder to vote escalated after the Tea Party’s triumph in the 2010 elections, when half the states, nearly all of them under Republican control, passed new voting restrictions, which disproportionately targeted the core of U.S. President Obama’s coalition, particularly minority voters. The voting changes were subtler than those of the 1960s, camouflaging efforts to deter voting with laws that rarely invoked race, introduced with equal fervor in North and South alike.
What is at stake, argue critics of the Right’s more recent voter-suppression tactics, is nothing short of American democracy itself.
“Democracy is not a state,” write Rep. Lewis and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) in an opinion piece published earlier this week, in the Los Angeles Times. “It is an act, and each generation must do its part to move this nation toward a more perfect union. There is no power more fundamental to democracy than the right to vote.”
As part of their effort to restore voting rights, Lewis and Leahy introduced the Voting Rights Advancement Act in June. If enacted, the law would restore the vital protections lost in the Shelby decision. “As legislators,” they write in their opinion piece, “we must see the changes to voting rights sweeping the land as a call to action. […] On this 50th anniversary, rather than pay tribute to the act’s original passage, we must fight for its restoration.”
In a similar vein, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, on Thursday championed the importance of the Voting Rights Act while also touting a pair of new bills he introduced which seek to expand voter participation.
One of the 2 bills would require states to automatically register all eligible individuals to vote when they turn 18 years old, a proposal which has garnered the support of various voter advocacy organizations and labor unions, including the Brennan Center for Justice, Dēmos, Common Cause, the Communications Workers of America, and others.
The second bill would establish Election Day as a national holiday as a way to improve poll access and voter turnout. “We should be doing everything possible to make it easier for people to participate in the political process,” said Sanders. “Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote.” Such a holiday would not “be a cure-all,” Sanders acknowledged, but said it would show a renewed “national commitment” to voter engagement and foundational principles.
“If we believe in a vibrant democracy,” he said, “we want to have the highest voter turnout in the world.”
