House members strengthen Voting Rights Act

TWITTER

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, praised the passage of the Voting Rights Advancement Act.

In a mostly party-line vote, Friday (Dec. 6) the House of Representatives passed legislation 228-187 that would strengthen voting rights, particularly for people of color, who had been denied their right to vote in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

The Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, House Resolution 4 (H.R.4) will restore one of the most powerful provisions of the original 1965 Voting Rights Act,  making it more difficult for states to discriminate against voters of color, and give the federal government a stronger ability to take action against states with a history of discrimination.

"This is particularly important for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, who are the fastest growing racial population in the United States but continue to face barriers at the polls due to voter suppression laws," said Rep. Judy Chu, D-CA, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

"So we are fighting back today with the Voting Rights Advancement Act. This law finally updates the VRA – which used to be one of the most bipartisan and popular laws – to restore the Department of Justice’s ability to block states with a history of voter suppression from creating another era where minorities are silenced.”

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was weakened considerably by the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder that required Congress to create an updated coverage formula to determine if the Federal government can intervene in a state’s election laws. The majority of the Justices ruled that the original act no longer applied because of the success of the 1965 law in forcing states to end racist voting restrictions.

Since that Supreme Court decision, nearly two dozen states have implemented restrictive voter ID laws and created obstacles for people to vote. 

This bill addresses that by developing an updated process to determine which states and localities with a history of voting rights violations over the past 25 years must preclear election changes with the Department of Justice. This bill also increases transparency by requiring reasonable public notice for voting changes, and allows the Attorney General to request the presence of federal observers anywhere in the country where a serious threat to voter access and fair elections exist. 

The Voting Rights Advancement Act also ensures that decreasing the operating days or hours of a polling place during the early voting period is classified as a discriminatory practice, as does making changes to voter registration lists in jurisdictions with a racial or language minority group making up twenty percent or more of the population. 

The court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder ushered in an era of new voter suppression laws across the country.

“States that used to be covered by preclearance, and even those with less deplorable records, took the Shelby decision as a signal to enact voting restrictions with impunity, and the flood gates were opened to voting discrimination unlike anything the country had seen in a generation. A squall of voting restrictions was advanced on a national scale, including: photo ID laws, restraints on voter registration, voter purges, cuts to early voting, restrictions on the casting and counting of absentee and provisional ballots, documentary proof of citizenship requirements, polling place closures and consolidations, and criminalization of acts associated with registration or voting,” writes the ACLU.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was a bipartisan bill and passed with a large majority. In stark contrast, the vote on Friday was highly partisan. All Democrats voting for the VRAA, but pnly one Republican crossed party lines to vote for H.R.4. Republicans for the most part hid behind the argument of so-called states rights. 

The resolution now goes to the Senate where, if they continue to put party above country, the Republicans will likely allow it to die.

“The passage of H.R. 4 in the House of Representatives today brings us one step closer to restoring the Voting Rights Act and undoing the tremendous damage of Shelby," said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "We commend the House for passing this critical legislation and urge Majority Leader (Mitch) McConnell to bring it up for a vote in the Senate. The VRAA is too important – and the right to vote is too fundamental — to end up buried in the McConnell legislative graveyard.”

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