Voting rights ally?
The prospects for fixing the Voting Rights Act in the wake of the Supreme Court's
Shelby County v. Holder decision possibly has an ally in House Majority Leader Eric Cantor,
reports Mike Ellis at
The Hill:
While other GOP leaders have shown little enthusiasm for replacing the anti-discrimination protections the Supreme Court snipped this summer from the landmark civil rights law, Cantor is already talking to prominent Democrats about doing just that.
"We've had a one-on-one; it went very well," Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) told The Hill last Friday, as Congress was leaving town for a five-week recess.[...]
"We think there's a possibility we can do something in a bipartisan fashion. So it won't be Democrats going alone and Republicans [separately]. We're going to go together," added Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement. "That's what we did in 2006, and we'll do it again."
That would seem to be encouraging news. If Cantor really does want a bipartisan fix to the Supreme Court's dreadful 5-4 ruling on the act, and he's actively discussing with Democrats, then there's at least some hope he could persuade reluctant fellow Republicans to actually make it happen. But we're nowhere near any legislation yet. And for most Republicans, the only percentage in supporting a fix is being on the right side of the issue. That's because voter suppression laws already emerging in several states that were previously covered by the provision of the Voting Rights Act that the court gutted help Republicans by reducing the number of minority voters. Voters who are more likely, especially in the case of African Americans, to cast their ballots for Democrats.
Coming up with a fix for Shelby's awful fall-out therefore won't be easy since it will require figuring out which jurisdictions will be covered by a requirement that they "pre-clear" any changes in voting laws with the Department of Justice.
Cantor's support for a fix seems to have its genesis in his trip with Lewis to Selma, Alabama, this last spring to commemorate the march from there to Montgomery in 1965. One day of that series of demonstrations against Jim Crow voting laws wound up being called Bloody Sunday when authorities decided to treat protesters as they had often done in the recent past, clubbing them into submission. Lewis got his skull cracked by police nightsticks near the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma. Cantor says his visit there on the 48th anniversary of those savage attacks was "a profound experience" and proved to him "the fortitude it took to advance civil rights and ensure equal protection for all."
"I'm hopeful Congress will put politics aside, as we did on that trip, and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected," Cantor said in June, responding to the court's ruling.
That's righteous. But is it going to prove to be more than just fancy boilerplate? Because since June, Cantor hasn't said anything publicly on the subject. And it's not included on his official website. That doesn't exactly demonstrate any passion on the subject. And persuading members of his own party to take bipartisan action on the Voting Rights Act will require a big dose of passion.
Please join Daily Kos by urging Congress to save the Voting Rights Act by creating a new preclearance formula